Saint Who?
Saints Who Lost Loved Ones
Blessed Jeanne Marie de Maille
Religious († 1414)Feast: March 28
When Baroness Jeanne Marie de Maille was a girl, her prayers saved a neighbor, a little boy named Robert, from drowning. Later, the two were married in a match arranged by Jeanne’s grandfather. Jeanne and Robert committed to living as brother and sister. They adopted three orphaned children, and their home became a place of mercy and goodness.
When Robert was captured during the Hundred Years’ War, Jeanne labored to produce his ransom, which took more time than his captors seemed inclined to wait. Robert escaped when, as he told it, the Virgin Mary herself appeared to break his chains. The grateful couple intensified their prayer, and increased their charity. When Robert died, his family were angry at Jeanne, blaming her for depleting the family estates. She was driven away. Eventually she went home to her mother, who taught her to support herself by mixing medicines.
Jeanne’s family, however, pressured her to remarry. So she left home again. The years that followed saw her surrender, guided in prayer, every possible source of financial security. At times she was homeless, and forced to sleep among stray dogs. In her late fifties, she settled near a Franciscan church in Tours. She became a Franciscan tertiary, visited prisoners, and taught catechism to young children. The final years of her life, it said, were devoted to prayer for the end of the Western Schism (the period from 1378 to 1417 when there was more than one claimant to the papacy). Jeanne died at eighty-two.
Merciful Father, through the prayers of Blessed Jeanne, increase our compassion for the homeless and prisoners.
