Background
Catherine Deshayes was married to Antoine Monvoisin, a jeweller with a shop at Pont-Marie in Paris. After her husband was ruined, La Voisin started her career by practising chiromancy and face-reading to support her family. She practiced medicine, especially midwifery, and performed abortions.
As for her practice in fortune telling, she was to say that she developed the talent God had given her. She was to have been taught the art of fortune telling at the age of nine, and after her husband became ruined, she decided to profit by it. She studied the modern methods of physiology and reading the client's future by reading their faces and hands. She also spend a lot of money to provide an atmosphere which could make the clients more inclined to believe in the prophecies. For example, she acquired a special robe of crimson red velvet embroidered with eagles in gold for a price of 1500 livres to perform in.
In 1665/66, her fortune telling was questioned by the priests of Saint Vincent de Paul's order, the Congregation of the Mission, but La Voisin defended herself successfully before the professors at the Sorbonne.
Read more about this topic: La Voisin
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