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also created financial irregularities in the government and supported a close relationship between
France and the papacy.
Driven by fears that Concini, aided by the queen mother’s favoritism, would soon attempt
to usurp royal authority, Louis XIII and his advisors concocted a plan that on 24 April 1617 led
to the murder of the royal advisor. The outcome of the assassination was the inauguration of
Louis XIII’s personal reign and the exile from court for the next four years of Maria de’ Medici.
A few years after her return in 1621, the queen mother would once again become a patron of
Parisian ecclesiastical architecture but this time with different goals and outcomes.
Maria de’ Medici’s Support of Churches after Her First Exile
In stark contrast to the earlier religious works supported by Maria de’ Medici, the
churches from the 1620s displayed a close association with the queen mother. Begun following
Maria’s return to court and admittance to the royal council, the churches for the Filles du
Calvaire and the Religious of St. Elizabeth included personal symbols and royal signs that in
addition to providing visual testimony to the prestigious patron called attention to the queen
mother’s agenda. While scholars have recognized Maria de’ Medici’s association with each
church and the incorporation of her personal symbols on the church of the Filles du Calvaire, an
examination of the queen’s intentions especially in comparison with the lack of royal symbols
during the regency is missing from the literature. 50 I propose that the new approach to
ecclesiastical architecture must be viewed as an attempt by Maria de’ Medici to regain the
authority she formerly wielded as regent and a reaction to Louis XIII’s challenge to her search
for power.
Filles du Calvaire
The first religious group supported by Maria de’ Medici following her return from exile
was the Filles du Calvaire, which she established in 1622 on a piece of land adjacent to the
Luxembourg Palace (fig. 70). The Filles du Calvaire, a reformed order of Benedictines, was
founded in 1617 in Poitiers by Father François Le Clerc du Tremblay and was brought to Paris in
1620 by Elisabeth Damours, widow of Monsieur de Lauzon, councilor of the Paris Parlement. 51
Maria de’ Medici had several reasons to want to support the religious group. In 1618 she helped
found the second convent of the Filles du Calvaire, located in Angers, naming herself its
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