Margaret of Lorraine, Duchess of Alençon (1463 at the castle of Vaudémont, Lorraine – 2 November 1521 in Argentan, Normandy) was a French noblewoman and a nun of the order of Poor Clares (Ordre des Clarisses). She was beatified in 1921.[1]
Françoise of Alençon, Duchess of Beaumont (1490- 14 September 1550), married firstly in 1505, François, Duke of Longueville; married secondly in 1513, Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, by whom she had thirteen children.
Left a widow in 1492, she busied herself in the administration of her duchy and the education of her children. When she was relieved of the duties imposed upon her by her position, she decided to renounce the world and retired to Mortagne, to a monastery of religious women who followed the rule of Saint Elizabeth. Later, having brought with her to Argentan some of these nuns, she founded there another monastery which she placed, with the authorization of the pope, under the rule of Saint Clare, modified by the Minor Observants.[3]
She herself took the religious habit in this house and made her vows on 11 October 1520. On 2 November 1521, after having lived an austere life for a year, she died in her modest cell, at the age of fifty-eight. Her body, preserved in the monastery of the Poor Clares, and when that monastery was suppressed, was transferred to the church of Saint Germain d'Argentan. In 1793, during the French Revolution, it was profaned and thrown into the common burial place.[3]
