Multiple memories: Pierre de Vaux’s Vie de Sainte Colette, Burgundy and the Church

Abstract

In 1490, a letter arrived at the Papal chancery in Rome, addressed to Pope Innocent VIII. It contained a request from Madame la Grande, the widow of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. In the letter, she asked for Papal permission to open a convent of Poor Clare nuns in Lille, which she duly received.1 That permission was forthcoming is hardly surprising: the dowager duchess was one of the great patrons of the religious orders in late medieval Europe. Since her wedding to Charles the Bold in 1468, Margaret of York had followed in the footsteps of her predecessor-duchesses of Burgundy, and had extended a helping hand and opened a liberal purse, to a bewildering variety of religious families.