Louise Marie Thérèse

Louise Marie Thérèse (1664–1732), known as the Black Nun of Moret, was a Benedictine nun rumoured to be of French royal descent.

It alleged that she was the daughter of Queen Marie-Thérèse, however, historians think she was most likely the illegitimate daughter of Marie-Thérèse's husband, King Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King.

History Birth parentage theories

Rumors created at the court of Versailles suggested that Queen Maria Teresa had a second child, besides Louis, Grand Dauphin, in 1664. This child was rumoured to be Louise Marie Thérèse.

Adulthood Louise Marie Thérèse was a Benedictine nun in the abbey of Notre-Dame of the Nativity Catholic Church in Moret-sur-Loing. She was called the "Mauresse de Moret" ("Mooress of Moret"), and a portrait of her exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris. Research conducted by the Société de l'histoire de Paris et d'Ile-de-France, published in 1924 by Honoré Champion éditions, concluded that this pastel portrait was painted around 1680 by the same hand which painted the series of 22 pastel portraits of Kings of France, from Louis IX to Louis XIV, between 1681 and 1683 on the initiative of Father Claude Du Molinet (1620–1687), librarian of Sainte Geneviève abbey.

The majority of accounts describing Louise Marie Thérèse's life agree that she was financially supported by King Louis XIV. However, many accounts differ on why this was. Voltaire suggested, in 1751, that Louise was likely one of many illegitimate children of King Louis XIV. Others at the time suggested that Louise fabricated the story. and in the Journal of the Duc de Luynes. The Duke of Saint-Simon writes:

Louise Marie Thérèse herself seemed convinced of her royal birth, and Saint-Simon states that she once greeted the Dauphin as "my brother". A letter sent on 13 June 1685, by the Secretary of the King's Household to M. De Bezons, general agent of the clergy, and the pension of 300 pounds granted by King Louis XIV to the nun Louise Marie-Thérèse on 15 October 1695, "to be paid to her all her life in this convent or everywhere she could be, by the guards of the Royal treasure present and to come" suggest that she may, indeed, have had royal connections. The duc de Luynes claimed that she was the daughter of two black gardeners, too poor to educate her, who applied to Mme. de Maintenon for patronage.

Legacy and impact In 1978, French writer Pierre-Marie Dijol published the book Nabo, ou le Masque de Fer, in which he claimed that the nun's father was Nabo, Queen Maria Theresa's dwarf black page, who was removed from court by order of the king soon after Louise Marie-Thérèse's birth, and incarcerated as the Man in the Iron Mask, under the pseudonym of "Eustache Dauger".

Marie-Thérèse's birth is depicted in the first three episodes of the TV drama series Versailles, which premiered in France in 2015. In the show, she is portrayed as the illegitimate daughter of Queen Maria Theresa and Prince Annaba of Assinia, with a dwarf named Nabo implicated and found dead, and the child later used as a political bargaining tool by the prince-turned-king.