Countess Charlotte Flandrina of Nassau

Charlotte Flandrina van Nassau (Antwerp, 18 August 1579 - St. Croix, near Poitiers, 16 April 1640) was the fourth daughter of William of Orange and his third wife Charlotte of Bourbon..^[1]

Biography

After the death of her mother in 1582, Louis III of Bourbon-Vendôme brought his granddaughter to France. However, Louis died a few months after his daughter, after which Charlotte Flandrina was taken under the care of a cousin of her mother, Jeanne de Chabot. This cousin had too Calvinistic tendencies for the liking of Jeanne de Bourbon, a sister of Charlotte Flandrina's mother and abbess of Jouarre. Jeanne de Bourbon therefore requested King Henry III of France to be allowed to take on the education of her niece. Charlotte Flandrina then converted to Roman Catholicism and entered a convent in 1593. In 1605 she became abbess of the convent of St. Croix where she died in 1640.

Charlotte Flandrina was, according to Levinus Ferdinand de Beaufort, “short in stature and very hard of hearing”[1]

A remarkable aspect of her life concerns Michel Louys De-La-Bruyère, who is considered a bastard child of Charlotte Flandrina. Despite her religious devotion, Charlotte Flandrina is said to have had a secret relationship with an unknown French nobleman, from whom Michel was supposedly born in 1605. Michel's existence was kept secret to avoid scandal. He was raised by a faithful servant of the monastery, far from public attention. Michel later showed remarkable intellectual abilities and managed to obtain a significant position within the church hierarchy.