Patronage and the Power of the Pen: The Making of the French Royal Midwife Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois (1563–1636) was no ordinary midwife.¹ She grew up in a prosperous family that had been reduced to poverty by the French Wars of Religion. She claimed to have taken up her profession out of financial necessity, and soon her fortunes rose sharply because just three years after she was licensed in 1598, she became midwife to Queen Marie de Médicis and, eight years later, a published author. Bourgeois effected this professional advancement by securing the sponsorship of some of the most important physicians and elite women in Paris. Her success speaks to a particular confluence of factors, most notably the increasing interest in childbirth by both medical men and the French state, which underscores the role that patronage played in advancing court practitioners' careers.² Like many male early modern scientists and medical practitioners at court, Bourgeois depended upon patronage for financial support and prestige.³ When, soon after her appointment, Bourgeois safely delivered the queen of her first child, the future King Louis XIII, the birth was celebrated throughout France. Although somewhat of an outsider to both the Parisian medical community and the royal court, Bourgeois was ultimately able to stake out a place in both milieux. Bourgeois capitalized on her success to become "la premiere femme de mon art qui mette la plume en main" (the first woman of my art to take pen in hand), writing and publishing a well-regarded book on midwifery.⁴ In doing so, this remarkable woman joined a growing number of seventeenth-century French male medical writers publishing on the "secrets of women."⁵ Ultimately, becoming a published author guaranteed Bourgeois a public legacy well beyond her lifetime.⁶ In this article, I analyze two moments in the making of Louise Bourgeois's career. Bourgeois makes exceptional use of both patronage and the world of letters, challenging norms that govern each of these institutions. A deep analysis of these two pivotal moments in Bourgeois's professional advancement helps us to understand the gendered norms at play in the social construction of the fields of science and medicine in this period.⁷

Much of what we know about Bourgeois's life comes from her own pen, as described in her three-volume midwifery manual, Observations diverses sur la sterilité, perte de fruict, fœcondité, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaux naiz (Diverse Observations on Sterility, Miscarriage, Fertility, Childbirth, and the Diseases of Women and Newborn Children).⁸ The first edition of this work, published in 1609, includes her case studies of caring for pregnant women who had difficult deliveries, as well as her knowledge of ancient medical theory, pharmacy, and diagnosing illnesses. In 1617, she published a second edition, containing a new volume along with the first. This second volume includes more case studies as well as medical recipes. A third edition, containing a new volume came out in 1626. Of particular interest here is the autobiographical material from the 1617 edition: Bourgeois describes how she became royal midwife in 1601, along with the circumstances of the dauphin Louis's birth that same year.⁹

Although her manual was primarily concerned with medical matters, in 1617, Bourgeois clearly felt it important to tell her own story about her spectacular success. By this time, she had safely delivered the queen of four more children and published the first volume of her Observations diverses (1609).¹⁰ However, Henri IV had been assassinated in 1610, and Marie de Médicis was serving as regent. As the age of majority for a king to rule was thirteen, the queen regent held the reins of the kingdom until 1617, by which time she had many detractors, including her sixteen-year-old son.¹¹ Almost all of Bourgeois's original supporters at court had died or fallen out of favor by 1617 and powerful allies were key to maintaining professional standing for any medical practitioner at court. Perhaps, then, she imagined that her account of her appointment and of the royal births would...