Foundress of the Royal Order of the Annonciade (1464-1505 ✝)
This princess (Saint Jeanne) was the daughter of King Louis XI. The grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling within her inspired in her, from the most tender age, a love for solitude and prayer; her heart was already filled with love for the Most Holy Virgin, and the sufferings of the Savior's Passion were the usual subject of her meditations. From this, she would draw consolation and strength through the harsh trials that would form, one might say, the very fabric of her life.
Her youth was spent divided between the mistreatment from her father and the sweet consolations with which God saw fit to reward her fidelity and resignation. At the age of sixteen, Saint Jeanne cherished the plan to consecrate herself to God in religious life, when an express order from the king, her father, forced her to marry the Duke of Orléans. Now, this prince, who contracted this union against his own inclination, affected to treat Jeanne as a stranger and showed her only aversion.
Our Saint, ever resigned, acted towards the duke as if she had only praise for his conduct, and she faithfully and courageously fulfilled all the duties of a Christian wife. However, King Charles VIII, son of Louis XI and brother of Jeanne, having died without issue, the Duke of Orléans ascended the throne under the name of Louis XII, and Saint Jeanne became Queen of France.
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God had reserved new trials for the pious princess. Louis XII, in fact, solicited and obtained from the Holy See a decree annulling his marriage, and this judgment was for Jeanne the most terrible blow her heart had ever endured; but she submitted humbly and courageously to the divine will. She withdrew to Bourges, where the King gave her the province of Berry as an appanage.
It was in this city that she spent the last four years of her life, surrounded by the love of her subjects and solely devoted to prayer, penance, and works of mercy. Her revenues were consecrated to the relief of the poor and the sick; she visited them in their humblest dwellings, cared for them with her own hands, consoled them, and prepared them for a Christian death: her preferences and her most tender care were for the unfortunate whose infirmities were the most repulsive.
It was at this time in her life that Jeanne founded the Royal Order of the nuns of the Holy Annonciade. For a long time, she had prayed to obtain heavenly enlightenment, when the Virgin Mary, who had inspired her to found this new institute, deigned to outline its plan for her:
“Have written in the Rule,” she said to her, “all that you find written about me in the Gospel, and have this Rule approved by the Sovereign Pontiff.”
This was in the year 1501.
Jeanne summoned to her side Father Gabriel Maria, then Provincial of Aquitaine, and proposed that he himself write the Rule of the nascent Order. This holy religious, who had long been her confessor, was also a powerful auxiliary for her in the foundation of the Order of the Annonciade.
After deeply meditating on what the evangelists said about the Most Holy Virgin, Father Gabriel-Maria summarized, in this Rule, the entire existence of Mary under certain general points which he called the ten virtues of Mary: the Rule is thus divided into ten chapters, each dealing with a virtue of Mary, proposed for the imitation of the nuns. From that moment on, the entirely angelic life of Saint Jeanne was employed in instructing, forming, and directing her spiritual daughters until the day when the Lord deigned to associate her with His glory in heaven, after having associated her with His sufferings on earth.
Source: Saint Jeanne de Valois