About Marie Mancini

A 17th-Century Affair:

Marie Mancini (1639-1715) was famous as the first love of Louis XIV of France, and later she and her sister Hortense became scandalous celebrities by running away from their husbands and traveling unaccompanied through much of Western Europe.

They managed to live independently from their husbands for the rest of their lives.

Despite her estrangement from her husband, Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Marie corresponded with him regularly. Today, her extant letters reside in the Colonna Archive at the Library of the Abbey of Santa Scolastica, in Subiaco, Italy. Created by collaborators at the University of Idaho, The Letters of Marie Mancini project is an initiative to transcribe, translate, visualize, and make them available to the public.