Blessed Margaret of Lorraine, Duchess of Alençon

Blessed Margaret of Lorraine married René, Duke of Alençon at the age of 25 in the year 1488. She would bear the Duke three children in their four years of marriage as he reposed in the year 1492. Left a widow, she would take charge of much of the duchy of Alençon as well as the charge she already held of her children. She also arranged the marriage of her younger daughter Anne to William IX Paleologos, the Marquis of Montferrat. While her son was still a minor, "she ruled the duchy so capably that when her children came of age, their inheritance had increased over and above what had been left at the time of their father's death." (Joan Carroll Cruz, The Incorruptibles, 135)

It was during the early part of her widowhood that she had come under the instruction of St. Francis of Paola and developed an interest in living an ascetical life. When she was relieved of the duties to her children, she did end up pursuing the monastic life. She first joined the Franciscan Third Order and established a convent in Argentan for Poor Clare nuns. She would eventually take on the habit in 1519 and, though she would be offered it, refused the honor of being the abbess. In this, she humiliated herself greatly as she held the state honor of a Duchess but then would become a Sister. For the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This became her life.

When her body was exhumed in 1792, a "skeletal body was wrapped in thin cloth and transferred to the Church of St. Germain in Argentan" and the  casket held "a small reliquary that contained the heart of the saint" (ibid). But among the crimes of the traitors in 1793 included the desecration of the body of the saint as it was thrown into a common graveyard. Currently, only a few bones and the heart survive of the relics of this saint. As the Church has never been without its unsavory politicians, it wasn't until 1921 that this pious woman was finally beatified by Pope Benedict XV. Her daughter Anne would follow up her own political career by entering into a convent of Dominican Sisters of Catherine of Siena.