Walled in Light: Saint Colette
Type
Book
Authors
Category
Catholic Saints
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Publication Year
1959
Publisher
Pages
247
Tags
Description
St. Colette of Corbie, great Poor Clare abbess of the fifteenth century, who be her Constitutions and her many foundations propped up the sagging structure of Franciscanism and restored it to its original spiritual splendor, ranks in the history of the Order of St. Francis and St. Clare. In Europe she is a favorite saint; but in America she is little known, even though today there are in this country nine monasteries of Poor Clares originating from her foundation at Ghent.
Colette undertook her immense task of reform during the Great Western Schism, and her work brought her into association with popes and kings. A time of disorder, it was a period of great saints as well: St. Vincent Ferrer, St. John Capistran, St. Jeanne d'Arc were her contemporaries, and their lives touched hers. Sister Mary Francis records Colette's public life fully, against its historical background. But for the story of Colette the woman, she relies primarily on the accounts left by Father Pierre de Vaux, her confessor, and Sister Perrine de la Baume, her secretary, writers who are "often inclined to pass over important historical events in favor of some homely detail about the saint."
It is the "homely detail" which strengthens the bond between the Poor Clare nun of the fifteenth century and her Poor Clare biographer of the twentieth, who is able to imagine, for example, how inconvenient it must have been for the nuns to have their abbess frequently in ecstasy; how embarrassed an abbess might be by the acquisition of an eccentric king as a spiritual son; the consternation produced when the saint asked God to let her confessor see the devil who was troubling her, and God heard her prayer. The story, as Sister Mary Francis tells it, is full of acute perceptions and often very entertaining.
Sister Mary Francis is a Poor Clare nun in Roswell, New Mexico. Her account of convent life in Roswell, as told in A Right to Be Merry, was a long-time best seller after its publication in 1956.
Born in St. Louis, Sister Francis attended Notre Dame Junior College and Saint Louis University, before entering the Poor Clares. Her literary work includes volumes of poetry and four plays. The last of these La Madre, a life of St. Teresa of Avila, was produced off-Broadway last year by the Blackfiars' Guild, where it was the subject of unanimous critical acclaim. She is also the author of a children's life of St. Francis of Assisi in the Patron Saint Series.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Colette undertook her immense task of reform during the Great Western Schism, and her work brought her into association with popes and kings. A time of disorder, it was a period of great saints as well: St. Vincent Ferrer, St. John Capistran, St. Jeanne d'Arc were her contemporaries, and their lives touched hers. Sister Mary Francis records Colette's public life fully, against its historical background. But for the story of Colette the woman, she relies primarily on the accounts left by Father Pierre de Vaux, her confessor, and Sister Perrine de la Baume, her secretary, writers who are "often inclined to pass over important historical events in favor of some homely detail about the saint."
It is the "homely detail" which strengthens the bond between the Poor Clare nun of the fifteenth century and her Poor Clare biographer of the twentieth, who is able to imagine, for example, how inconvenient it must have been for the nuns to have their abbess frequently in ecstasy; how embarrassed an abbess might be by the acquisition of an eccentric king as a spiritual son; the consternation produced when the saint asked God to let her confessor see the devil who was troubling her, and God heard her prayer. The story, as Sister Mary Francis tells it, is full of acute perceptions and often very entertaining.
Sister Mary Francis is a Poor Clare nun in Roswell, New Mexico. Her account of convent life in Roswell, as told in A Right to Be Merry, was a long-time best seller after its publication in 1956.
Born in St. Louis, Sister Francis attended Notre Dame Junior College and Saint Louis University, before entering the Poor Clares. Her literary work includes volumes of poetry and four plays. The last of these La Madre, a life of St. Teresa of Avila, was produced off-Broadway last year by the Blackfiars' Guild, where it was the subject of unanimous critical acclaim. She is also the author of a children's life of St. Francis of Assisi in the Patron Saint Series.
Taken from the inside flaps.
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