The Patient Princess

Humiliation and frustration, which followed Jeanne de Valois all her life, did not end with her death. The daughter of crafty, crusty Louis XI, King of France, Jeanne was born (1464) a sickly, misshapen creature. Her father was so displeased that he sent her away to be raised by guardians in lonely seclusion. When she was eleven, he married her off to the 14-year-old Duke of Orleans, hinting that he intended thus to end the Orleans line with his ugly, barren daughter.

Jeanne's husband publicly insulted her whenever he had an opportunity. On his accession to the throne, he had their marriage annulled. But Jeanne never ceased praying for his soul. She founded the Order of the Annunciades; later she herself took the order's vows and wore its habit under her clothes. After she died in 1505, at the age of 40, many healing miracles were attributed to her, and Roman Catholics have long regarded her as a saint.

But in 400-odd years, Jeanne de Valois was never canonized. Her "process," begun in 1775, was delayed first by unusual strictness on the part of the Congregation of Rites, then by the French Revolution (no French bishop dared offend Napoleon by pushing the sainthood of a member of the old regime). In 1905, when the process was finally resumed, authorities insisted that at least one more miracle would be necessary. In 1932 occurred what was regarded as an authentic miracle: French Nun Marta Fourrier, apparently on the verge of death from a duodenal ulcer, was suddenly cured when someone at her bedside called upon Jeanne de Valois for help. Last week the cause of Jeanne de Valois reached almost the end of the long road. In the Vatican's red damask Consistorial Hall, pink-cheeked Clemente Cardinal Micara rose and begged the Pope's permission to close her case. One by one the assembled cardinals rose and bowed to the papal throne; then, as the Pope asked each one for his opinion, each murmured "placet" (it pleases). The canonization, say church authorities, will almost certainly take place within the next year.

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