Margaret of Lorraine

Granddaughter of King René, she married René of Alençon in 1488 and was widowed at twenty-nine, with three small children and a duchy to hold. She held it more than twenty-five years: she administered, went to law, married off her daughters, had her son brought up, and governed well enough that no one thought of taking the regency from her. Only when that charge was finished did she do what she had long wanted: she founded a convent of Poor Clares at Argentan, then entered it in 1518 as an ordinary religious, refusing to be its abbess and living by the common rule. She died there in 1521. She is the great-grandmother of Henri IV. Beatified in 1921 by Benedict XV, she was never canonised.