The Monastery of the Humility of the Blessed Virgin

The daughter of King of France Louis VIII the Lion and Blanche of Castile, Isabelle of France, undertook in 1255 the construction of a monastery in the forest of Rouvray (current Bois de Boulogne), near Paris. The first stone was laid on June 10, 1256 by King Saint Louis (Louis IX). It was the Poor Clare monastery of Longchamp, completed in 1259. Some of the first nuns came from the Poor Clare monastery in Reims. On February 2, 1259 Pope Alexander IV approved the new Rule which was composed especially for this monastery by the Franciscan Mansuetus based on the Rule of Saint Clare. Not as strict as that rule, the community was allowed to hold property.

From 1260, Isabelle moved into a small house, built for her in the enclosure of the monastery, to share the life and prayer of the sisters, but she never made a religious profession. In 1263, she obtained from Pope Urban IV an updated version of the rule, which was adopted by several monasteries in France and in Italy (Urbanist Poor Clares).

Isabelle died in Longchamp on February 23, 1270, and was buried in the monastery church. After the death of Saint Louis (in Tunis, the same year), Charles of Anjou, brother of the king and of Isabelle, asked one of Isabelle's ladies in waiting to write her biography, with a view to her canonization. Agnes d'Harcourt published this hagiographic account, around 1280, but Isabelle was not beatified until 1521, by Pope Leo X (Piis omnium bull).

Adapted from: Nominis