Blessed Delphine of Glandèves

Blessed Delphine of Glandèves was a Provençal noblewoman, countess of Ariano, and the wife of Saint Elzéar of Sabran, with whom she vowed to live in chastity. After his death she gave away her wealth and spent the rest of her life in poverty and prayer. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on November 26.

She was born at Puimichel in Provence, the daughter of the local lord. The year of her birth is not known: the sources give dates from 1282 to 1285. In the literature she is called Delphine of Glandèves, of Signe, or of Puimichel. She lost her parents early, and her relatives entrusted her upbringing to the convent of Saint Catherine at Sorps, where her aunt was a nun. Already as a girl she wished to remain a virgin and to give herself to God.

By the will of Charles II of Anjou, king of Naples and count of Provence, she was betrothed to Elzéar of Sabran, the son of the count of Ariano. They married around 1300, both still in their teens. Delphine told her husband of her desire, and after some time he came to respect it. The spouses lived in continence, and around 1316 they together made a vow of chastity before a Franciscan friar. The bull of Elzéar’s canonization states, on the testimony of his wife and of his confessor, that the saint preserved his virginity.

After his father’s death Elzéar inherited the county of Ariano in the Kingdom of Naples and served King Robert of Anjou. Delphine joined her husband in Italy and for years lived at the court in Naples, where she became a friend of Queen Sancia. Both combined the duties of their state with prayer, penance, and care for the poor. They were closely tied to the Franciscans, and the tradition of the order counts them both among the tertiaries of Saint Francis, although the surviving documents of the period, Elzéar’s will included, do not call him a tertiary.

Elzéar died on September 27, 1323, in Paris, where he had gone on an embassy, and was buried in the church of the Franciscans at Apt. For a long time Delphine remained with Queen Sancia, made a vow of poverty, and gradually sold her estates, giving the money to those in need. After returning to Provence she lived as a recluse, first at Cabrières and then at Apt, devoted to prayer and works of mercy.

She testified in the inquiry that from 1351 prepared her husband’s canonization. In her last years she patiently bore a long illness. She died at Apt on November 26. Scholars who have studied the acts of her process accept the year 1360, older works also give 1358, and the Roman Martyrology records both dates. She was buried beside Elzéar in the church of the Franciscans. Today the relics of both spouses are venerated in the cathedral of Apt.

In 1363 Pope Urban V, Elzéar’s godson, ordered an examination of her life and miracles. Witnesses were heard at Apt, but the process was never completed. The same pope canonized Elzéar on April 15, 1369. The veneration of Delphine, alive in Provence and in the Franciscan family, was confirmed in 1694 by Pope Innocent XII.