Saint Jeanne de Lestonnac

Saint Jeanne de Lestonnac was a wife and mother from Bordeaux who, after her husband’s death, founded a religious order devoted to the upbringing and education of girls. She was a niece of the writer Michel de Montaigne. The Church commemorates her on February 2.

She was born on December 27, 1556, in Bordeaux, at a time when France was divided by disputes over the faith. Her father, Richard de Lestonnac, was a Catholic. Her mother, Jeanne Eyquem de Montaigne, embraced Calvinism and did everything she could to raise her daughter in it. Pope Pius XII recalled that it was Montaigne who warned his brother-in-law of this danger and helped to remove the girl’s upbringing from her mother’s influence. Jeanne remained faithful to the Catholic Church and from her youth tried, though without success, to bring her mother back to it as well.

In 1573 she married Gaston de Montferrant at her father’s wish, although she had earlier thought of religious life. She bore seven children, not all of whom lived to adulthood; the Roman Martyrology speaks of five, whose upbringing she wisely provided for after her husband’s death. She was widowed in 1597 and at the same time lost her eldest son. Two daughters became Annonciade nuns.

Once her children’s future was secure, in 1603 she entered the Feuillantines in Toulouse, an austere branch of the Cistercian nuns, and took the name Jeanne of Saint Bernard. After a few months her health gave way and she had to leave the monastery. According to the tradition of her order, during the last night she spent there in prayer she understood that she was to devote herself to girls. She returned to Bordeaux, and during the plague of 1605 she nursed the sick.

She saw how many girls were growing up without education and without support in the faith. With the help of Jesuits, among them Father Jean de Bordes, she prepared a community modeled on the Society of Jesus, joining prayer with teaching. The archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal François de Sourdis, supported her, and Pope Paul V approved the order on April 7, 1607. It was called the Order of the Daughters of Our Lady; today it bears the name Company of Mary Our Lady (Compagnie de Marie Notre-Dame). In 1608 the first house was established in Bordeaux, and in 1610 the first religious vows were made there.

Jeanne became the first superior. In 1622 she was removed from that office, and for several years she endured humiliation and isolation. A decree of the Holy See of 1948 says that these sufferings brought her virtues to a heroic degree. She died in Bordeaux on February 2, 1640, at the age of eighty-three. The order then had thirty houses in France.

Pope Leo XIII beatified her on September 23, 1900, and Pius XII canonized her on May 15, 1949. Pius XII said on that occasion that the saint shows how important a woman’s education is in view of her role in society. The Company of Mary Our Lady is present today on four continents.