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Back to article: MARQUISE DE JEANNE AGNES BERTHELOT DE PLENEUF PRIE (1698-1727)

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PRIE, JEANNE AGNES BERTHELOT DE PLENEUF, MARQUISE DE (1698-1727), French adventuress, was the daughter of a rich but unscrupulous father and an immoral mother. At the age of fifteen she was married to Louis, marquis de Prie, and went with him to the court of Savoy at Turin, where he was ambassador. She was twenty-one when she returned to France, and was soon the declared mistress of Louis Henri, duc de Bourbon. During his ministry (1723-1725) she was in several respects the real ruler of France, her most notable triumph being the marriage of Louis XV. to Marie Leszczynska instead of to Mlle de Vermandois. But when, in 1725, she sought to have Bourbon's rival Fleury exiled, her ascendancy came to an end. After Fleury's recall and the banishment of Bourbon to Chantilly Mme de Prie was exiled to Courbepine, where she committed suicide the next year.
See M. H. Thirion, Madame de Prie (Paris, 1905).
PRIE-DIEU, literally " pray God," strictly a prayer desk, primarily intended for private use, but often found in churches of the European continent. It is a small ornamental wooden desk furnished with a sloping shelf for books, and a cushioned kneeling piece. It appears not to have received its present name until the early part of the 17th century. At that period in France a small room or oratory was sometimes known by the same name. A similar form of chair, in domestic furniture, is called prie-dieu by analogy.