Memoirs

248 Pages·2008·2.695 MB·English, French

by  Mancini, Marie, Nelson, Sarah, Mancini, Hortense Mancini

MEMOIRS
THE
OTHER VOICE
IN
EARLY MODERN
EUROPE
A Series Edited by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr.
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Hortense Mancini
and
Marie Mancini
MEMOIRS
(cid:2)
Edited and Translated by
Sarah Nelson
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago & London
Hortense Mancini (1646–1699)
Marie Mancini (1639–1715)
Sarah Nelson is associate professor of French
at the University of Idaho.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2008 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50278-6 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50279-3 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-50278-3 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-50279-1 (paper)
The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of
James E. Rabil, in memory of Scottie W. Rabil, toward the publication of this book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Memoirs / Hortense Mancini and Marie Mancini ;
edited and translated by Sarah Nelson.
p. cm. — (The other voice in early modern Europe)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50278-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-50278-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50279-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-50279-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Mazarin, Hortense Mancini, duchesse de, 1646–1699—Diaries. 2. Mancini,
Maria, 1639–1715—Diaries. 3. France—History—Louis XIV, 1643–1715—Sources.
4. France—Court and courtiers—Diaries. I. Nelson, Sarah. II. Mazarin, Hortense
Mancini, duchesse de, 1646–1699. Mémoires. English. III. Mancini, Maria,
1639–1715? Apologie. English.
DC130.A2M4613 2008
944’.0330922—dc22
2007050574
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Series Editors’ Introduction ix
The Memoirs of Hortense and Marie Mancini 1
Volume Editor’s Bibliography 21
To M.*** [The Memoirs of Hortense Mancini] 27
The Truth in Its Own Light by Marie Mancini 82
Appendixes
A. Genealogical Chart of the Mazzarino
and Mancini Families 175
B. Map of Present-day Western Europe 177
C. Map of Present-day France 179
D. Map of Present-day Italy 181
Series Editors’ Bibliography 183
Index 203

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In July 2003, I had the good fortune to take part in the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities Summer Institute, A Literature of Their Own?
Women Writing—Venice, London, Paris—1550–1700. I am profoundly
grateful to the director of the institute, Albert Rabil, Jr., for his organiza-
tion of that extraordinary experience, for his creation and oversight, along
with Margaret L. King, of the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series
and for the opportunity he afforded me to edit this volume. I thank Janet
Rabil for her contributions to running the institute, and I thank the distin-
guished scholars who served as faculty for it. I am especially grateful to
the French specialists, Elizabeth Goldsmith and Erica Harth, who brought
into the institute the memoir of Marie Mancini in its seventeenth-century
English translation; and I thank Elizabeth Goldsmith for her scholarship
on the Mancinis, which was tremendously valuable to me as I prepared
this volume. Finally, I express my hearty thanks to the twenty-four other
participants in the institute, including Monique Nagem, Carrie Klaus, and
Nathalie Hester, who read drafts, offered advice, and furnished helpful in-
formation on this project.
My work on this volume was supported by a University of Idaho Seed
Grant and also by a grant-in-aid from the Friends of the University of
Wisconsin–Madison Libraries. I am particularly grateful to Tom Garver for
his kind assistance at the University of Wisconsin. I would also like to thank
Katherine Aiken, James Reece, and Joan West at the University of Idaho
for helping me carve out the time to complete this project. Many other
Idaho colleagues were generous in their assistance: Cecelia Luschnig read
multiple drafts of both memoirs; Sandra Reineke tracked down volumes at
the Bibliothèque nationale; Ellen Kittell, Louis Perraud, and Sean Quinlan
were invaluable consultants on historical and linguistic questions; and a vii
viii Acknowledgments
great many people, including Michael O’Rourke, Bill McLaughlin, Debbie
McLaughlin, Irina Kappler-Crookston, and Anne Perriguey, provided pre-
cious advice and support. I am also grateful to colleagues and mentors from
outside of Idaho who kindly advised me on specifi c points: Ellen Millender,
Ullrich Langer, Christopher Kleinhenz, and Kirk Read. I owe a great debt
to a number of people whom I have never met but whose careful genealogi-
cal documentation made much of my annotation of this volume possible:
Alain de Carné, Davide Shamà, Salvador Miranda, and Nicolas Hobbs. And
I am very grateful to Alison Folk for the illustrations she created, as well as
to freelance copyeditor Susan Tarcov, and Randy Petilos and his colleagues
at the University of Chicago Press for their expertise and generosity.
Finally, I thank the friends and family whose constant interest in this
project made working on it such a pleasure for me: many dear friends in
Moscow, Idaho, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; the Madison group—Nancy
Virtue, Dolly Weber, Kathleen Suchenski, Tim Scheie, Loren Ringer, Elise
Leahy, Cheryl Krueger, Rebecca Karoff, and Rebecca Saunders; my par-
ents, Corinne and Harland Nelson; and of course, my son Luke Gresback
and my husband Tim Gresback, who (unlike the husbands of Hortense and
Marie Mancini) always sent me on my research travels with a smile and
never, never sought legal means to detain me or had agents tail me.
Sarah Nelson
THE OTHER VOICE IN
EARLY MODERN EUROPE:
INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES
Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr.
THE OLD VOICE AND THE OTHER VOICE
In western Europe and the United States, women are nearing equality in
the professions, in business, and in politics. Most enjoy access to educa-
tion, reproductive rights, and autonomy in fi nancial affairs. Issues vital to
women are on the public agenda: equal pay, child care, domestic abuse,
breast cancer research, and curricular revision with an eye to the inclusion
of women.
These recent achievements have their origins in things women (and
some male supporters) said for the fi rst time about six hundred years ago.
Theirs is the “other voice,” in contradistinction to the “fi rst voice,” the voice
of the educated men who created Western culture. Coincident with a gen-
eral reshaping of European culture in the period 1300–1700 (called the
Renaissance or early modern period), questions of female equality and op-
portunity were raised that still resound and are still unresolved.
The other voice emerged against the backdrop of a three-thousand-
year history of the derogation of women rooted in the civilizations related
to Western culture: Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Christian. Negative at-
titudes toward women inherited from these traditions pervaded the intel-
lectual, medical, legal, religious, and social systems that developed during
the European Middle Ages.
The following pages describe the traditional, overwhelmingly male
views of women’s nature inherited by early modern Europeans and the new
tradition that the “other voice” called into being to begin to challenge reign-
ing assumptions. This review should serve as a framework for understand-
ing the texts published in the series The Other Voice in Early Modern
Europe. Introductions specifi c to each text and author follow this essay in
all the volumes of the series.
ix