Bronze medal from the Paris Mint (Horn hallmark from 1880).
Minted around 1970.
Engraver : Gilaz.
Dimensions : 68mm.
Weight : 264 g.
Metal : bronze.
Mark on the edge: Cornucopia + bronze.
Quick and neat delivery .
The easel is not for sale.
The stand is not for sale.
Armande-Grésinde-Claire-Élisabeth Béjart, known as Mademoiselle Molière, is a French actress of the Grand Siècle, born on an uncertain date and place, and died in Paris on November 30, 1700. Daughter or sister of Madeleine Béjart (the question is still unanswered), she was for eleven years the wife of Molière, who wrote numerous roles for her, including that of Célimène in Le Misanthrope. His talent, both in the tragic and the comic, was recognized by his contemporaries. A contrasting personality, she was the subject, even during her lifetime, of a defamatory fictionalized biography, La Fameuse Comédienne, republished many times over the following centuries.
Biography
Birth and identity
More than three centuries after his death, the identity of Molière's wife has not been clearly established. The scarcity of existing documents, the absence in particular of a baptismal certificate which would bear her four first names and the names of her parents, does not allow us to resolve the question, already controversial during her lifetime, of knowing whether she was the daughter or the sister of Madeleine Béjart. Historians are therefore reduced to combining in various ways the few clues at their disposal and which are presented below in chronological order.
Frances of Modena (1638)
Capital of the Saint-Eustache church in Paris.
The oldest date put forward about “Mademoiselle Molière”Note 1 is that of July 3, 1638. That day, in Paris, Madeleine Béjart, aged twenty, minor daughter1 of Joseph Béjart and Marie Hervé, gave birth to a child who would be held eight days later on the baptismal font of the Saint-Eustache church2:
“Eleventh of July, was baptized Françoise, born on the third Saturday of this present month, daughter of Messire Esprit Raymond, knight, lord of Modena and other places, chamberlain of the affairs of Monseigneur, only brother of the KingNote 2, and of damsel Magdeleyne Béjard , the mother, living on rue Saint-Honoré; the godfather, Jean-Baptiste de L'Hermitte, esquire, sieur de VauselleNote 3, holding for lord Gaston-Jean-Baptiste de Raymond, also knight, lord of ModenaNote 4; the godmother, lady Marie HervéNote 5, wife of Joseph Béjard, escuyerNote 6. »
The child's first name was chosen in reference to the man who, had he not died six years earlier, would have been his most predictable godfather: his paternal grandfather, François de Rémond de Mormoiron, Count of Modena, known as “Big Modena”3.
The little girl baptized that day seems to be the one that Jean-Léonor Le Gallois de Grimarest, Molière's first biographer, will evoke4, when in 1705, without mentioning her first name, he identified "la Molière" (i.e. say Armande Béjart) as the daughter of Madeleine Béjart and the Count of Modena.
Noting that Françoise de Modena does not appear, with this first name, in any subsequent document, certain authors, including the most recent biographer of Molière5, take it for granted that she died at a young age, like many infants at the time. , and formulate the hypothesis that Madeleine Béjart would have had, in the following years, another child from the same Spirit of Modena, with whom she would have continued a romantic relationship until 1642, and that it is this second daughter, unrecognized by her father and baptized on an unknown date under the quadruple first name of Armande-Grésinde-Claire-Élisabeth, who is said to have married Molière in 1662.
A “little unbaptized girl” (1643)
At the end of winter 1643, eighteen months after the death of Joseph Béjart, his widow Marie Hervé and the three eldest of their children worked with their friend Jean-Baptiste Poquelin on the creation of the Illustre Théâtre, which would see the day June 30. In an act signed on Mars 10, in the presence of a “private civilian lieutenant”, three prosecutors at Châtelet and various other witnesses, Marie Hervé declared, “in the name and as guardian of Joseph, Madeleine, Geneviève, Louis and a little unbaptized child, minors of the said deceased and she", wanting to renounce their father's estate as being more onerous than profitable6.
Having not yet been baptized, but perhaps simply waved, the little girl is not named; however, most historians agree in recognizing her as the future Armande-Grésinde-Claire-Élisabeth, who married Molière in 1662 (see the chapter A discreet marriage). For what reason, even though she is at least nine or ten months old, Note 7, has this last-born of Marie Hervé not yet been baptized? Madeleine Jurgens and Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller argue7 that "the ceremony had been postponed because of all the concerns that had haunted the family since the death of Joseph" Note 8, that it had again been "postponed because of the adventures of the Illustre Théâtre”, and that this suggested that the baptism could have taken place in the provinces (see below the section A late baptism?)7.
Among the numerous documents which, until the 1680s, attest that Armande BéjartMademoiselle Menou
List of characters from Corneille's Andromeda (1651 edition), with in the margin the names of the actors from Molière's troupe who played the roles in the performances given in Lyon in 1652-1653.
Most of Armande Béjart's biographers have identified her with the “demoiselle Menou” mentioned in a letter that Chapelle would have sent to her “very dear friend” Molière at the end of a particularly harsh winter (that of 1658- 1659, it seems), and which will be published thirty-three years later10,Note 20:
“All the beauties of the countryside will only grow and become more beautiful, especially that of green, which will give us leaves on the first day […]. However, it will not be soon, and for this journey we will have to be content with the one who covers the earth and who, to put it to you a little more nobly,
Young and weak, crawl down
In the depths of the meadows, and has not
Still vigor and strength
To penetrate the tender bark
The willow that stretches out its arms to him.
The branch, loving and flowery,
Crying for his nascent baits,
All in sap and tears, beg him
And, jealous of the meadow,
In five or six days we promise
To attract it to its summit.
You will show these beautiful verses to Mademoiselle Menou only; as well they are the figure of her and of you. For the others, you will see that it is especially appropriate that your wives do not see them, and for what they contain, and because they are, as well as the first, all of the most wicked. I made them to respond to this place in your letter where you detail the displeasure that the partialities of your three great actressesNote 21 give you for the casting of your roles. »
Thus, three years before their marriage, and while Molière was faced with dissensions within the troupe, Armande (if it is indeed her) and he would have maintained a romantic relationship that was still kept secret.
With Molière's troupe
Presumed portrait of Armande Béjart around 1660, by Pierre Mignard (Musée Carnavalet, Paris).
Since the arrival of Molière's troupe in Paris in the fall of 1658, the young woman has shared the lives of the actors. Her name appears for the first time in documentation, on August 26, 1659, under the form “Grésinde Béjart”. That day, with all the members of the troupe, she signed the marriage contract between two friends of the actors11. In November 1660 and April 1661, she signed on two similar occasions as “Grésinde Armande” and “Armande Grésinde”12.
For all those among whom she lives (the actors, their families, their relatives, their friendsNote 22), Armande is, at least in an “official” or “legal” way, the younger sister of “Mlle Béjart” (Madeleine), of “Mlle Hervé” (Geneviève) and “Béjart” (Louis). A document attests to this: the partnership contract signed before notaries on October 4, 1659, in which the legal relationships between the actors of the troupe are redefined and where Madeleine Béjart reserves, “to the exclusion of all others, two places for his brother and one of his sisters”13. The last words designating Geneviève, who has belonged to the troupe since the creation of the Illustre Théâtre, the other “sister” can, logically and objectively, only be Armande.
During the Easter break of 1661, Molière asked his comrades for “two shares instead of one that [he] has”, which “the troop grants [him], for him or for his wife if he
Biography
Birth and identity
More than three centuries after his death, the identity of Molière's wife has not been clearly established. The scarcity of existing documents, the absence in particular of a baptismal certificate which would bear her four first names and the names of her parents, does not allow us to resolve the question, already controversial during her lifetime, of knowing whether she was the daughter or the sister of Madeleine Béjart. Historians are therefore reduced to combining in various ways the few clues at their disposal and which are presented below in chronological order.
Frances of Modena (1638)
Capital of the Saint-Eustache church in Paris.
The oldest date put forward about “Mademoiselle Molière”Note 1 is that of July 3, 1638. That day, in Paris, Madeleine Béjart, aged twenty, minor daughter1 of Joseph Béjart and Marie Hervé, gave birth to a child who would be held eight days later on the baptismal font of the Saint-Eustache church2:
“Eleventh of July, was baptized Françoise, born on the third Saturday of this present month, daughter of Messire Esprit Raymond, knight, lord of Modena and other places, chamberlain of the affairs of Monseigneur, only brother of the KingNote 2, and of damsel Magdeleyne Béjard , the mother, living on rue Saint-Honoré; the godfather, Jean-Baptiste de L'Hermitte, esquire, sieur de VauselleNote 3, holding for lord Gaston-Jean-Baptiste de Raymond, also knight, lord of ModenaNote 4; the godmother, lady Marie HervéNote 5, wife of Joseph Béjard, escuyerNote 6. »
The child's first name was chosen in reference to the man who, had he not died six years earlier, would have been his most predictable godfather: his paternal grandfather, François de Rémond de Mormoiron, Count of Modena, known as “Big Modena”3.
The little girl baptized that day seems to be the one that Jean-Léonor Le Gallois de Grimarest, Molière's first biographer, will evoke4, when in 1705, without mentioning her first name, he identified "la Molière" (i.e. say Armande Béjart) as the daughter of Madeleine Béjart and the Count of Modena.
Noting that Françoise de Modena does not appear, with this first name, in any subsequent document, certain authors, including the most recent biographer of Molière5, take it for granted that she died at a young age, like many infants at the time. , and formulate the hypothesis that Madeleine Béjart would have had, in the following years, another child from the same Spirit of Modena, with whom she would have continued a romantic relationship until 1642, and that it is this second daughter, unrecognized by her father and baptized on an unknown date under the quadruple first name of Armande-Grésinde-Claire-Élisabeth, who is said to have married Molière in 1662.
A “little unbaptized girl” (1643)
At the end of winter 1643, eighteen months after the death of Joseph Béjart, his widow Marie Hervé and the three eldest of their children worked with their friend Jean-Baptiste Poquelin on the creation of the Illustre Théâtre, which would see the day June 30. In an act signed on Mars 10, in the presence of a “private civilian lieutenant”, three prosecutors at Châtelet and various other witnesses, Marie Hervé declared, “in the name and as guardian of Joseph, Madeleine, Geneviève, Louis and a little unbaptized child, minors of the said deceased and she", wanting to renounce their father's estate as being more onerous than profitable6.
Having not yet been baptized, but perhaps simply waved, the little girl is not named; however, most historians agree in recognizing her as the future Armande-Grésinde-Claire-Élisabeth, who married Molière in 1662 (see the chapter A discreet marriage). For what reason, even though she is at least nine or ten months old, Note 7, has this last-born of Marie Hervé not yet been baptized? Madeleine Jurgens and Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller argue7 that "the ceremony had been postponed because of all the concerns that had haunted the family since the death of Joseph" Note 8, that it had again been "postponed because of the adventures of the Illustre Théâtre”, and that this suggested that the baptism could have taken place in the provinces (see below the section A late baptism?)7.
Among the numerous documents which, until the 1680s, attest that Armande BéjartMademoiselle Menou
List of characters from Corneille's Andromeda (1651 edition), with in the margin the names of the actors from Molière's troupe who played the roles in the performances given in Lyon in 1652-1653.
Most of Armande Béjart's biographers have identified her with the “demoiselle Menou” mentioned in a letter that Chapelle would have sent to her “very dear friend” Molière at the end of a particularly harsh winter (that of 1658- 1659, it seems), and which will be published thirty-three years later10,Note 20:
“All the beauties of the countryside will only grow and become more beautiful, especially that of green, which will give us leaves on the first day […]. However, it will not be soon, and for this journey we will have to be content with the one who covers the earth and who, to put it to you a little more nobly,
Young and weak, crawl down
In the depths of the meadows, and has not
Still vigor and strength
To penetrate the tender bark
The willow that stretches out its arms to him.
The branch, loving and flowery,
Crying for his nascent baits,
All in sap and tears, beg him
And, jealous of the meadow,
In five or six days we promise
To attract it to its summit.
You will show these beautiful verses to Mademoiselle Menou only; as well they are the figure of her and of you. For the others, you will see that it is especially appropriate that your wives do not see them, and for what they contain, and because they are, as well as the first, all of the most wicked. I made them to respond to this place in your letter where you detail the displeasure that the partialities of your three great actressesNote 21 give you for the casting of your roles. »
Thus, three years before their marriage, and while Molière was faced with dissensions within the troupe, Armande (if it is indeed her) and he would have maintained a romantic relationship that was still kept secret.
With Molière's troupe
Presumed portrait of Armande Béjart around 1660, by Pierre Mignard (Musée Carnavalet, Paris).
Since the arrival of Molière's troupe in Paris in the fall of 1658, the young woman has shared the lives of the actors. Her name appears for the first time in documentation, on August 26, 1659, under the form “Grésinde Béjart”. That day, with all the members of the troupe, she signed the marriage contract between two friends of the actors11. In November 1660 and April 1661, she signed on two similar occasions as “Grésinde Armande” and “Armande Grésinde”12.
For all those among whom she lives (the actors, their families, their relatives, their friendsNote 22), Armande is, at least in an “official” or “legal” way, the younger sister of “Mlle Béjart” (Madeleine), of “Mlle Hervé” (Geneviève) and “Béjart” (Louis). A document attests to this: the partnership contract signed before notaries on October 4, 1659, in which the legal relationships between the actors of the troupe are redefined and where Madeleine Béjart reserves, “to the exclusion of all others, two places for his brother and one of his sisters”13. The last words designating Geneviève, who has belonged to the troupe since the creation of the Illustre Théâtre, the other “sister” can, logically and objectively, only be Armande.
During the Easter break of 1661, Molière asked his comrades for “two shares instead of one that [he] has”, which “the troop grants [him], for him or for his wife if he