COLETTA (COELLET o BOYLET, NICOLETTE), saint. - Foundress of the Poor Clares, called Colettines, born at Calceye, near Corbie, on 13 Jan. 1381, died at Gand on 6 March 1447. At the age of twenty-one she became a recluse near the church of S. Maria di Corbie, leading there a most austere life for three years. Feeling herself then called to a special mission, Challant (v.), legate of the antipope Benedetto XIII, to dispense her from perpetual enclosure. Having obtained the dispensation on 1 Aug. 1406 (Acta SS. Martii, I, pp. 536-37), she shortly afterward entered the Poor Clares, to whose reform she subsequently devoted her entire life. With the help of Blessed Enrico di Baume and Bianca di Ginevra, she began in 1408 at Besançon her
work of reform in a convent of Urbanist Poor Clares, founded upon absolute poverty. This was followed by foundations at Auxonne, Poligny, Decize, and others, numbering twenty-two in all. Her reform also spread among the Franciscans, resulting in the so-called Colettines, suppressed by Leone X in 1517. She was beatified on 26 Aug. 1740 by Benedetto XIV, and canonized by Pio VII on 24 May 1807.