Today is the feast of Blessed Margaret of Lorraine.
Margaret was born to Frederick II of Vaudémont and his cousin, Yolande d'Anjou, in 1463, at their castle in Lorraine.
She married René, Duke of Alençon in 1488. When he died four years later, Margaret was already the mother of three children. "The first thing she did was to secure her right to the guardianship of her children. . . . Having done this, she settled down in her castle at Mauves, where she brought them up. . . . she showed herself to be a most capable administrator. . . ."
--Butler's Lives of the Saints
When her son reached his majority, and Margaret was no longer needed as administrator of the duchy, she retired to a convent in Mortagne in Brittany. Later, with some of the nuns, she founded at Argentan in Brittany a new monastery of Poor Clares. She made vows in 1520 and died in 1521. In 1793, her burial place was desecrated and her body thrown into a common grave.
Margaret of Lorraine -- daughter, wife, duchess, mother, grandmother, foundress -- was beatified in 1921.
