SAINT COLETTE

St. Colette

Colette (Coleta, Niolette), Poor Clare
Feast day: March 6
Patron Women seeking to conceive, expectant mothers and sick children
Birth: 1380
Death: 1447
Beatified By: January 23, 1740 by Pope Clement XII
Canonized By: May 24, 1807 by Pope Pius VII

Born at Calcye, Picardy, France, on January 13, 1381; died in Ghent, Flanders, 1447; canonized in 1807.

Born to De Boilet (or Boylet), a carpenter at Corbie Abbey in Picardy, her parents named her Nicolette in honor of Saint Nicholas of Myra. They died when she was 17, leaving her in the care of the abbot.

Colette was said to be petite and very beautiful. She tried her religious vocation with the Beguines and Benedictines but failed. She distributed her possessions to the poor and entered the third order of Saint Francis.

When she was 21, the abbot gave Colette a small hermitage beside the church of Corbie, where she lived a life of such austerity that her fame spread and people came seeking her advice. Colette had dreams and visions in which Saint Francis appeared and charged her to restore the first rule of Saint Clare in its original severity. She hesitated to act upon this but was struck blind for three days and dumb for three more, which she saw as a sign.

Encouraged by her spiritual director, Father Henry de Baume, she left her hermitage in 1406. After trying to explain her mission to two convents, she realized that she must have better authority to accomplish her mission. She set out for Nice, barefoot and clothed in a habit of patches, to meet with Peter de Luna, acknowledged by the French during the great schism as pope under the name Benedict XIII.

He welcomed her and professed her as a Poor Clare. He was so impressed with her that he made her superioress of all the convents of Minoresses that she might reform or found and a missioner to the friars and tertiaries of Saint Francis.

She travelled from convent to convent through Picardy and Savoy. At first she was met with rude opposition and treated as a fanatic, and even accused of sorcery. She met rebuffs and curses patiently, however, and eventually began to make inroads, especially in Savoy, where her reform gained sympathizers and recruits. This reform passed to Burgundy, France, Flanders, and Spain.

With the support of Henry de Baume, the first house of Poor Clares to receive the reformed rule did so in 1410. She aided Saint Vincent Ferrer in the work of healing the papal schism. Colette also founded 17 new convents, in addition to reforming many, including several houses of Franciscan friars. Her most famous convent is Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire), which has sustained an unbroken continuity, even through the French Revolution.

Saint Colette was untrained and unprepared for the work for which she had been commissioned; she achieved it by the power of faith and holiness, and a determination that no opposition could discourage. Impressed by her simple goodness, many people of high rank were greatly influenced by her, including James of Bourbon and Philip the Good of Burgundy.

Like Saint Francis, Colette had a deep devotion to Christ's Passion with an appreciation and care for animals. She fasted on Fridays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., meditating on the Passion. Almost always after receiving Holy Communion she would fall into an hours-long ecstasy.

It is said that Colette met Saint Joan of Arc on her way with an army to besiege La Charite-sur-Loire in 1429, but there is no evidence.

In Flanders, where she had established several houses, Colette was seized with a last illness. She foretold her own death, received the last rites, and died in her convent in Ghent at age 67. Her body was removed by Poor Clares when Emperor Joseph II was suppressing religious houses in Flanders; it was taken to her convent at Poligny, 32 miles from Besancon. A branch of Poor Clares is still known as the Colettines