GIOVANNA di VALOIS (JEANNE DE FRANCE), saint. — Daughter of Louis XI, king of France, and of Charlotte of Savoy, and founder of the Religious of the Annunciation, b. in Paris on 23 Apr. 1464, d. in Bourges on 4 Feb. 1505. The object of her father’s aversion, both because of her profound piety and because of her small stature and deformed body, she was nevertheless given in marriage in 1476, for political reasons, to her cousin Louis, duke of Orléans.
He imitated his father-in-law in his disregard for G., and despite the fact that she had obtained his release from prison, to which he had been condemned for rebellion against his sovereign, as soon as he ascended the throne under the name of Louis XII, he hastened to request the annulment of his marriage to G., on the grounds of the coercion he had suffered and of her inability to bear children. The papal commission declared the marriage null on 17 Dec. 1498; and G. accepted the sentence as a favor, since it offered her the means of serving the Lord more freely. Retiring to the Castle of Bourges, given to her as an appanage, she founded there, with the approval of s. Francis of Paola and the assistance of the Franciscan Gabriele Maria, the Order of the Annunciation (1500), confirmed by Alexander VI on 15 Feb. 1501. At her profession, made at Pentecost in 1503, G. took the name of Sister Gabriella Maria. The cult rendered to G. from the beginning was confirmed by Benedict XIV on 21 Apr. 1742; she was canonized by Pius XII on 20 May 1950. Feast day: 4 Feb.