Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/February 26

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Saint Isabel of France (March, 1225 – 23 February 1270) was the daughter of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. She was a younger sister of Louis IX of France (Saint Louis) and Alphonse of Toulouse, among others. She was also an older sister of Charles I of Sicily. She founded the Abbey of Longchamp.

When still a child at court, Isabel, was devoted to religion. She not only broke off her engagement with a count, but moreover refused the hand of Conrad IV of Germany, son of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, although pressed to accept him by everyone.

As Isabel wished to found a convent of the Order of Poor Ladies of Saint Clare, Louis IX began in 1255 to acquire the necessary land in the Forest of Rouvray-Catillon, not far from the Seine and in the neighbourhood of Paris. On 10 June 1256, the first stone of the convent church was laid. The building appears to have been completed about the beginning of 1259, because Pope Alexander IV gave his sanction on 2 February 1259, to the new rule which Isabel composed along with a team of at least four leading Franciscans, including Saint Bonaventure. This rule was drawn up solely for this convent, which was named the Monastery of the Humility of the Blessed Virgin (monasterium humilitatis beatae Mariae virginis). The fast was not so strict as in the Rule of Saint Clare; the community was allowed to hold property, and the sisters were subject to the Franciscans. Some of the first sisters came from the female Franciscan convent at Reims.

Isabel never entered the cloister, but from 1260 (or 1263) she followed the rules in her own home near by. Isabel was not altogether satisfied with the first rule drawn up, and therefore submitted a revised rule to Pope Urban IV. Urban approved this new constitution on 27 July 1263. The difference between the two rules consisted for the most part in outward observances and minor alterations. In the new rule Urban IV gives the nuns of Longchamp the official title of sorores minores inclusae, which was doubtlessly intended to emphasize closer union with the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans).

Isabella died in her house at Longchamp on 23 February 1270, and was buried in the convent church. After nine days her body was exhumed, when it showed no signs of decay, and many miracles were said to have been wrought at her grave.
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