Saint Jane Frances de Chantal
Cofounder of the Order of the Visitation1572–1641
Feast · August 12
- Where to pray
- Annecy, Moulins
Life
Jane Frémyot was born at Dijon in January 1572, the daughter of Bénigne Frémyot, president of the Parliament of Burgundy and a loyal supporter of the king. She lost her mother when she was about eighteen months old. In 1592, at twenty, she married Christophe de Rabutin, baron de Chantal. Six children were born to them, and four lived.
Her husband was killed in a hunting accident, leaving her a widow at twenty-eight with four young children. In Lent of 1604 she heard Francis de Sales preach in the Sainte-Chapelle of Dijon and placed herself under his direction, and over the following years he guided her toward the religious life.
On June 6, 1610, she and her first companions entered the Maison de la Galerie at Annecy, and the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary began, joining the contemplative life to the care of the sick. The order had thirteen monasteries when Francis de Sales died in 1622, and more than eighty when Jane died; the sources give 86 or 87.
She died on December 13, 1641, at sixty-nine, at the Visitation of Moulins, where she had come to visit the sisters, among them a new novice, Marie-Félice des Ursins, widow of the duke of Montmorency. Her body was taken back to Annecy and laid near that of Saint Francis de Sales. Her granddaughter was the letter writer Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné.
Cult and relics
Pope Benedict XIV beatified Jane on November 21, 1751, and Pope Clement XIII canonized her on July 16, 1767. Her feast was set on August 21 in 1769, moved to December 12 in the calendar of 1969, and has been on August 12 in the General Roman Calendar since 2001. Her relics were venerated with those of Saint Francis de Sales in the church of the first Visitation monastery at Annecy until the Revolution, and in 1911 both were carried to the new basilica of the Visitation.
At Moulins, Marie-Félice des Ursins, who took her vows in 1657 and was elected superior in 1665, rebuilt the chapel of the convent from 1648 and placed in it the marble tomb of her husband by the sculptors Michel and François Anguier, set up in 1653. The chapel is the only part of the convent where Saint Jane died that still stands; the Lycée Banville has occupied the site of the other buildings since 1802.
In art
She is shown in the black habit of the Visitation with a silver cross on her breast. A large seventeenth-century painting of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, owned by the town of Moulins and listed as a historic monument in 1979, was recorded at its listing above an altar in a chapel of the Lycée Banville.
Where to pray
- Annecy, Basilica of the VisitationThe church above the town where her relics have rested since 1911, beside those of Saint Francis de Sales.
- Annecy, Maison de la GalerieThe house where she and her first companions began the Visitation on June 6, 1610, kept today by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.
- MoulinsThe seventeenth-century chapel of the Visitation at 35 rue de Paris, the last part of the convent where she died; the town’s heritage service offers guided visits.
On our ways: Annecy.