ABSTRACT
Privacy is often associated with sharply defined dichotomies and strong delineations. Like many other frameworks for the historical study of early modern privacy, such dichotomies and delineations do not hold up under closer scrutiny. Privacy at court was malleable, temporal, and situational. Religious devotion seems particularly useful for studying the malleability, temporality, and situation-based nature of privacy. In this case study, we analyse the different forms of religious withdrawal available to female members of the highest nobility in early modern France. We focus on Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Madame de Guise, who fashioned different modes of devotional privacy at court. In the correspondence between the half-sisters, we identify a varied system of scales and means of withdrawal: from monastic retreats, which entailed a demonstrative withdrawal in appearance and action, to pockets of solitude in the daily devotional routine.
