Jane Frances De Chantal

1572-1641. Founder of the Congregation of the Visitation of Our Lady. Born Jeanne Françoise Frémiot at Dijon, she was the daughter of the president of the parlement of Burgundy. She married Baron de Chantal (1592), who was killed in a hunting accident nine years later, leaving her with four young children. She heard Francis de Sales* preach, and she placed herself under his direction in 1604. After her eldest daughter married, and as her fourteen-year-old son was provided for, she took her two remaining daughters to Annecy, and there founded the Visitation Order (1610). At her death there were eighty-six houses, and by 1767 when she was canonized there were 164.