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CHAPTER 5
MARIA DE’ MEDICI AND PARISIAN CHURCHES:
THE USE AND DISUSE OF ROYAL SIGNS
From 1611 to 1628 Maria de’ Medici supported the construction of seven churches for
recently established religious orders in Paris, the Minims of the Place Royale (begun 1611), the
Discalced Carmelites (begun 1613), the Récollets (begun 1614), the Jacobins on the rue Saint-
Honoré (begun 1614), the French Oratorians (begun 1616), the Filles du Calvaire (begun 1625),
and the Religious of St. Elizabeth (begun 1628) (fig. 2). 1 The queen’s contribution to each
building varied considerably, ranging from helping the religious acquire land to placing the first
stone of the church to providing funds for construction. Although the only extant churches are
the Discalced Carmelites’ Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes and the Religious of St. Elizabeth’s Notre-
Dame-de-Pitié (today Sainte-Elisabeth), an examination of contemporary descriptions and
engravings presents an intriguing pattern of support by Maria de’ Medici. The five buildings
begun prior to 1617, while Maria de’ Medici was regent and before her first banishment from
court, lack any visual reference to the royal aid they received. Indeed only the churches for the
Filles du Calvaire and the Religious of St. Elizabeth, both begun after the queen mother’s return
from exile and her admittance into the royal council, included prominent imagery explicitly
linking the buildings to their royal patron.
To account for the striking differences between those churches begun from 1611 to 1617
and those from the 1620s, I propose that one must look to the queen mother’s distinct objectives
first during her reign as regent and then in her role as counselor to the king. During the regency
Maria de’ Medici had two primary concerns: the promotion of the Catholic faith and the
legitimization of her right to rule for her minor son, a position threatened by her foreign status
and her gender. By contributing to the construction of churches for religious orders, the queen
helped to legitimize her rule by participating in an established tradition of French monarchs and
at the same time promoting the ideals of the Catholic Reformation. The absence of visual signs
tying the churches to Maria de’ Medici limited possible fear of control by a foreign queen while
suggesting that the initiative for reform came solely from the religious groups. In contrast, upon
admittance to the royal council in 1622 the queen’s greatest desire was to regain the authority she
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