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."

Saint Margaret of Cortona, "A Second Magdalene"

Margaret of Cortona (died 22 February 1297)

                           Saint Margaret of Cortona,

               detail from a late thirteenth-century painting,

                      Museo Diocesano, Cortona, Italy

A wild and spoiled child, a willful and "dissolute" young woman, Margaret of Cortona left home at the age of seventeen in order to live as the mistress of a wealthy young man.

She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, but her lover, the child's father, was murdered. A distraught Margaret tried to return home, only to find that her father would not receive her.

She then devoted her life to prayer and penance, finding a home among the Franciscans. Her son eventually became a friar, Margaret joining the Third Order of Saint Francis, a lay penitential order devoted to a life of poverty, prayer, and penance.

In 1277 Margaret of Cortona experienced the first of a series of visions of Jesus, who addressed her first as la poverella, ultimately as "my child." Among her many works on behalf of the poor and unfortunate, she helped to establish a hospital for the impoverished and sick in Cortona and gathered together a group of dedicated nurses to work in the hospital.

Margaret of Cortona was canonized in 1728.

The Franciscan Institute has published a biographical/devotional book, The Life and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297)--while not a scholarly work, it may still be of interest for its treatment of Margaret of Cortona's life. This is the best of quite a number of devotional appreciations of the saint. You may also be interested in Saint Margaret of Cortona, a novel by the great French writer and Nobel Prize winner (in Literature, 1952) François Mauriac.

The Basilica of St. Margaret's, Cortona