Saint Joan of Valois

After this favor, which all the writers of our Saint's life delight in recounting, the young princess seemed to find happiness only in solitude. She left her apartments only to go and adore Jesus Christ in His sanctuary. Through voluntary sacrifices, she worked to make herself worthy of corresponding to God's designs for her, and acquired the strength to resist the blows of adversity. She maintained a holy communion with those consecrated to God; their examples, their advice, and their prayers strengthened her in her generous resolutions. It was in this way that she often conferred with Saint Francis of Paola, whom her father had c alled from the depths o saint François de Paule Founder of the Minims and spiritual advisor to Joan. f Italy to his court. She sometimes had to, in obedience to the King's orders, attend court festivities; but she always brought such great modesty to them, she watched so well over all the movements of her heart, and was so effectively protected by the Queen of Virgins, that she had the happiness of escaping all dangers.

Lacking the external charms that everyone seeks, Jeanne had received, in exchange, goods a thousand times more precious: she was endowed with a noble and truly royal character; she possessed a compassionate heart, and a strength of soul that allowed her to suffer the greatest evils without uttering a complaint; she feared only one thing: incurring, through sin, the disgrace of the divine Master. This misfortune is, in fact, the only one that Christians should fear, for it is the only one that is irreparable.

Jeanne was preparing to leave the court and enter a monastery to consecrate her virginity to God, when an order from the King, as distressing as it was unexpected, came to prevent her from consummating her sacrifice. Louis XI, consulting the interests of a selfish policy rather than the inclinations of his daughter, had resolved to unite her with the Duke of Orléans, the first prince of the blood. In this extremity, Jeanne did not lose courage: she prostrated herself at the feet of her crucifix, and shedding tears, she begged the Savior to grant her the fulfillment of her desires. Her prayer was not in vain: the Duke of Orléans, who was only marrying her by force, protested against the violence done to him; and far from harming the princess's purity, he studied only to give her marks of his indifference, and even of his contempt and hatred.

Diverted from her holy vocation, married by order of a father who did not love her to the Duke of Orleans, whose aversion to her was manifest, Jeanne opposed the injustices and mistreatment to which she was subjected only with kindness, gentleness, and forgiveness. It was through the solicitations of this princess to Charles VIII that the Duke of Orleans, guilty of having taken up arms against the State, owed his pardon and was able to leave the prison where he had been languishing for three years; but this ungrateful husband, no sooner had he ascended the throne after the death of Charles VIII, than he had his ma rriage to Louis XII Husband of Joan, he had their marriage annulled after his accession to the throne. his liberator annulled. Louis XII swore that he had been forced to marry Jeanne and that he had never lived with her. Thereupon, the Pope dissolved the marriage.

The Saint accepted as a blessing the breaking of the bonds that tied her to the king: "Blessed be," she said, "the Lord who has permitted this separation, to help me serve Him better than I have done until now!" Then, she retired to the c ville de Bourges City where Leopardin received his episcopal blessing. ity of Bourges, which the king had given her as an appanage along with several other domains and a pension of twelve thousand crowns.

At the news of Queen Jeanne's repudiation, general discontent broke out in Paris and throughout the kingdom. As for her, having escaped the snares of a world whose pleasures and maxims she detested, she rejoiced in a disgrace that allowed her to surrender to the noble inspirations of her heart. Her farewells to her husband were touching: they expressed neither reproach nor regret, but a lively gratitude and a tender solicitude for his happiness. "I owe you gratitude," she told him, "as to a liberator, since you have withdrawn me from the harsh servitude of the world. Forgive me for any wrongs I may have had toward you. I wish to expiate them by dedicating my life to praying for you and for France."

Jeanne was welcomed by the inhabitants of Bourges as a beneficent protectress whom heaven had sent to them to edify, console, and relieve them in their sorrows. She spent the rest of her days peacefully in this city in works of devotion and piety, and edified all of France by the holiness of her life. She macerated her tender and delicate body with hair shirts and cilices. She ate only the vilest and coarsest of foods; and for lean days, she abstained entirely from butter and eggs, and from anything else that comes from flesh. Her piety and compassion were admirable toward the poor, and especially toward the sick, whom she had carefully attended by her physicians; she even applied remedies to them with her own royal hands, from which miraculous healings often followed.

We have already spoken of her conferences with Saint Francis of Paola. As long as she remained at court, she used the advice of this holy man for the conduct of her conscience, as the King her father had expressly recommended to her at the point of death; but no longer being able to do so in person, because she was far from him, she continued to do so by letter. She consulted him particularly regarding the design, which she had formerly communicated to him, of establishing a new congregation of daughters in honor of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, just as that same Mother of God had revealed to her. When she was well confirmed by the resolutions of the holy man, she made her design known to Father Gilbert Nicolai, others call him Gilbert Nicolas, of the Order of Saint Francis of Assisi, her confessor, who, by a brief of Pope Alexander VI, was l ater named Gabr Gilbert Nicolas Confessor of Joan and co-founder of the Annonciade. iel-Marie, because of his great devotion to the mystery of the Annunciation. This holy personage, who was not at first of this opinion, represented to Her Royal Highness that she would do better to follow the example of the late Queen Charlotte of Savoy, her mother, who had established the daughters of Saint Clare at the monastery of the Ave Maria in Paris. The virtuous princess gave him an answer full of courage and trust in God: "If it is," she said, "the will of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, they will surely assist me in all the oppositions and all the difficulties that may be encountered."

Two years passed in these delays; but at the end of this time, the holy duchess, having fallen into a very serious and very stubborn illness, warned her confessor that the only opposition he was putting to her religious design was the cause of it. Indeed, this Father having yielded to the will of the Saint, to the advice she had received from heaven, she began to feel better, and to regain her strength little by little, and finally recovered perfect health. She therefore began her establishment, and named this same confessor first Father Guardian over all the daughters who would embrace this new congregation; and she gave him the commission to choose those he judged most fit to serve Jesus and Mary, his most holy Mother, there.

There were a great number who considered themselves very happy to be able to learn piety under the guidance of such a wise princess; but before receiving them, she wanted to have the rule drawn up that they were to observe, under the glorious title of the ten pleasures or the ten virtues of the Virgin. As soon as it was done, she sent it to Rome by Father Guillaume Morin, a distinguished preacher of the same Order of Saint Francis, to beseech His Holiness to approve it; but so many difficulties were encountered that this religious, judging the matter impossible, returned to France and brought back only a refusal to the Duchess. She did not, however, lose courage; knowing that affairs which concern the honor of God and his holy Mother are usually established only through patience and the strength of prayers, she redoubled hers with all possible fervor. And, to make them more powerful before God, she joined them to those of all the good souls she knew in France. Then she sent her confessor to Rome; but he found no more ease for the Duchess's affair than Father Morin had: on the contrary, everything seemed to oppose her designs, until Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Ferrier, Bishop of Modena, a personage of very great learning and distinguished piety, who was of great authority at the court of Rome, very cherished and honored by Pope Alexander, whose chaplain he was, sent for this religious to tell him that he wanted to take his cause in hand, and that he had had a vision on this subject of the martyr Saint Lawrence and Saint F rancis, who co pape Alexandre Pope who authorized the return of the relics to Naples in 1497. mmanded him to pursue the confirmation of this holy rule. Indeed, the Pope, learning of this vision, and moreover being extremely edified by the constant resolution of Father Gabriel and the piety of such a great princess of the house of France, daughter and sister of kings, finally approved and confirmed the rule on February 15, 1501.

During this journey from Rome, the Duchess did not lose any time; she obtained permission from the King to build, in any city of her kingdom she wished, houses and monasteries of the Order she desired to establish, and to found churches there. And, furthermore, she worked on the reform of a convent of nuns of the Order of Saint Benedict, who were not living according to the spirit and institution of that great Patriarch; she succeeded through her great prudence and the firmness of her zeal, always supported by the grace of God.

One cannot express the joy that the holy Princess received when she learned that the Sovereign Pontiff had approved her rule, and granted several beautiful privileges, graces, and indulgences to the Order she wished to found. She had thanks given to God for this, not only by her daughters, but also by the devout souls of Bourges and by all the monasteries of that same city. She received the rule with incredible gladness; and, to do so with a kind of solemnity, she had herself accompanied by her ladies and damsels, and by all the girls who desired to take the veil. There was only one who could not be present at this ceremony, because she was in bed, sick with a high fever; but no sooner had they placed the book of the rule on her head than, the fever ceasing at that very hour, she found herself perfectly cured: which served as an evident proof that this rule was holy and inspired by God.

After that, she thought only of finding a suitable place to build a convent. She acquired land belonging to the canons of Moyen-Moutier, where she had the plan for the church and other buildings drawn up. Guillaume de Cambrai, Archbishop of Bourges, laid the first stone with the ordinary ceremonies, and the management of the construction was given to the Duchess's squire, named Amé Georges, until they were in a state to house the nuns.

Several miracles, which occurred while they were working on this holy house, clearly showed that God was its principal Conductor and sovereign Architect, for laborers were buried under a mountain of earth without receiving any harm. Large blocks of earth fell on fourteen or fifteen masons, and not one was injured. Another was carried away by a large stone he wanted to throw into the foundations, but he rose from his fall and was not hurt at all.

If the holy Duchess took care of the temporal edifice of her monastery, she brought no less diligence to preparing living stones for the spiritual temple she intended to build to the divine Majesty. To this end, she chose five of the most virtuous girls, to whom she had the habit given on October 8, the year 1502. And it was through these that the Order of the Annonciade began in Bourges, called that of the ten pleasures or the ten virtues of the Virgin: the imitation of the ten principal virtues of which the Blessed Virgin was a perfec t model in the differ Ordre de l'Annonciade Religious order founded by Saint Jeanne. ent mysteries that the Church honors each year, was the end that Saint Jeanne proposed to herself in instituting her Order. It took its name from the first as from the greatest of the pleasures or joys of Mary: that of the Annunciation.

From Bourges, the Order spread to several places. The first five daughters were soon followed by several others who, animated by the love of Jesus and Mary, renounced with a good heart all the vain pleasures of creatures. But the principal and the first professed of all was the holy princess: she bound herself to the rule she had established on the following Pentecost, the year 1503. Since then, she no longer disposed of anything, that is to say, neither of her goods nor of her person, without the permission of the superior general of her Order.

She had such a tender devotion to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar that she never received it without being bathed in tears: her love for God was so tender that she was sometimes thought to be ill when her heart was seized by divine languors. Her prayer was sublime, and she was often caught up in ecstasy during it. One day, during Holy Mass, as she was in a rapture, Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin presented two hearts to her on a platter, with Jesus Christ smiling and telling her to place her own there as well. But the blessed woman was very astonished when, having looked for it, she realized she no longer had one, because it was more perfectly united to that of Jesus than to her own body.

Being in the fortieth year of her life, she saw well by the diminution of her strength that the hour to depart from this world was near; her end had been foreshadowed by a heart condition long deemed incurable. She wished to prepare for her departure for eternity through the action she deemed most pleasing to God, which was the instruction of her daughters. Indeed, in the last visit she paid them, she spoke to them in a discourse so beautiful and so ardent on the imitation of Jesus and Mary that, according to the report of those who heard it, her nuns had never heard it treated with such force or such grace. The next day, after having recommended to each one in particular and to all in general what was their duty, she gave them the final kiss of peace; then, having herself taken back to her palace, she ordered that the door she used to pass to the monastery be blocked, judging well that she would use it no more. From that day, which was the feast of Saint Agnes, she did not pass a single one without receiving Holy Communion; which she always did with new fervor and special graces until the fourth of February, which was the last of her mortal life and the first of her blessed life.

An extraordinary brightness appeared in her room at the moment of her passing and lasted for a good hour and a half: numerous witnesses saw at the same hour a kind of extremely bright cloud over the church of the Annonciade. While Jeanne of France was fading away to the lamentable sound of the great bell of the cathedral of Bourges, a sinister comet dragged its flaming tail above the palace of Louis XII who, seized by a late but sincere repentance, hastened to write to the inhabitants of that city a letter to invite them to the splendid funeral prepared, by his order, for his noble victim. After her death, her body was found covered with a rough hair shirt on her bare flesh, and burdened with five silver nails at the place of the heart, and an iron chain on her loins; such were the instruments of penance that the Saint used. She was dressed in her nun's habits as she had ordered; but afterwards, by order of the king, she was adorned as a princess: they placed the hat and crown on her head, and the violet velvet mantle, sown with the arms of France, on her shoulders; and, to mark that she was a nun, the veil and scapular over it.

Her funeral was conducted with all the ceremonies due to her status as a princess of the blood, daughter, sister, and wife of kings.

The details of this burial are no less touching. The body of the duchess, dressed in the costume of the Annonciade nuns, remained exposed for twelve days in a burning chapel. At the palace, her table was served with covered dishes, as if she were still living, and, morning and evening, Madame de Chaumont, her lady-in-waiting, and her confessor, Father Gilbert Nicolas, would sadly come to sit there, then, after a few moments of religious silence, would rise and have the service distributed to the poor who crowded at the door.

On February 21, her mortal remains, sealed in a triple coffin, were taken to the Annonciade in a velvet litter, drawn by four mules harnessed with mourning ornaments, under a canopy carried by four barons of Berry: Philibert de Beaujeu, Baron of Linières; Jean de Culant, Baron of Châteauneuf; Jean d'Aumont, Baron of Châteauroux, and a fourth, representing the gentlemen of the city of Bourges.

After the service, at the moment when the bier was lowered into the vault, the entire assembly burst into sobs, and the steward of the noble deceased, prey to despair, broke his staff, the distinctive sign of his office, and cried out: 'Ah! My good mistress, I shall then no longer have the honor of serving you! Remember your afflicted servant; pray to God for him!'

Her body was buried under the nuns' choir, where it rested for fifty-six years without any sign of corruption. But in the year 1562, the Calvinist heretics, having surprised the best cities of France and having declared war on all holy and sacred things, did not spare the precious relics of the Saints. They therefore burned the body of this blessed princess and cast her ashes to the wind; but they were received into the hands of Divine Providence, which will restore them to life with immortality. It is said that at the approach of these impious men, the Saint appeared to wake in her tomb: as they were about to accomplish their sacrilegious work, a deep sigh escaped from her breast. A furious man who plunged his sword into her heart withdrew it all bloodied.

The memory of our Saint became very famous through such a great number of miracles and supernatural healings that André Frémiot, Archbishop of Bourges, approved up to one hundred and thirty of them, which can be seen in a book printed in the year 1618.

Pope Benedict XIV approved, for the Order of Saint Francis, the cult of Joan of Valois, established from time immemorial. At the request of Louis XV, a procedure for her canonization was begun; she was canonized under Louis XVI, on April 20, 1775. Pius VI, who then governed the Church, issued a de cree i Pie VI Pope cited as having approved the cult of Julie in 1821. n the form of a brief to declare that it was certain that Joan had practiced the Christian Virtues to a heroic degree: he extended her cult to all of France.

The Order of the Annonciades of France counted more than forty houses in the last century: some have been re-established in our day.

Often, the infant Jesus is painted near Saint Joan, placing a ring on her finger to signify that the celestial spouse replaced for her the prince of the earth who had repudiated her. A crown is at her feet: this symbol speaks for itself. When she has two crowns on her head, one is the crown of royalty and the other that of holiness. A crucifix is often placed in her hand to recall her piety toward the Passion. Retired in an oratory consecrated to the Holy Sepulcher, she shed abundant tears there over the sufferings of Our Lord and struck her breast with a stone. She is also represented giving clothes to the poor.

Her life has been written by several trustworthy authors, but more expressly by Louis Douy d'Altiby, Bishop of Riez, in Provence, then of Autun, in Burgundy, and by the Rev. Fr. Hilarion de Coste, both of the Order of Minims.