Saint Delphine of Signes

Little disposed at first to lend herself to this project, she decided, it is said, to follow in this regard the will of her parents, in the conviction that the state of marriage was not incompatible with that of continence. The two spouses received, in 1299, the nuptial blessing. It is reported that after the wedding feast, Delphine took her husband aside and declared to him her firm intention to remain a virgin, to which the young baron promised not to oppose: they therefore lived as brother and sister, and, so as not to falter in their resolution, they called to their aid prayer, fasting, and mortifications.

Elzéar, whom business called to Italy, remained separated from Delphine for four years, then, after he had returned to spend a year in Provence with her, they both went to Naples; the young countess left her retreat at Ansouis with regret; the frivolous conversations of the court seemed to her to require expiation through a redoubling of privations and austerities.

When her husband took her to the County of Ariano, she managed to stifle all the dissensions that divided the gentlemen and the townspeople there. She soon gained the confidence of persons of her sex and station who wished to give themselves to God. Sancia, who later bec ame Queen of Naples, joined with Delph Sancie, qui depuis fut reine de Naples Queen of Naples, friend and companion in charitable works of Delphine. ine for good works; united by their tastes and their friendship, they visited the poor and the hospitals together, and encouraged one another in the ways of perfection.

On the occasion of the mourning observed by the court upon the death of Charles II in 1309, Delphine represented to the queen's ladies, in such an energetic manner, the fragility of human things, that most of them resolved to begin a more Christian life immediately.

Around 1321, Elzéar, having followed the King of Naples to Avignon, left his wife in that city and continued his journey to Paris, where he had been sent for a negotiation and where he died (1325). Delphine, who survived him for thirty-five years, left the court definitively from that moment on to re Cabrières Place of retreat for Delphine near Ansouis. tire to Cabrières, near Ansouis. Having gone to Sicily to fulfill pious intentions, she pronounced there, in a village chapel, the vow of perpetual poverty. It was in Palermo that she was seen for the first time begging, asking for her bread from door to door, and giving to the poor what she had left over; she did the same in Naples, where she lived only on alms, to the great astonishment of the king and queen.

Upon arriving in Provence, she no longer wished to reside in her castles nor even enjoy the proceeds of her rents. The sale she had made of her assets produced considerable sums, with which she provided dowries for and married a large number of orphan girls, repaired and adorned several churches, and relieved many families. The convents were not forgotten: seven hundred gold florins were given to the monastery of Sainte-Croix in A monastère de Sainte-Croix d'Apt Religious institution that received significant donations from Delphine. pt alone.

Delphine reserved for herself, from such great wealth, only forty-five ounces of gold, and even then she wished to share them among her servants out of a motive of justice and charity; after which she found herself obliged to dismiss them, asking them to call her by no other name than that of Servant of Jesus Christ, which she preferred to all others.

Having subsequently stayed for some time in Apt, she came to Cabrières and lodged there in a wretched house that was almost falling into ruins; but her brother-in-law, Guillaume de Sabran, obliged her to accept a room in the old castle, having been unable to make her consent to take more comfortable accommodation elsewhere; she lived there in perfect recollection, dressed in a grey woollen robe, girded with a rope, veiled, hiding her hands under the folds of her wide sleeves, sleeping on straw, observing the most absolute silence, and asking for her food only with the help of a small bell which she rang to call her servant Barthélémie, who had wished not to be separated from her and to imitate her in her devotion.

Delphi ne Apt Town in Provence where Delphine spent the end of her life and where her relics rest. spent the last fifteen years of her life in Apt; the house she inhabited there, which still existed in 1820, touched the old bridge that ended in front of the Cordeliers' chur église des Cordeliers Religious order welcomed by Engelbert in Cologne. ch and was attached to the enclosure of their convent. She had chosen this place as being within reach of her husband's tomb.

She died in Apt on November 26, 1360, at the age of seventy-six. Two hours later, her body was carried, dressed in the habit of Saint Francis, to the church of Saint Catherine, to be exposed there for public veneration; the next day it was transferred with pomp to the church of the Cordeliers, where Philippe de Cabassole delivered her funeral oration: she was buried next to her husband, in the same tomb. In 1363, at the request of the people of Apt, the nobility of Provence, and the Estates of the country, regarding the canonization of Delp Urbain V Reforming pope of French origin, 200th pope of the Catholic Church. hine, Urban V appointed commissioners to conduct the preliminary procedure on site. They stayed in Apt from May 13, 1363, to the following July 5, and held their public sessions in the church of the Friars Minor. They then went to Avignon to present the result of their investigations to the Pontiff. But Urban V having died in 1370, before this matter was finished, the troubles that arose in the country prevented it from being pursued.

In 1410, the body of the Saint, having been exhumed, was placed in a wooden chest covered with silver plates upon which were represented the twelve greatest miracles of the countess. This reliquary having been stripped of its ornaments during the siege of Apt by th e Adrets, des Adrets Warlord whose siege of Apt caused the spoliation of the reliquary. the relics were placed in a gilded chest, where they remained until 1642, the time at which it appears that the office of the Saint began to be celebrated, and when her head was separated from the rest of her body, by order of Bishop Modeste de Villeneuve, to be enclosed in a bust similar to that of Saint Elzéar.

In 1669, it was decided that the reliquaries of the two Saints would be sealed with iron bands, to prevent the relics from being removed. The constitutional clergy transferred them, in 1791, from the church of the Cordeliers, which was about to be sold, to the cathedral where they still rest today.

Barjavet, Dictionnaire biographique du département de Vaucluse.