Madeleine Des Roches

Who was Madeleine Des Roches?

Madeleine Des Roches was a French woman writer of the Renaissance. She was the mother of Catherine Fradonnet, called Catherine Des Roches, to whom she taught poetry, literature and ancient languages.

Madeleine Neveu married André Fradonnet, seigneur Des Roches, the procurer of Poitiers around 1539. Later, in a second marriage, Madeleine Des Roches wed the lawyer François Eboissard, seigneur de la Villée. Both she and her daughter died of an epidemic on the same day.

Contemporaries of Pierre Ronsard, and friends of the humanist Estienne Pasquier, Madeleine Des Roches and her daughter were the center of a literary circle based in Poitiers between 1570 and 1587, and which included the poets Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, Barnabé Brisson, René Chopin, Antoine Loisel, Claude Binet, Nicolas Rapin and Odet de Turnèbe. The circle is most well known for a collection of gallant verse entitled La Puce de Madame Des Roches in which the poets, inspired by an original poem by Pasquier, wrote on the theme of a flea upon Catherine's throat.