Eleanor of Provence, Queen and Regent of England

Eleanor of Provence, queen of England (married 14 January 1236)

Eleanor of Provence was one of the four daughters of Berengar, count of Provence, and his wife, Beatrice of Savoy--born around the year 1223, Eleanor was the second of the sisters. Her elder sister, Margaret, was born in 1221; following Eleanor's birth was Sanchia, born c. 1228; and Beatrice, born c. 1231.

Notably, these four sisters would all become queens. Margaret of Provence was married to Louis IX of France in 1234. As queen of France, Margaret was the daughter-in-law of a powerful female politician, Blanche of Castile. Margaret's marriage to the French king in 1234 raised the profile of the remaining daughters of the count of Provence and his wife.

This head, in the Muniment Room of
Westerminster Abbey, is believed to
represent Eleanor of Provence,
c. 1250s

Sanchia of Provence (died 1261) was married in 1243 to Richard, earl of Cornwall. Although he was an English prince (the second son of King John), Richard was elected as king of the Germans in 1256 and, a year later, as king of the Romans (though he made only four trips to Germany before he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1271). 

Beatrice (died 1267), who inherited Provence from her father, was married to Charles I of Anjou (Louis IX's brother) in 1246. According to one story, when she and her husband were in Paris for a Christmas gathering in 1254, when all four sisters and their spouses were together, Queen Margaret refused to seat Beatrice with the sisters who were queens--because Beatrice was not a queen. Charles promised to make Beatrice a queen--he kept his promise by invading and conquering Sicily. He became king of Sicily in 1266, making Beatrice the queen of Sicily on 12 February of that year. She enjoyed her title only briefly, dying in September 1267. 

As for Eleanor, she was the second of the sisters and the second of the four daughters to marry. She was only twelve when she was married to the twenty-eight-year-old King Henry III of England, at Canterbury Cathedral on 12 January 1236. 

A romantic story exists that Henry's younger brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall (he would later marry Sanchia, the third sister), who had visited Savoy on his way to fight in the Holy Land, extolled the beauty of Eleanor to his brother, causing the king to abandon his negotiations for a marriage with Joan, countess of Ponthieu, and decide to marry Eleanor instead. 

A manuscript illustration of
the marriage of Elanor of Provence
 and Henry III, king of England

Widely recognized for her beauty, her education, and her courtly accomplishments--she wrote poetry--Eleanor was beloved by her husband and heartily disliked by the people of England, in particular Londoners. The fact that she brought no dowry with her did not help her reputation.

Eleanor was attended in England by a number of her Savoyard relatives, and her devoted husband granted them influential and lucrative positions in government--and for this reason, she (rather than Henry) was the target of resentment, unrest, and friction. (She was also blamed for tax increases.)

The fact that one of these influential Savoyards was her uncle, William, did not help matters either--he had been involved in the negotiations over Eleanor's dowry, which had resulted in no money accompanying her to England--only the promise of some money that never materialized.

Together the couple had five children, the eldest of whom, Edward (b. 1239), became King Edward I following the death of Henry in 1272.

Despite resentment and outright hostility. Henry left his queen as regent of England in 1253 when he launched a military expedition in Gascony. (He named his brother, Richard, as co-counsel, not as co-regent.) Her insistence on collecting taxes and fines, intended to help fund her husband's war efforts, caused even more resentment.  

Her role as regent was limited, however; early in 1254, she left for Gascony with her son, Edward, to seal the peace her husband had won--the young prince was to be married to Eleanor of Castile, the daughter of Alfonso of Castile, Henry's opponent in Gascony. 

In 1264, the queen was the flashpoint in one of the most serious rebellions during Henry's reign, known as the Second Barons' War--her barge was attacked by Londoners as she left the Tower, Eleanor pelted with mud and rotten vegetables. A failed attempt at arbitration by the French king left Eleanor in France, with Henry returning to fight to subdue his recalcitrant barons.

But things went horribly awry at the battle of Lewes, with the king, his brother, Richard of Cornwall, and Prince Edward all taken prisoner. The barons ordered Eleanor to join her husband in captivity. Instead, she began plotting an invasion of England to come to his defense. 

Another manuscript illustration of Henry and Eleanor.

By the fall of 1264, she had a significant force ready on the Flemish coast, but she was trapped there by bad weather for several months. Without money to pay her troops, she was unable to retain them. But early in the next year, Edward escaped his imprisonment, raised his own army, and defeated the barons, restoring his father to power. Eleanor rejoined him in November of 1265. 

Having regained the throne, Henry concentrated on securing the hard-won peace. Increasingly ill, he named his son as Steward of England (though Edward would leave on crusade in 1270) and focused on his spiritual health and his religious devotions. 

After King Henry III's death in 1272, the dowager queen remained briefly at court, caring in particular for her grandchildren, but after the deaths, in 1274 and 1275, of her grandson, Henry, and two daughters, Margaret and Beatrice, she retired to the convent of Amesbury. She died there in 1291.

Letters from and to Eleanor of Provence, queen of England, can be found at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters, accessed by clicking here. The Epistolae site also includes a very good biographical essay. There is also a brief entry on Eleanor in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The most complete treatment is Margaret Howell's Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England.

For a wonderful biography of all four sisters from Provence, see Nancy Goldstone's Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe. 

For a post on Garsenda of Forcalquier, the grandmother of Eleanor and her sisters, click here.

Margaret of Provence and Her Sisters

Margaret of Provence, queen of France (died 21 December 1295)

Margaret of Provence, 
from a fifteenth-century
manuscript

Margaret of Provence was one of the four daughters of Berengar, count of Provence, and his wife, Beatrice of Savoy--born around the year 1221, Margaret was the oldest of the sisters, followed by  Eleanor of Provence, born c. 1223; Sanchia of Provence, born c. 1228; and Beatrice of Provence, born c. 1231.

While Berengar was himself related to the kings and queens of Aragon and Castile, Beatrice of Savoy was noted as a skilled diplomat and as a skillful ruler in her own right. These were roles that her daughters learned and practiced well.

Notably, all four of Berengar and Beatrice's daughters became queens: 

Margaret of Provence was married to Louis IX of France in 1234. As queen of France, Margaret was the daughter-in-law of a woman we have already met this year, Blanche of Castile.

Two years later, in 1236, Eleanor of Provence (died 1291) was married to King Henry III of England, thus becoming queen of England.

This head, in the Muniment Room of
Westerminster Abbey, is believed to
represent Eleanor of Provence,
c. 1250s

Sanchia of Provence (died 1261) was married in 1243 to Richard, earl of Cornwall. Although he was an English prince (the second son of King John), Richard was elected as king of the Germans in 1256 and, a year later, as king of the Romans (though he made only four trips to Germany before he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1271).

Beatrice (died 1267), who inherited Provence from her father, was married to Charles I of Anjou (Louis IX's brother) in 1246. According to one story, when she and her husband were in Paris for a Christmas gathering in 1254, when all four sisters and their spouses were together, the elder sister, Queen Margaret, refused to seat Beatrice with the sisters who were queens--because Beatrice was not a queen. Charles promised to make Beatrice a queen--he kept his promise by invading and conquering Sicily. He became king of Sicily in 1266, making Beatrice the queen of Sicily on 12 February of that year. She enjoyed her title only briefly, dying in September 1267.

Beatrice of Provence,
from the fourteenth-century
Bible of Naples

Since Margaret is the nominal subject of today's post, here are a few highlights of her biography--her relationship with her mother-in-law, Blanche of Castile, was reportedly marred by jealousy and resentment.

Margaret gave birth to eleven children. She accompanied her husband on Crusade in 1248 (now numbered the Seventh Crusade, dated from 1248 to 1254), and after he was captured, ruled as regent briefly and raised Louis' ransom (though her "rule" was brief, she is sometimes said to have been the only woman who led a Crusader army).

Her attempts to play a role in politics after the debacle in the Holy Land were dismissed or repudiated; when Louis left on a second Crusade, Margaret (wisely) decided to stay home (Louis died while in the Holy Land).

For a wonderful biography of all four sisters, see Nancy Goldstone's Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe.

There is an excellent selection of letters from and to Margaret of Provence at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters; for access, click here. For Eleanor of Provence's letters, click here. Only one letter from Sanchia survives, though several letters to her exist; click here. (There are no letters to or from Beatrice among those on Epistolae.)

Margaret Howell's scholarly biography of Eleanor of Provence, queen of England, is also available: Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth Century England.

For a post on Garsenda of Forcalquier, the grandmother of Margaret and her sisters, click here.

Sanchia of Provence,
a nineteenth-century drawing
of her seal

Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Other Women

Eleanor of Aquitaine (crowned queen of England, 19 December 1154)

Eleanor of Aquitaine was intelligent, well-educated, well-traveled, charismatic, and powerful, and today she is one of the most well-known women of the twelfth century. She lived in a time of of remarkably gifted and memorable women, many of whom I have posted about already this year: Urraca of León and Castile, the Empress Matilda, Melisende of Jerusalem, Heloise of Paris, Anna Comnena, Hildegard of Bingen . . . 

Eleanor of Aquitaine's effigy,
Abbey of Fontevrault 

I am assuming that the broad outline of Eleanor's life story is familiar--born between 1122 and 1124, she was heiress to her father's county of Poitou and his duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, a vast territory that occupies more than one-quarter of modern France. She inherited this wealth and power after her father's death in April 1137. 

By July, she was married to Louis, the son and heir of King Louis VI, who promptly died in August of 1137, so that, within four months of her father's death, Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, was queen of France. She bore the French king two daughters: Marie of France, born in 1145, and Alix of France, born in 1150. 

She traveled with Louis on the Second Crusade, from 1145 to 1149 (her eldest daughter was born right before Eleanor departed for the Holy Land, her younger daughter on her return). 

While on Crusade, and before the birth of her second daughter, Eleanor decided that her marriage was invalid and sought an annulment on the basis of consanguinity. Although her request was at first rejected (by Pope Eugene III), after a second daughter was born, leaving Louis still without a male heir, an annulment was granted on 11 March 1152. After fifteen years, the couple's marriage was declared invalid--although their children were declared to be legitimate.

Eleanor remarried almost immediately. On 18 May 1152, she married Henry, duke of Normandy. In 1154, he became King Henry II of England, with Eleanor's coronation taking place on 19 December. And, interesting to note: the marriage of Eleanor and Louis was annulled because, as third cousins once removed, they were too closely related; Eleanor and Henry were also third cousins.

The marriage was productive, certainly--with Henry, Eleanor gave birth to five sons and three daughters. It was also tumultuous; as I've noted elsewhere, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned for sixteen years, between 1173 and 1189. But after Henry's death on 6 July 1189, Eleanor was freed and resumed a rich and full life.

She was regent of England for Richard when he left on the Third Crusade later in that year, and she negotiated his ransom and release, traveling to Germany to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor in order to secure his freedom on 4 February 1194.

Eleanor of Aquitaine's seal

After Richard's death, her youngest son, John, became king of England. She served and advised him until her death on 1 April 1204, when she was in her eighties. 

I could write an impossibly long and detailed post about Eleanor of Aquitaine, since her life seems to have taken on mythic (and frequently fantastical) proportions, but, instead, I thought I'd a few details about some of the other women in her family--other women who add more to the on-going discussion of family values and traditional marriage in this blog.

I've already had a bit to say about Eleanor's period of imprisonment--even queens, when they became "inconvenient" for one reason or another, could simply be removed from sight and held captive. And I've already noted that among the many ways of discrediting women, accusing them of incest seems to be particularly popular (Eleanor was accused of incestuous adultery with her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, a charge that still finds its way into a great deal of popular history today.) But wait! There's so much more:

Eleanor of Aquitaine's grandfather was the renowned troubadour William IX, duke of Aquitaine, whose wife, Philippa, countess of Toulouse, was forced to retire to the Abbey of Fontevrault when her husband refused to give up his mistress, the aptly named Dangerose de l' Isle Bouchard. Although Dangerose seems to have been a more-than-willing partner, William was excommunicated for having abducted her. (She was married to his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault.)

While his wife Philippa was occupied in Toulouse, William had moved his mistress into the Maubergeonne tower of his castle in Poitiers--thus earning Dangerose the nickname La Maubergeonne. When Philippa returned to Poitiers from Toulouse, she found that her husband William would not move his mistress out. Despite appeals to secular and spiritual authorities, no one came to Philippa's aid, and she spent the last two years of her life in the abbey, from 1116 until her death on 28 November 1118.

The death of Philippa of Toulouse brought another inconvenient woman into the picture--Ermengarde of Anjou. Many popular biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine assert that Ermengarde was William IX's first wife--one whose marriage was dissolved after two years--but scholarly opinion seems to cast grave doubt on that part of the story.

But Ermengarde of Anjou does seem to have been in Fontevrault when Philippa arrived, and after Philippa's death, Ermengarde seems also to have demanded of the Council of Reims that it once again excommunicate the duke of Aquitaine and force him to renounce his mistress. That did not happen. 

In the mean time, the duke and his mistress arranged for the marriage of his son, William, to her daughter, Aenor de Châtellerault, in 1121--in this example of "traditional" marriage, then, Eleanor's maternal grandmother was her grandfather's mistress . . . 

Eleanor of Aquitaine's sister, Petronilla of Aquitaine, offers another interesting story about marriage and family. Born about the 1125, Petronilla accompanied Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137 when she married Louis. In 1141, while on a progress through Eleanor's many territories, Petronilla became involved with Raoul of Vermandois, the seneschal of France--decades her senior and, inconveniently, already married. Raoul's wife was Eleanor, the daughter of Stephen of Blois and Adela of Normandy (who happened to be William the Conqueror's daughter . . . )

Despite the fact that Raoul of Vermandois had been married to Eleanor since 1125 (and she had dutifully given her husband a son and heir), and apparently with Eleanor of Aquitaine's encouragement and support, Raoul was able to annul his marriage and replace his first wife with Petronilla. 

Theobald of Champagne, the brother of Raoul's rejected wife, went to war over the insult to his sister--a war that lasted for two years, from 1142 to 1144, and that drew Louis into battle and, after the fiery and bloody sacking of the town of Vitry-sur-Marne, was said to "haunt his days and nights" and to have broken his spirit.

Meanwhile, Theobald had offered his abandoned sister his protection, and he protested to Pope Innocent III, who excommunicated both Raoul and Petronilla. The excommunication was lifted, the pope ordering Raoul to give up his relationship with Petronilla. After Raoul refused, he and Petronilla were excommunicated for a second time. 

Pressures continued, particularly on Louis, who was warned that he was endangering his own salvation--but, conveniently, Innocent III died and his successor, Celestine II, again lifted the excommunication and recognized the validity of the marriage. (Details about Petronilla's later life are extremely few, and those who claim she lived until 1193 are pretty much living in a fact-free zone. There are a few reference to a Petronilla in English financial records, the "Pipe Rolls" in the 1150s, which may be to this Petronilla, but it's not at all clear.)

As for the next generation, I've already noted, in a post earlier this year, about Eleanor of Aquitaine's journey with Berengaria of Navarre, who married Eleanor's son, King Richard "the Lionheart." 

Eleanor's eldest daughter with Louis of France, Marie of France, married Henry of Champagne. Interestingly, Henry of Champagne was the brother of Louis' second wife, Adela of Champagne. In other words, Marie of France was married to her stepmother's brother. And oh, by the way, Queen Adela and Marie's husband, Henry, were the children of Theobald of Champagne--the same guy Louis went to war with over the Raoul and Petronilla affair. 

Eleanor's youngest daughter with Louis of France, Alix of France, married Theobald V, count of Blois--who was also the brother of her father's second wife, Adela of Champagne, and of Henry of Champagne, her sister's husband.

Eleanor's daughters with Henry were Matilda of England (born 1156), Eleanor of England (born 1162), and Joan of England (born 1165).

Matilda, also called Maud, named after her paternal grandmother, was married to Henry, duke of Saxony and Bavaria. She was regent for her husband between 1172 and 1173, while he was on Crusade in the Holy Land. (Henry and Matilda were exiled from Germany on two occasions, when they took refuge in her father's court in Normandy.)

Eleanor of England was married to Alfonso VIII of Castile, becoming queen of Castile--by circumstances and undoubtedly by her own strengths, she wielded great power and influence in Castile as queen. Her daughter Blanca of Castile became queen of France--and, as I've noted in an earlier post this year, in 1199, when Eleanor of Aquitaine was in her late 70s, she traveled to Castile to select one of her granddaughters as a bride for Louis, the son of Louis VII. She was ambushed and held captive on her trip, but the indefatigable Eleanor negotiated her release and arrived in Castile in January of 1200. 

After deciding that Blanca was the right choice, Eleanor and her twelve-year-old granddaughter left Castile in March and traveled back over the Pyrenees and into Bordeaux, on their way to Normandy. Caught up in violence and bloodshed on the way, this was one journey Eleanor of Aquitaine could not complete--too ill to travel farther, she retired to the abbey of Fontevrault while Blanca continued on, becoming Queen Blanche of France. (I've also posted about Eleanor of Castile, queen of England, who was Eleanor of England's great granddaughter and Eleanor of Aquitaine's great great granddaughter.)

Joan of England, Eleanor's youngest daughter, was married to William II of Sicily in 1177 and was crowned queen of Sicily. After William's death in 1189, as I've noted in an earlier post, Joan was imprisoned by her husband's successor, Tancred. Ultimately released by her brother Richard, as he stopped in Sicily on his way to the Holy Land, Joan accompanied her brother and his wife, Berengaria, on the Third Crusade. 

Richard toyed with the idea of marrying his widowed sister to Saladin's brother, setting the two up as rulers of Jerusalem, but that plan didn't work out. Instead, Joan married the much-married Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, in 1196. This was not a happy marriage; nevertheless, while he was away fighting, a pregnant Joan had raised an army to counter a rebellion against Raymond in Toulouse. She was betrayed by some of her own men, barely escaping with her life. She had ridden north to seek help from her brother, King Richard, only to learn of his death while she was en route. She turned to her mother for assistance and wound up in the abbey of Fontevrault. She died in childbirth there, just thirty-three years old. 

There are many biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, quite a few popular and exciting, some fairly scholarly. I'd recommend the chapter on Eleanor in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens, but if you're really looking for more--by which I mean something of the mythologizing of a life that really needs no embroidering, I'd take a look at Michael Evans's Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine. It's hideously expensive--interlibrary loan?--but really excellent. 

There's a wonderful selection of letters to and from Eleanor of Aquitaine at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters.

Update, December 2019: For a new, myth-busting biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Sara Cockerill's Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England and Mother of Empires, will be published in the spring of 2020. In the mean time, you will enjoy her conversation on the "myth and reality" of  Eleanor on the BBC's History Extra podcast (click here).

Blanche of Castile: Following in Her Grandmother's Footsteps

Blanche of Castile, queen of France (born 4 March 1188)

Blanche of Castile was the daughter of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his English wife, Eleanor Plantagenet--who was herself the daughter of the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine.* As queen of Castile, Eleanor Plantagenet had considerable influence, her political acuity and ability recognized by her husband, who specified in his will of 1204 that, should he die before his son and heir reached the age of his majority, Eleanor should act as regent of Castile.

Blanche of Castile,
from a contemporary ms. 

But Queen Eleanor did not live long enough to act as regent for her son, Enrique, when he became king--she died on 31 October 1214, just days after King Alfonso's death. Instead, her daughter, Berengaria, acted as regent for her brother, who was just ten years old.

Like her sister, Blanche would also prove to be a capable--and successful--ruler, when she was regent of France not once but twice, from 1226 to 1234, and then again from 1248 to 1252.

In the year 1200, the twelve-year-old Prince Louis of France was married to Blanca de Castilla, then aged eleven--in a historically fascinating note, Blanca's eighty-year-old grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, traveled to Castile in order to accompany her granddaughter on her journey to France. 

Now in France, where the Spanish Blanca was known as Blanche, she had her first child in 1205.

Over the course of the next twenty years, Blanche gave birth to at least eleven more children (and perhaps as many as thirteen--accounts vary). Her husband Louis became king of France in 1223. By 1225, aware that he was becoming increasingly ill, Louis named his wife Blanche of Castile as co-regent of France and as the sole guardian for his son and heir. When when Louis VIII died in 1226, his son was twelve years old. Blanche finessed any question of co-regency by having her son crowned as King Louis IX within a month of his father's death. 

Although she was to become one of the most long-serving and successful regents in France, Blanche was not the first woman to serve in this capacity--indeed, there was a long tradition of powerful women who had shared in government extending back to the time of Hugh Capet and his wife, Adelaide of Aquitaine (fl. 960s-1006), and Constance of Arles (c. 986-1032), the wife of Robert II, Adelaide's son.

The first woman to serve officially as regent of France seems to have been Adèle of Champagne (c. 1140-1206), the third of Louis VII's wives. During her twenty-year marriage to Louis, Adèle proved a "capable and energetic" queen. She attempted to take control of the government for her fifteen-year-old son, Philip, after Louis VII's death in 1180 but was unable to do so. Ten years later, in 1190, when he went on Crusade, Philip II appointed his mother as co-regent in his absence

But certainly one of the most successful and well-known women to have functioned as regent of France is Blanche of Castile. In his discussion of the long tradition of female regents in France, historian André Poulet indicates something of the breadth of her "absolute power" as queen-regent when it was her turn to take up the role: she "legislated, dealt with foreign powers, waged war, arranged marriages." "In short," he concludes, she "imposed herself as sovereign of the realm."

Although her son reached the age of majority in 1236, Blanche maintained her influence. As Poulet notes, although Louis IX was "under [his mother's] sway far longer than was stipulated by law," he nevertheless "respected her command of statecraft and recalled her to affairs of state when he went on crusade in 1248." 

Then, instead of appointing his wife, Margaret of Provence, to function as regent in the event a regency were needed, Louis IX turned once more to his mother. Although she opposed his crusading venture, Blanche again assumed her role as regent of France. After her son was captured in 1250, she added the job of raising his ransom to her responsibilities as regent. She died in 1252, while her son was still in the Holy Land.

Maubuisson Abbey, founded by Blanche of Castile,
and site of her burial

It is interesting to place Blanche of Castile in the of a powerful family of women--her grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine; her mother, Eleanor Plantagenet of England, queen of Castile; her sister Berengaria, who acted not only as regent of Castile for her younger brother, but who became queen regnant of Castile after his death (though her only way of maintaining power was to abdicate in favor of her son); her sister Urraca, who became queen of Portugal (named as regent, though she died before assuming the role); and her sister Eleanor, who became queen of Aragon. 

A new, full-length biography of Blanche of Castile is desperately needed, though Régine Pernoud's 1975 Blanche of Castile is very enjoyable. There is also an excellent assessment of Blanche of Castile, by Miriam Shadis, in Kathleen Nolan's Capetian Women.

Update: And here it is, a new scholarly biography, Lindy Grant's Blanche of Castile: Queen of France (Yale University Press, 2017).

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Isabelle of France, Saint and Princess

Isabelle of France (died 23 February 1270)

Another saint today, Isabelle, the daughter of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile, a woman whom we will meet next month. Isabelle's brother was Louis IX, who would himself be named a saint, St. Louis.

A nineteenth-century copy
of an original sculpture,
Church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, Paris

Born in 1224, Isabelle was a contemporary of the subject of yesterday's blog post, Margaret of Cortona (1247-97), though the circumstances of their birth could hardly have been more different. Margaret was the daughter of a farmer, Isabelle a princess, the only daughter of the French king. Her brothers were kings and counts.

Well educated, Isabelle refused to marry, even when pressed to do so, instead deciding to remain a virgin consecrated to God. Devoted to the Franciscans, she wanted to establish a monastery of the Order of Poor Ladies of St. Clare of Assisi, and construction was begun just outside Paris in 1256. When it was completed in 1259, it was known as the Monastery of the Humility of the Blessed Virgin, at Longchamp, for nuns to be known as "sisters of the humble order of servants of the most blessed virgin Mary."

But rather than following the Rule established by St. Clare, Isabelle had a special rule devised for the nuns of her community, and although she herself never lived within the cloister, she followed the rule within her own home in Longchamp.

Isabelle died on 23 February 1270 and was buried in the church of the monastery she founded. Isabelle was canonized in 1696. Her monastery was closed at the time of the French Revolution and remained empty until it was eventually torn down in 1857.

For an excellent biography and analysis, see Sean L. Field's Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century. A biography of Isabelle was written by Agnes of Harcourt, abbess of Longchamp, in the 1280s; Field's edition, The Writings Of Agnes Of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France and the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp, makes available "what is probably the first biography of one woman by another in French."