A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Parthenay, Anne de
PARTHENAY, ANNE DE,
A lady of great genius and learning, who lived in the sixteenth century. She married Anthony de Pons, Count of Marennes, and was one of the brightest ornaments of the court of Ferrara. She was a Calvinist.
Her mother was Michelli de Sorbonne, a lady of Bretagne, a woman of uncommon talents, lady of honour to Anne of Bretagne, wife to Louis the Twelfth, by whom she was appointed governess to her daughter, Renata, Duchess of Ferrara. Anne, under the superintendence of her mother, received a learned education, and made great progress in the knowledge of the languages, and in theology, and was also skilled in music. She had so great an influence over her husband, that while she lived he was distinguished as a lover of truth and virtue, and instructed himself, his officers and subjects at Pons, in the scriptures; but after her death, he married one of the pleasure-loving ladies of the court, and became, from that time, an enemy and persecutor of the truth.