Marie Anne Éléonore de Bourbon

Marie Anne Éléonore
Mademoiselle de Bourbon
Abbess of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs
Born(1690-12-22)22 December 1690
Palace of Versailles, Île-de-France, France
Died30 August 1760(1760-08-30) (aged 69)
Villejuif, Paris, France
Names
Marie Anne Éléonore Gabrielle de Bourbon
HouseBourbon-Condé
FatherLouis III, Prince of Condé
MotherLouise Françoise de Bourbon
ReligionRoman Catholicism
SignatureMarie Anne Éléonore's signature

Marie Anne Éléonore Gabrielle de Bourbon (French pronunciation: [maʁi an eleɔnɔʁ ɡabʁijɛl də buʁbɔ̃]; 22 December 1690 – 30 August 1760)[1] was a daughter of Louis III de Bourbon, Prince of Condé and Louise Françoise, Princess of Condé. She was the Abbess of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, an abbey in the Villejuif suburb of Paris.[2]

Biography

Marie Anne Éléonore as a child, by Pierre Gobert.

Marie Anne Éléonore was born at the Palace of Versailles to the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon. The eldest child of her parents she was known as Mademoiselle de Bourbon in her youth. In her early years she was close to her mother but was later replaced by her sister Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon. Her father, Louis III de Bourbon, was the grandson of le Grand Condé, and her mother, Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, was the eldest surviving daughter of Louis XIV of France and his maîtresse-en-titre, Madame de Montespan.

As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, she was a princesse du sang ("princess of the blood") and was allowed the style of Serene Highness.

On 6 May 1706 at the age of 16, she was made a nun at the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou. She was later made the Abbess of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs in 1723 and was known as Madame de Bourbon.[3] Saint-Antoine-des-Champs had been an abbey since the 13th century.

She outlived all of her siblings apart from her sister Dowager Princess of Conti and grand mother of the future Philippe Égalité. Dying in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif, she was buried at the Abbey of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs.

Her sister Henriette Louise de Bourbon was an abbess at Beaumont-lès-Tours and a cousin Louise Adélaïde d'Orléans was the Abbess of Chelles. The Abbey at Saint-Antoine is now the home of the Hôpital Saint-Antoine outside Paris.

Ancestry

References

  1. ^ Achaintre, Nicolas Louis (1825). Histoire Généalogique Et Chronologique de la Maison Royale de Bourbon (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Jules Didot Aine. p. 407.
  2. ^ Barthelemy, Edouard (1883). Les correspondants de la marquise de Balleroy (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Lebraierie Hachette Et C. pp. 529–530.
  3. ^ Houry, Laurent (1749). Almanach national: annuaire officiel de la République française (in French). Paris. p. 34.
  4. ^ Genealogie ascendante jusqu'au quatrieme degre inclusivement de tous les Rois et Princes de maisons souveraines de l'Europe actuellement vivans [Genealogy up to the fourth degree inclusive of all the Kings and Princes of sovereign houses of Europe currently living] (in French). Bourdeaux: Frederic Guillaume Birnstiel. 1768. p. 44.