Blessed Margaret of Lorraine

Blessed Margaret of Lorraine was Duchess of Alençon, a wife and mother. She was widowed early, raised three children, and governed the duchy for years, and at the end of her life she became a Poor Clare in the monastery she herself had founded at Argentan. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on November 2.

She was born in 1463 in Lorraine, probably at the castle of Vaudémont. Her father was Frederick of Lorraine, Count of Vaudémont, and her mother was Yolande, daughter of René of Anjou, known as Good King René. She lost her father as a child. She was brought up at her grandfather’s court in Aix-en-Provence, and after his death in 1480 she returned to Lorraine. From childhood she loved to read the lives of the saints, and she took as her model Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, to whom she was related.

In 1488 she was given in marriage to René, Duke of Alençon, of the House of Valois. She bore three children: Charles, Françoise, and Anne. After a little more than four years of marriage, in 1492, she was left a widow. She then took upon herself the upbringing of her children and the government of the duchy in the name of her underage son. She put the duchy’s indebted finances in order and improved its courts. Sources count the years of her rule differently, from fifteen to more than twenty.

The decree of the Holy See of 1921 states that she set aside a third of her goods for the poor, whom she called her lords, and another third for the things of God: she built and endowed monasteries, hospitals, chapels, and churches. She nursed the sick with her own hands, kneeling beside them. In 1498 she founded a monastery of Poor Clares at Alençon, and she brought Franciscan tertiary sisters to the hospital at Mortagne. She left her son Charles written advice to love God above all things and to remember that the glory of princes lies not in commanding peoples but in doing the will of God.

She provided for her children’s future. Charles married Marguerite of Angoulême, sister of the future King Francis I. Françoise, in her second marriage, wed Charles of Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, and their grandson was King Henry IV of France. Anne became the wife of William Palaeologus, Marquis of Montferrat. Free from the duties of a ruler, Margaret first joined the Third Order of Saint Francis. She settled at Mortagne, where she herself cared for the sick and the poor.

At Argentan she founded and endowed a monastery of Poor Clares, which she entered herself. After her novitiate, on October 11, 1520, she made her solemn religious vows there. A year later she fell gravely ill. Before her death she tearfully asked the sisters for forgiveness, received the sacraments, and died kissing the cross, in the night of November 2, 1521. She was buried in the church of the monastery she had built.

In Normandy she was venerated from the time of her death. The process in the Diocese of Séez was concluded in 1909, and on March 20, 1921, Pope Benedict XV confirmed the veneration given to her from time immemorial, which is equivalent to beatification.