Talk:Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné
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This article needs big cleaning up. The 1911 Britannica is not a very good source for many things. --K.C. Tang 04:07, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
REGARDING SMALLPOX
Contrary to what many sources printed in the 1800s might say, Madame de Sévigné abosolutely did not contract smallpox. The "myth" that she had died of smallpox was started by Abbé Martinel, the vicar of Grignan, in a letter he wrote to the Duke of Wellington in the early 1800s. Abbé Martinel was upset that during the French Revolution, the tomb of la Sévigné had been violated. Martinel (who was notorious for having a loose grip on reality) decided that such a horrible deed could never have been committed, so he came up with the story that the marquise had died of smallpox and that she had been buried in a separate crypt in Grignan's Collegiale Saint-Saveur, and not in the Adhemar family tombs in order to avoid the crypt being contaminated by "pestilential vapours". According to Martinel, when the revolutionaries broke into the crypt 100 years after the marquise's death, the corpse that they violated was of "some other noble woman." It was patent nonsense, but Martinel kept repeating it until it became "common knowlege" that the marquise had died of smallpox. There is absolutely no documentary evidence that the marquise ever had smallpox. Her doctor kept careful notes and said she succumbed to a "fever" which was most likely influenza or pneumonia. There was no reason for him to lie -- it was not shameful to have smallpox, and every other case of smallpox in the Sévigné family was reported matter-of-factly. As for the "hidden tomb", during the 2005 renovations to the Collegiale, every paving stone in the church was removed and there was no evidence of a hidden tomb. Recent DNA analysis of the bones found in the Adhemar crypt matched known DNA of la Sévigné. Abbé Martinel's smallpox lie needs to be put to rest. PLEASE STOP CHANGING THIS SENTENCE. [For an exhaustive, academic discussion of this, please see La Sépulture de Madame de Sévigné : a-t-elle été violée? by Madeline Hérard (Dijon : Académe des Sciences, Arts et Belles Lettres. Tome CXVI Annés 1960-1962)] Adhemar01 20:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
