Talk:Louise Marie-Thérèse (The Black Nun of Moret)

Untitled

I am going to suggest here that this article is complete poppycock. john k (talk) 05:51, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, from what I can gather, this is a genuine rumor, but we are presenting it as though it is true. I will note that the fact that a baby has dark coloration at birth is no particular sign of African ancestry, and that the idea of Marie Thérèse, in particular, engaging in a sexual liaison with an African dwarf seems massively unlikely. And the idea that the child did not really die, but survived and became a nun, needs a lot more support than we have right now. john k (talk) 14:08, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree that the articles read too factual for something that's just an allegation. Some rewording might help. Cladeal832 (talk) 20:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The Black Women in Antiquity book that's cited is very problematic. Firstly, there are some obvious errors - it says the child was born in 1656, which was several years before Louis XIV and Marie Thérèse even married. It also has what claims to be a quote from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in which she supposedly reports what the Dauphin told her about the birth of this princess. The Dauphin was three years old at the time. (The princes-s website, which also has quotes from Montpensier, but in French, uses "Monsieur," instead of "The Dauphin," which makes more sense - Monsieur would certainly have been privy to this information, and was an adult). The book has no footnotes, and no sources for any claims. It also does not explain why a princess who was born "Marie Anne" would have had her name changed to "Louise Marie Thérèse". I'll add that there is absolutely no evidence that the picture in this article is of this supposed individual. Beyond that, we have the princes-s website. This website purports to collect lengthy excerpts from various published primary sources on this subject. Might we not check those sources, all of which should be fairly widely available, to see if these materials are actually within them? If the quotes are genuine, then there's obviously more here than pure nonsense. But it's still essentially a rumor, and we ought to report it more skeptically. If the quotes aren't genuine, then it's totally bogus. john k (talk) 13:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...further looking, this seems to be a real rumor. That being said, the official story at the time was never that Marie Therese had an affair with the dwarf. It was that he frightened her while she was pregnant, causing the child to be black. Obviously, that's nonsense, but we shouldn't make up other explanations based on dubious secondary sources. john k (talk) 13:57, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't know how on point this is, but maybe it ought be more in the lines of Kaspar Hauser (that isn't stated as the lost of heir of Baden, but just rumoured to be. Again, with this seeming so unlikely, there must be some source that are against it or have disproven it? Cladeal832 (talk) 23:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know. Oftentimes with these things, the only people who write about them are believers. Man in the Iron Mask might be another possible model. john k (talk) 02:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a bad lemma. The sources are erroneously cited: Saint-Simon does not refer to the dwarf Nabo at all, nor does Mme de Montespan, nor does Voltaire.

The Nabo hypothesis is cited in the first paragraph of this lemma, as if all these memorialists would agree on this particular hypothesis. In fact, the Nabo hypothesis originates from Mlle de Montpensier alone. It has later been inflated by the (false) memorialist of Cardinal Dubois. The English texts in the external link, represented as translations of Saint Simon, are slightly incorrect, in the sense that some pieces of the original memoirs have been deleted in the translation, pieces that indicate that Saint-Simon didn't take the evidence very seriously (such as Ni l'une ni l'autre ne prenaient pas un soin direct de cette Mauresse qui pût se remarquer - neither one (the queen) or the other (Maintenon) noticeably took direct care of the Mooress).

There is no added value in citing Prof. Ivan van Sertima, as he knows nothing more than what is in these sources, and moreover, some scholars (Glyn Daniel, in New York Times) call the work of this learned Professor "ignorant rubbish". May I recommend to replace the lemma by a translation of the more neutral French or Dutch articles. The current one is too much sensation-oriented.

Finally, Saint-Simon, Montespan, and Montpensier all had accounts to settle with Louis XIV. That may have motivated them to spread a nice piece of gossip. Riyadi (talk) 19:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Verified article – removed accuracy dispute

I now cleaned out the article, and removed all sentences where sources have been twisted, especially Saint-Simon. The article is now in line with the French and Dutch Wikipedia. Sad that I had to remove Van Sertima's book, as it is an excellent example of how some incoherent gossip is dramatically blown up to historic proportions, and given credibility in order to prove a doubtful thesis (namely that black people have played an important role in history). Riyadi (talk) 16:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

After several edits by other users, we're close to where we were at the very start: the incoherent gossip stories are again represented as if they were true, and irrelevant information (on the exhumation of the kings) has been added (suggesting that Louis XIV was black, or what is the intention). This is kind of vandalism. Riyadi (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The third and fourth paragraphs under the "Life" section still do not have citations to reliable sources as required by Wikipedia policy. Accordingly, I have removed them.DanJazzy (talk) 21:38, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Black like ink

This article has been obviously made from the French one. Please remove "especially the one of Louis XIII; but Louis XIV skin was black like ink." Because the French article removed it, it was a bit ridiculous to make a link between the skin color of the nun and the skin color of the dead king. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.168.223.232 (talk) 11:23, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Sources

No less than 6 writers from the time
is a bit exaggerated. Voltaire wrote quite some time after the events, and Cardinal Dubois did not write his own Mémoires (these ficticious Mémoires date from 1814). In the list of non-contemporaries, the duc de Luynes, who lived at the court of Louis XV, may be mentioned as well, as he has a very reasonable explanation for the provenance of the nun. Riyadi (talk) 09:49, 23 August 2016 (UTC)