Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (review)

Isabelle of France (d. 1270), daughter of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castille, sister of Louis IX, devoted virgin of Christ, founder of the Franciscan female convent of Longchamp, pious, ascetic, and princess, was never formally canonized. This, despite the fact that she fit the ideal of pious royal women in the thirteenth century so often sainted (in a pattern of late medieval sanctification now clarified by Gábor Klaniczay), and despite an early and co-ordinated effort, including the writing of an important vita and the backing of her brother, the indomitable Charles of Anjou. Successful canonizations might founder on a myriad of institutional, political, or devotional rocks, but in this case must largely be attributed to Louis IX's own canonization in 1297, overshadowing his sister's fame and filling whatever appetite existed for a Capetian royal saint. In recent years, Sean L. Field has recovered Isabelle. First, in his edited edition of Agnes of Harcourt's Life of Isabelle of France, written in the 1280's (Sean L. Field, The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France and the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp [Notre Dame, Indiana, 2003]), and now in his new biography of Isabelle herself (under review here), Field has explored Isabelle's career. As he indicates in his introduction (pp. 5-8), the life of Isabelle of France relates to three central themes in late medieval history—the power of women, sanctity and sanctification, and the development of female Franciscan spirituality and institutions. It is also a fascinating exploration of an extraordinary woman—from her rejection of the putative heir to the imperial throne (Conrad, son of Frederick II), to her commitment to lifelong virginity, to her deft negotiations with popes and kings, to her ability to quietly translate her moral authority as a consecrated virgin into political influence, to the veneration shown her after her death. Field argues that in the 1250's Isabelle was seen as a budding saint whose fame and renown was spreading beyond the court, who was recognized as such by contemporaries like Pope Alexander IV and Thomas of Cantimpré, and who was able to translate this reputation into effective power. The dual attributes of virginity and royalty were the defining features of Isabelle's identity for contemporaries.

The book is structured chronologically. The first chapter examines Isabelle's childhood and negotiations for a political marriage. Her refusal to marry, and a subsequent illness, led to a vow of virginity which shaped her vocation and her life. Chapter two chronicles her cultivation of an independent (virginal) identity within the politics of the court, and her attraction, in the 1240's and '50's, to the Franciscan Order. Chapters three and four discuss her foundation of Longchamp, and, in Field's words, the "process by which she parlayed her royal status and religious renown into a role as co-author of a new form of life for Franciscan women" (p. 61). It is notable that Isabelle chose to found a Franciscan convent, rather than the hospital for the poor that she first considered (and in which she would have emulated existing models of female royal sanctity found in Agnes of Prague and Elizabeth of Hungary). Field traces the driving role Isabelle played in the composition of a rule in 1259, and then a revised rule of 1263 in which she won the right to call her nuns Sorores Minores. Field argues that although politicized considerations downplayed explicit record of Isabelle's contributions, her hand and her influence are evident, as with, for example, a move to strengthen the abbess's institutional power. The rule was subsequently adopted by Franciscan convents in France, England...