Ida of Louvain

Ida of Louvain (died around 1300) was a Cistercian nun in the 13th-century Low Countries. She was beatified for her piety and humility. Her feast day is April 13.[1]

Life

Ida was born into a well-to-do family in Leuven, Duchy of Brabant (now Belgium). At the age of 22 she felt a religious vocation but her father was a worldly man who would not accept this and subjected her to various forms of ill-treatment to discourage her.[2] Despite parental disapproval, she first dedicated her life to God in a single cell, and later became a nun in the recently founded Cistercian Abbey of Roosendael (the Valley of the Roses) in what is now Sint-Katelijne-Waver. One historian has described her as adding "éclat" to the monastery.[3] She received the stigmata, wounds mirroring Christ's that appeared miraculously and would not heal.[4] The only record of her life is in a series of letters by her confessor, a priest named Hugh.

References

  1. ↑ Basil Watkins (ed.), The Book of Saints (7th ed., London, 2002), p. 273.
  2. ↑ Alphonse Le Roy, "Ida ou Ide (la bienheureuse)", Biographie Nationale de Belgique, vol. 10 (Brussels, 1889), 6-7.
  3. ↑ Alphonse Wauters, Histoire des environs de Bruxelles, vol. 3, p. 662.
  4. ↑ The Cistercian fathers, or, Lives and legends of certain saints and blessed of the Order of Citeaux, tr. by H. Collins. 1872. pp. 163–170.
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