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The queen certainly believed that she suffered many hardships stemming from the ill
treatment endured at the hands of her son. After seven years of loyal service to Louis XIII,
reigning as regent while he remained too young and inexperienced to handle the burdens of
kingship, Maria de’ Medici felt she was indecorously treated by being exiled from court while
her closest advisor Concini was murdered and her best friend Léonora Galigaï was tried and
executed for witchcraft. Despite the indignities suffered by the queen, she thought that by
consenting to assist her son as a member of the royal council she could prove her devotion to the
people of France.
Although Louis XIII asked Maria de’ Medici to join his council, her insatiable desire for
power and continued association with conservative Catholics forced the king to remain
suspicious of her motives. 75 As part of his efforts to exert his own authority and to limit his
mother’s growing sense of power, Louis XIII turned to the church of the French Oratory (fig. 4).
Not only was it a symbol of the dévot party’s goals to form a united Catholic Europe allied with
Rome and Spain, it also represented Maria de’ Medici, who as founder of the congregation had
used it along with other religious organizations to secure her power during the regency. As I
have shown in chapter two, to curb the growing confidence of Maria de’ Medici and the
conservative Catholics, Louis XIII appropriated the church of the French Oratory, naming it the
palace chapel of the Louvre and converting it into a symbol of his sovereign authority.
This event was certainly in the mind of the queen mother as work progressed on her
palace. Indeed I argue that Louis XIII’s decision to use the new royal chapel as a sign of his
political will was the impetus behind Maria de’ Medici’s sudden change in approach to
supporting churches. Less than two years after her son’s action, the queen mother began
construction of a church for a newly established reformed order, located adjacent to her palace.
The combination of the church’s urban placement, the inscription on the foundation stone, and
the personal symbols explicitly tying the building to the queen mother, turned it into an
expression of her political will. Although Maria de’ Medici used the Marian symbolism to assert
her right to rule, she incorporated the pelican to demonstrate her devotion to Louis XIII and her
benevolence towards the French kingdom.
Notre-Dame-de-Pitié
In April 1628, three years after work began on Notre-Dame-du-Calvaire, Maria de’
Medici placed the first stone of Notre-Dame-de-Pitié for the Religious of St. Elizabeth, the last
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