Franciscan Studies

Imagining Isabelle: The Fifteenth-Century Epitaph of Isabelle of France at Longchamp In her recent novel, The Crown Rose, fantasy writer Fiona Avery has set the thirteenth-century French princess Isabelle of France at the center of a world of magic, intrigue, conspiracy, and romance. Presumably the outlines of Isabelle’s real life piqued this author’s interest, for the career of Louis IX’s sister was indeed striking. Born in 1225 and raised as the only daughter of the powerful and pious Blanche of Castile, Isabelle spurned a potential marriage to the heir to the German Empire at age eighteen, embraced a life of saintly virginity, and later became the royal patron of her new Franciscan abbey of l’Humilité-de-Notre-Dame (better known as Longchamp, located just west of Paris in the modern Bois de Boulogne). Isabelle did not become a nun herself, but she co-authored the rule for Longchamp and secured for the sisters the controversial title of Sorores minores. By the time of her death in 1270, Isabelle enjoyed a reputation for sanctity that rivaled that of her brother, the future Saint Louis. She is now beginning to receive her scholarly due as a Capetian “saint,” powerful monastic patron, and co-author of an influential form of life for Franciscan women.  I thank Cecilia Gaposchkin, Lezlie Knox, David Collins S.J., and the two anonymous readers for Franciscan Studies for their valuable critiques; Kathleen Nolan , Caroline Bruzelius, Elizabeth A.R. Brown, and Jane Carroll for generously sharing their knowledge of medieval tombs and related bibliography; and the University of Vermont History Department’s Thompson Fund for travel and research support.  Fiona Avery, The Crown Rose (Amherst, N.Y.: Pyr, 2005).  Recent studies include Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006); Anne-Hélène Allirot, “Isabelle de France, soeur de saint Louis: La vierge savante. Étude de la Vie d’Isabelle de France écrite par Agnès d’Harcourt,” Médiévales 48 (2005): 55-98; William Chester Jordan, “Isabelle of France and Religious Devotion at the Court of Louis IX,” in Kathleen Nolan, ed., Capetian Women (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 209-23; Sean Field, “Gilbert of Tournai’s Letter to 371 Franciscan Studies 65 (2007) 16.Field.indd 371 1/3/08 16:46:42 Sean L. Field 372 The serious study of her posthumous cult, however, has barely begun. Thanks to the biography written around 1283 by the third abbess of Longchamp , Agnes of Harcourt, we know that many miracles were witnessed at Isabelle’s tomb at Longchamp in the decade after her death, as nuns, Franciscans , members of the royal family, and local townspeople traveled there to seek cures and other aid. But what became of this devotion to the saintly princess after the thirteenth century? This article will begin to address this question by editing and analyzing the epitaph that was newly written and placed over Isabelle’s tomb in the later fifteenth century. Though the Bollandists published a Latin translation in 1743, the original French text has never appeared in print, and its sources, intentions, and interest have never been studied. Moreover, the physical object itself—the extant manuscript and the evidence for its appearance and presentation in its early modern context—has never been seriously examined. This epitaph was in fact the first substantial reworking of the material provided by Agnes of Harcourt, and reveals the ways in which Isabelle’s legend could be put to new uses in the late medieval period. The nuns of Longchamp engaged in this réécriture hagriographique as a way to renew Isabelle of France: An Edition of the Complete Text,” Mediaeval Studies 65 (2003): 57-97; idem, “New Evidence for the Life of Isabelle of France,” Revue Mabillon n.s. 13 (2002): 117-31; and Beth Lynn, O.S.C., “Clare of Assisi and Isabelle of Longchamp : Further Light on the Early Development of the Franciscan Charism,” Magistra 3 (1997): 71-98. The booklet by Gabrielle Joudiou, Isabelle de France et l’abbaye de Longchamp (Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 2006), though not a work of...