Charlotte Duplessis-Mornay

Charlotte Duplessis-Mornay (born Charlotte Arbaleste de la Borde) lived from 1550 to 1606 and became a French writer of the Reformation.

She was born into a well-to-do French family many years before the civil war between the French Catholics and Protestants. During the religious wars in France, her father left the Catholic Church for the Protestant Church, while her mother remained a devout Catholic. Her siblings were divided between Catholic and Protestant, but Charlotte herself left the Catholic Church and remained a devout Protestant. At the age of 17, Charlotte married her first husband, Jean de Pas, the lord of Feuqueres. Jean de Pas was also a converted Protestant, but he had served at the court of Catholic Valois kings in the past. Once they were married, Charlotte was sent by her husband to Sedan, where their daughter was born. Jean died five months later, never meeting his daughter.

Charlotte became a Huguenot as an adult and was known for writing a first-person account of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (1572). After being caught up in the massacre she left her daughter in the custody of her Catholic mother and fled to Sedan for safety. In 1576, after she gained notoriety for writing those accounts, she met Philippe de Mornay (1549-1623), a writer who would later become her second husband.

Charlotte Duplessis Mornay was born Charlotte Arbaleste, in Paris, France, on February 1, 1550. She had three brothers and a sister. Her father was Guy Arbaleste II, Viscount of Melun, Lord of la Borde in 1552. In 1555 he became president of the Paris Chamber of Accounts. He joined the Protestant religion in 1569 and died the following year. Charlotte's mother was a devout Catholic until the day she died in 1590.

The widowed Charlotte did not wish to remarry, but she met and was attracted to the intelligence of Philippe de Mornay, lord of Plessis-Marly, a Huguenot fighter in the religious wars of the Protestant Reformation and a leading French Protestant. In 1576, at age 26, with an eight-year-old daughter from her first marriage, she married Philippe (age 27), who was also a writer and who had escaped the St. Bartholomew massacre as well. He continued to be a soldier but soon became adviser to then-Huguenot King Henry of Navarre, who wanted the French throne. Philippe was a well respected soldier and author and was called the Pope of the Huguenots. In marrying Philippe de Mornay Charlotte’s life course changed dramatically; she was now set on traveling with her husband as much as she could. She desired to enable her husband the freedom to write.

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