The fifth of six children of King Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile, Elizabeth - known as Isabella - was born in March 1225 into one of the most influential royal families in the history of Christianity: The Capetian family.
Beautiful in all her person, clear in her affections, cultured and erudite, a lover of reserve and silence from childhood, Isabella nourished a love for prayer, the interior life, asceticism and the austerity of life. Around 1243, at the age of eighteen, his mother's attempts at a carnal marriage failed because she had chosen our Lord Jesus Christ as her eternal husband. An illness that arose towards the end of 1243 affected her already fragile health conditions, and this allowed Isabella to more easily convince her mother and her family of her desire to lead a celibate life. From that moment on, Isabella began to devote herself to a more humble, less sumptuous life and was entirely anchored in prayer.
Her life continued to take place at the royal palace of the Capetians, but in a rather unusual way: she was a woman of the Court, yet she progressed in the spiritual life; She did not agree to marry, but she did not accept becoming a nun either. He devoted himself to divine prayer, subjected herself to fasting and abstinence, cared for the sick by visiting them and caring for the salvation of their souls, and fed the poor with her own hands.
She persevered in the virginal state, but without having canonical ties. There are no traces today that can attest that she received the title of "consecrated virgin". In 1256, Pope Alexander IV, with the letter Benedicta filia tu, reconfirmed in praise the choice of virginity of Isabella, "royal virgin" next to Mary ", Queen of virgins".
Reading of a work by Gilbert of Tournai, a Franciscan theologian, prompted Isabella in 1254 to embrace the life purpose of St. Francis, moving away from the traditional family closeness to the Cistercian Order and being the first to undertake relationships and relations with the Friars Minor. In the same year, Innocent IV accepted the request that the Friars Minor could be her confessors, confirming a concrete "turn" towards the Franciscan piety she assumed.
In 1255, whilst St Clare of Assisi was being canonised, Isabella undertook the foundation of a monastery in the Franciscan spirit. She built a monastery at Longchamp, where charity could be exercised together with the praise of God. The royal family also attended the ceremony, and her brother (now king), Louis IX, laid the foundation stone of the Monastery of the Sisters of the Order of the Humble Servants of the Glorious Blessed Virgin Mary.
Isabella wanted to create a new rule: with the support of Alexander IV and in editorial dialogue with the Parisian Friars Minor master’s in theology (including Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, then Minister General), she herself participated in the drafting of the text. After being approved in 1259 by Alexander IV, and then modified and reapproved by Urban IV in 1263, the Rule spread to some monasteries in France, England and Italy.
Isabella would have liked the title of the Order to be that of Sorores Minores, corresponding to that of Fratrum Minorum, to focus on the identity of the new foundation and its vision of female Franciscan life. Urban IV, in the revised Rule of 1263, added to Sorores Minores the title of reclusae, because this was the only form of religious life approved for women.
Isabella lived the last years of her life near the Monastery. Only at his death, which took place on the 23rd February, 1270, were her remains placed in the abbey. In 1521, Leo X canonised her as a saint, granting her the title of Blessed.
Although there are no sources to attest to her profession before her death, the Order always venerated her as a Virgin of the Second Order.
From the Letter of the Minister General “Isabella of France, younger sister in the footsteps of St. Francis”, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of her birth (1225-2025).