Biography
Other info : Bibliography
Charlotte Duplessis-Mornay (born Charlotte Arbaleste de la Borde)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.
