Louise Marie~Thérèse ~ The Black Nun of Moret

Louise Marie~Thérèse, was a French nun, and was dubiously claimed to be the daughter of the Queen of France, Marie-Thérèse of Spain, the wife of King Louis XIV.

❤ The rumours that Queen Marie-Thérèse had an illegitimate daughter, were well known.
Several writers from the time, have written about the scandal.
The Nun is mentioned in the memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Montespan, Cardinal Dubois and Voltaire.

❤ The nun’s father was supposedly Nabo, Queen Marie-Thérèse’s page ~ a dwarf, who was also black.
Nabo was one of the Queen’s closest companions.
A bit too close perhaps…
Nabo was removed from court by order of the king, soon after Louise Marie-Thérèse’s birth.
There are some claims that Nabo was incarcerated as the ‘Man in the Iron Mask, under the pseudonym of “Eustache Dauger”

❤ The court was told the child had died, and a funeral was prepared and acted out.
The the child was given into the hands of Monsieur Alexandre Bontemps, the King’s first valet.
Bontemps placed the baby in a convent, where she became a nun.

❤ The nun herself, seemed convinced of her royal birth, and she once greeted the Dauphin, as “my brother”.
A letter sent on 13th June 1685, states that ~
“a pension of 300 pounds granted by King Louis XIV to the nun Louise Marie-Thérèse on 15th October 1695, to be paid to her all her life, in this convent or everywhere she could be”
This could suggest that she may, indeed, have had royal connections.

❤ Louise Marie-Thérèse died at Moret~sur~Loing in 1730, aged 71–72.
A portrait of her still exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, in Paris.
Research conducted by the Société de l’histoire de Paris et d’Ile-de-France, concluded that this pastel portrait was painted around 1680, by the same hand which also painted the series of 22 pastel portraits of the Kings of France……

Louise Marie Thérèse (The Black Nun of Moret) 1695.
Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, in Paris.