Isabelle of France

Owners

Louis IX’s sister, Isabelle of France (1225-1270), shared his fervent piety. Having taken a vow of chastity, she founded – with Louis’ support – a Franciscan convent outside Paris, later known as Longchamp. Her Franciscan spirituality and presumed retirement to the convent at some point after its completion in 1260 are not incompatible with the manuscript’s Sainte-Chapelle Calendar or with the Parisian use of the Hours of the Virgin and the Office of the Dead. Isabelle never took the veil, lived separately from the nuns, would have used the manuscript for private devotion rather than liturgical observance, and would have treasured it as a tangible link to her closest family. The arms of her father and mother (Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile), dominant in the line fillers, and the obits of her grand-father, father, mother and brother inscribed in the Calendar made this volume a highly personalised prayer book. The textual and visual aspects paralleled in Books of Hours from Brabant and Hainaut, and from the diocese of Liège may be explained by Isabelle’s personal connections with women from those regions. Although Isabelle was never canonised, she was venerated as a saint and in March 1270, shortly after her death, her body was moved (translated) to a special resting place at Longchamp. The only aristocratic women recorded as attending the ceremony were Margaret, Countess of Flanders, her daughter Marie and her grand-daughter Margaret, Duchess of Brabant. The cumulative textual and visual evidence suggests Isabelle as the manuscript’s likeliest owner.