Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/597

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MAIMZ


560


MAinz


she had fifty ^oung girls educated at Rueil by an Ursu- line, Mme de Brinon. Her zeal for education increased : the boardingHschool at Rueil was transferred in Feb- ruary, 1684, to Noisy-le-Sec, where 124 girls were edu- cated; then, in 1686, to Saint-Cyr, to the magnificent buildings which Mansart had begun to construct in June, 1685. The house at Saint-Cyr, called the *' Insti- tut de Seunt-Louis ", was intended to receive 200 young ladies, who had to be poor and also able to prove four degrees of nobility on their father's side; on leaving this house each one was to receive a dowry of 3000 crowns. Mme de Maintenon took an active interest in everything at Saint-Cyr; she was the stewardess and the servant of the house, looking after the pro- visions, knowing the number of aprons, napkins etc. The primary idea connected with the foundation of Sain^Cyr was very original. "The object of Saint- Cyr, wrote the Jesuit La Chaise, the king's confessor, " 18 not to multiply convents, which increase rapidly enough of their own accord, but to give the otate well-educated women ; there are plenty of good nuns, and not a sufficient number of good mothers of fami- lies. The young ladies will be educated more suitably by persons living in the world." The constitutions of the house were submitted to Racine and Boileau, and at the same time to P^re La Chaise and Abb4 Gobelin. F^elon came to Saint-Cyr to preach ; Lulli composed the music for the choirs; Mme de Brinon developed among the pupils a taste for declamation, Racine nad the young ladies play Esther (January and February, 1689) and Athalie (5 April, 1691). But the very suc- cess of these pieces, at which Louis XIV and the Court assisted, finally disturbed many minds; both the Jes- uits and Jansenists agreed in blaming the development of this taste for the tneatre in young eirls. At the in- stigation of des Marais, Mme de Maintenon trans- formed Saint-Cyr: on 1 December, 1692, the pensiatv- not became a monastic boarding-school, subject to the Order of St. Augustine. This transformation, how- ever, did not change the end for which the house was founded: of the 1121 ladies, who passed through Saint- Cyr from 1686 to 1773, only 398 became nuns, 723 remaining in the world. And, even after the trans- formation of Saint-Cyr, the course of instruction remained, in the opinion of M. Gr^rd, incomparably superior, by its comprehensiveness and duration, to that of any other house of instruction in the eigh- teenth century. The " Entretiens ", the "Conversa- tions", and the "Proverbes" of Mme de Maintenon, by which she formed her students, hold a unique position in the contributions of women to French lit- erature.

Mme de Maintenon left Versailles on the evening of 30 August, 1715, thirty-six hours before the death of the king, who recommended her to the Due d'0rl6ms, and said of her finally: " She helped me in everything, especially in saving my soul." She went to live at Saint-Cyr in deep retirement, which was interrupted only by the visit paid to her on 10 June, 1717, by Tsar Peter the Great of Russia. The news of the imprison- ment at DouUens of the Duke of Maine, who was com- promised by the conspiracy of Cellamare (1718-9), saddened and perhaps shortened her closing years. In January, 1794, her tomb was desecrated by the revo- lutionaries, who stripped her corpse, mutilated it, and cast it into a large hole in the cemetery. As for the Institut de Saint-Louis, it was closed in 1793.

Besidea the memoiiB of the period (see biblioffraphy to Louis XrV), consult Mme dk Maintenon, (Euvret, ed. Lavall^e (12 vols., Paris, 1854); GRfcARD, ExtraiU de Mme de Maintenon sur Education (Paris. 1884); Godet de« Marais, Lettrcs h Mme de Maintenon, ed. Berthier (Paris, 1907); Souvenirs aw Mme de Maintenon, published by Haussonvillk and Hanotaux (3 vols., Paris, 1902-4): Due de Noaillks, Hist, de Mme de M. (4 vols., Paris, 1848-59): Lavall^e, Mme de M. ei la Mai9on royale de St-Cyr (Puns, 1862); Read, La petite- fille d'Agrippa d'AubifrnA in Bulletin de la Soc. de Vhiat. du protestantisme, XXXVI-VII; DE Boiau.sLE, Scarron et Fran^oise d'Avhiffne (Paris, 1804); Geftrov, ^rme de M. d'aprH m, correejMndance (2 voIb., Puna, 1887); Baudrillart, Mme de M. et son role


politique in Revue dea Queations hietor,, XLVUI (1800); Bbu- NETZkRE, Queetiom de critique (Paris, 1889); D&LUNamR, DU einfiuureiehaie Frau der frantdneehen Oeach, in Akadem. Vor- Mkge (Munich, 1889) ; Maintenon, Secrti correepondenem wiik the Princeee dee Ursine (tr., London, 1827); Bilungton, Mme de Maintenon and St-Cvr in Irish Monthly. XXXVII (Dublin, 1904) , 524 3 1 : 608-15; Morrison, Mme de Maintenon, une Hude (New York, 1886) ; Montbspan, Triumph of Mme de Maintenon in Classic Memoirs, 1 (New York, 1901). 180-202; Dyson, Mme de Maintenon (London, 1910).

Georgbs Gotau.


Mains, (jlerman town and bishopric in Hesse; for- merly the seat of an archbishop and elector.

History. — (1) UntU the Suppression of the Former Archdiocese. — ^Near the site of the modern Mains there existed some centuries before the Christian era a Celtic settlement. Here, about 38 b. c, Agrippa establii^hed a Roman camp (Moguntiacum), which, under Drusus, became the centre of the Roman province of Upper Germany. About the camp gradually developed a considerable town. According to St. Irensus, whose statement received valuable corroboration from the excavations of 1907-8, Mainz possessed a Christian community in the second century. Cr^centius, whom legend identifies with the disciple of St. Paul, is mentioned as first bishop. Of the bishops before Boniface, however, little is known. Bothardus built a basilica in honour of St. Nicomedes; Riuthardus was imprisoned, when the Alamannian prince Bando sacked the town in 368, and Bishop Aureus was put to death by the Alamannian Crocus in 406. In 451 Mainz was pillaged by the Huns. Under the Prankish domination the town began again to prosper. Bishop Sidonius, who lived early in the sixth century, restored the old churches and built new ones. The Frankish king Da^obert surrounded Mainz with walls and estab- lished his residence there. Under him the AltmUns- terkloster was erected by St. Bithikiis. Bishop Ceroid, who fell* in battle against the Silicons, was succeeded in 743 by his son Gewilio.

The ecclesiastical and secular importance of Mains may fitly be dated from the accession of St. Boniface (q. v.). Strictly speaking, however, Mains was not then raised to metropolitan rank: Boniface was him- self an archbishop as formerly^, before he occupied any see in Germany, but the archiepiscopal dignity did not descend immediately to his successor, St. Lul or Lul- lus. The long quarrel between Lullus and the Mon- astery of Fulda ended in the complete exemption of the latter from the episcopal authority. Lullus there- upon built the Monastery of Hcrsfeld, in which he was later buried. In 780 or 782 Mainz was elevated to metroiK)litan rank. The dioceses of LOttich. Colore, Worms, Speyer, and Utrecht were fiirst maae subject to ib, together with the sees of Erfurt, Buraburg, and Eichstatt, as dioceses founded by Boniface; then the Swabian dioceses of Augsburg, Strasburg, Constance, and Chur. The dioceses of Erfurt and Buraburg, however, lapsed on the death of their first occupants, and in 798 Cologne was made a metropoUtan see with Luttich and Utrecht among its suffragans (see Co- logne). With the spread of Christianity in Saxony, the dioceses of Paderborn, Halberstadt, Hildesheim, and Verden were, on their erection, added to the suf- fragans of Mainz, and under Archbishop Willigis the newly-created sees of Prague and Olmiitz were made subject to it. The ecclesiastical province then pos- sessed fourteen suffragans, and extended from the Elbe to the Grison Alps and from the Vosges to the Thurin- gian Saale, thus representing the greatest ecclesiastical administration of the Middle Ages after the papacy. The actual power of the archbishops over their suffra- gans was, however, small. Mainz lost Prague and Olmiitz during the fourteenth century, and Halber- stadt and Verden through the Peace of Westphalia. In 1752 the addition of the newly-created Diocese of Fulda raised the numl)er of suffragans to eleven.

Among the immediate successors of Lullus, Arch-