Madelonnettes Convent

The Madelonnettes Convent (couvent des Madelonnettes) was a Paris convent in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. It was located in what is now a rectangle between 6 rue des Fontaines du Temple (where there are the remains of one of its walls), rue Volta and rue du Vertbois, and part of its site is now occupied by the lycée Turgot. As the Madelonnettes Prison (prison des Madelonnettes) during the French Revolution, its prisoners included the writers the Marquis de Sade and Nicolas Chamfort, the politician Jean-Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville and the actor Dazincourt.

Its origins date back to 1618, when the wine merchant Robert de Montry - after being rebuffed by the local prostitutes in his attempts to reform them - finally decided to put them back to the right path whilst being accommodated in his own home. With the aid of M. Du Pont (curé of Saint-Nicolas des Champs), the Capuchin Father Athanase Molé and M. de Fresne (an officer of the Gardes du Corps du Roi and a friend of Saint Vincent de Paul among others), Montry worked to spread his charitable work to other prostitutes. Quickly overtaken by their success, at first they rented rooms in the faubourg Saint-Honoré, before Robert de Montry lent them a house he owned in the quartier de la Croix-Rouge. A chapel for the house was improvised, served by Benedictines from Saint-Germain des Prés.

The idea of creating an actual convent was down to the patronage of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and the generosity of the Marquise de Maignelay (née Claude-Marguerite de Gondi, sister of Jean-François de Gondi, archbishop of Paris), who, on 16 July 1620, acquired from sister Dubuisson a property in rue des Fontaines, between the Abbaye Saint-Martin des Champs and the Temple fortress enclosure, and left them 101,600 livres in her will. In 1625, Louis XIII granted them 3,000 livres in rents, and they were accorded a constitution by pope Urban VIII in 1630]. Most of the buildings were constructed in 1637, with the first chapel inaugurated by Anne of Austria on 22 March 1648 and a church built from 1680 onwards and consecrated on 2 September 1685.

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