(Excerpted from Butler's Lives of the Saints)

The father of St. Jane de Chantal was Benignus Fremiot, one of the presidents of the parliament of Burgundy, famous for his loyalty to Henry IV, in opposing the league; also for his great piety, and the modesty with which he refused the dignity of first president, by which he showed himself the more worthy of that honor. By his lady, Margaret de Berbisy, he had three children, Margaret, who was afterward married to the count of Effran. Jane, who was born at Dijon on the 23rd of January, 1513, and Andrew, who died archbishop of Bourges. The president Fremiot was left a widower by the death of his lady whilst his children were yet in their infancy; but he took such pious and prudent care of their education, that no assistance or instructions were wanting for forming them in the most perfect sentiments and practice of every religious duty, and for introducing them into life with advantage. Jane, who at her confirmation was called Frances, profited by them above the rest, and was most tenderly beloved by her father, who gave her in marriage, when she was twenty years of age, to the baron de Chantal, chief of the family of Rabutin, then twenty-seven years old, an officer of distinction in the French army, and highly in favor with king Henry IV. The marriage was solemnized at Dijon, and a few days after she went with her husband to his seat at Bourbilly. She found a family, which, by the absence of the master, had not been much accustomed to regularity, which she made it her first care to establish. She was very attentive to see that all her domestics were every day present at evening prayers ; and at mass on Sundays and great holydays in the parish church, on all other days at home. Regular hours were assigned for meals, and every employment and duty was discharged with great order, she being sensible that this is an indispensable part of virtue, to which few things are more fatal than the confusion of a disorderly life or family. During the frequent absence of her husband, who was obliged often to attend the court or the army, she scarce ever admitted any company, and never stirred abroad, knowing how much this virtue is both the duty and the delight of a good wife, in order to watch over her servants, children, and domestic concerns, and to shun the snares of dissipation, levity, vanity, love of trifling, and much loss of time, which insensibly sap the very foundations of a virtuous life, and strike at the roots of a Christian spirit. This pious lady employed all her leisure hours either at her work, or in the daily long exercises of prayer and pious reading which she prescribed herself. These devotions she at first much abridged when her husband was at home, at which season her house was usually full of company. But afterward repenting of this loss of time, and always finding the spirit of piety much impaired in her by that dissipation and amusement or play, beyond what necessity might excuse, she resolved, in 1601, no more, upon any such pretence, to curtail her usual exercises ; and from that time she so contrived matters as neither to omit any of her devotions, nor to be wanting to any office which charity, courtesy, or other duties of her station in the world required of her. The baron de Chantal was a nobleman of strict honor, and very religious. Nor was any thing which the world could afford wanting to this pious couple to complete the happiness of the married state. But God, who would reign alone in the heart of our saint, prepared it for himself by the most sensible sacrifice.

The baron, in complaisance to a friend who was come to see him, went out one day a shooting; and, as he had on a coat which resembled the color of a deer, his friend, mistaking him for one behind the bushes, shot him in the thigh. He survived this accident nine days, during which time he received the holy sacraments in the most edifying sentiments of resignation and piety, and caused his pardon of the person by whom he had been shot to he recorded in the registers of the parish church, strictly forbidding any one to prosecute or bring him into trouble. He expired in the arms of his disconsolate lady, who was left a widow at twenty-eight years of age, with one little son and three daughters; besides which she had buried two children in their infancy. Her grief is not to be expressed; yet she bore it with such an heroic constancy and resignation, that she sometimes said she was surprised to see herself receive so grievous a shock with so great contentedness and equanimity. In her desolate state, offering herself to suffer whatever crosses God should be pleased to lay upon her, she made an entire sacrifice of herself to him with the most perfect resignation, and a vow of perpetual chastity. In the depth of this affliction she found an extraordinary comfort and joy at the thought that she was now at liberty to give herself more perfectly to the divine service; and she repeated to God, Thou hast broken my bonds, and I will sacrifice to thee a victim of praise. The more authentically to testify her perfect forgiveness of him who had been the cause of her husband’s death, she studied constantly to do him every good office in her power, and stood godmother to one of his children. According to the rules laid down by St. Paul, St. Ambrose, and other holy fathers, to sanctify the state of her widowhood, she proposed to herself a new plan of life. A considerable part of the nights she spent in tears and prayers. She redoubled her alms, distributed all her rich clothes among the poor, making a vow not to wear any but what were made of linen; she discharged most of her servants, giving all of them honorable recompenses; fasted much, lived retired, and divided all her time between the instruction and care of her children, her prayers, and her work. Such was her fervor, and so ardent her desire of living perfectly to God alone, that she wished she could hide herself in some desert, to be more removed from all worldly hinderances. She declared in confidence, that had not her four little children been a tie upon her, too fast for her conscience to get clear of, she believed she should have fled to the Holy Land and there ended the remainder of her days; and it was her earnest and continual prayer, with many tears, that God would free her from whatever could hinder her from loving and serving him, and that he would conduct her to a truly holy spiritual guide, by whom she might be instructed in what manner she might in all things best accomplish his adorable will. She then received in her devotions many heavenly favors. One day, while she was earnestly begging our Lord to bring her to a faithful guide who should conduct her to himself, she saw on a sudden a man of the same stature and features with St. Francis of Sales, in a black cassock with a rochet and cap on, just as he was the first time she saw him afterward at Dijon. Another time, being in a little wood, her soul was in a rapture, and she desired to get into a church that was near, but all in vain. Here it was given her to understand that divine love must consume all the rust of self-love in her, and that she should meet with a great many troubles both from within and without. Upon recovering herself, she found her heart in wonderful joy in the Lord, insomuch that to suffer for God seemed to her the food of love on earth, as his enjoyment is in heaven.

When the year of her mourning was expired, her virtuous and tender father Frermiot sent for her to his house at Dijon, where she pursued much the same manner of life, except that she sometimes received visits from certain grave ladies who were of an advanced age. A year after this she was obliged, by the affairs of her family, to go with her children to Montelon, one league from Autun, to live with her father-in-law, the old baron de Chantal, who was then seventy-five years of age. Her patience was there put to a continual severe trial by the perpetual frowardness of the old gentleman, and the imperious carriage of a peevish housekeeper, whose authority was absolute in the family. Jane never let fall the least word of complaint, nor discovered the least sourness in her looks, and her compliance in everything was cheerful and agreeable. But she gave most of her time to prayer, and on Sundays went to Autun, which was three little leagues off, to assist at sermons. It happened in the year 1604 that St. Francis of Sales came to preach the Lent at Dijon, upon which occasion the devout widow made a visit to her father Fremiot, that she might have the opportunity of assisting at the sermons of that celebrated preacher and eminent servant of God. The first time she saw him site was much taken with his saintly deportment, and was persuaded he was the spiritual director she had long begged of God to send her, to conduct her soul in the most perfect paths of his holy love. Before she spoke, the bishop knew her from a former vision, in which God had manifested to him this future vessel of his grace. St. Francis dined frequently at her father the president Fremiot’s house, and, by hearing his familiar discourse, she conceived a great confidence in him, and felt extraordinary sentiments of devotion kindled in her breast. It was her earnest desire that she might be allowed to lay open to him the interior state and dispositions of her soul; but she was hindered by a scruple on account of a vow she had made, by the advice of an indiscreet religious man, her director, not to address herself to any other than to himself for spiritual advice. She, however, took great delight in hearing St. Francis’s discourses. One day the good bishop seeing her dressed better than usual, said to her : “Madam, would not your head-dress have been neat without this lace? and your handkerchief been good enough without fringe?” The devout widow hereupon cut the fringe off upon the spot, and the lace at night. The bishop, who knew that nothing is little that is done with a desire perfectly to please God, was much delighted with her ready obedience.

The perplexities about her indiscreet vow, the resolution of which St. Francis referred to others, being at length removed, she made several confessions to him, and a general one of her whole life. At the same time she suffered severe interior trials by desolation of soul, and alarming anxieties about her conduct, under which she received great light and comfort by the wholesome councils of St. Francis. By his advice, she so regulated her devotions and other exercises of virtue, as to conform herself in her exterior to the will of others, and to what she owed to the world whilst she lived in the houses of her father and father-in-law. This conduct charmed every one, and made them say : “Madam prays always, yet is never troublesome to any body. She rose at five o’clock, always without a fire, and without the attendance of a maid. She made an hour’s meditation; then called up her children, and went with her family to mass. After dinner, she read the holy scripture for half an hour; at evening, catechised her children and some others of the village ; read again, and said her beads before supper ; retired at nine o’clock, said evening prayers with her children and family; after which, she continued a long time in prayer alone. In the employments of the day, and even in company, nothing seemed to interrupt the attention of her soul to God. She mortified her taste in whatever she ate, yet without showing it ; she wore a hair-cloth, coarse linen, and very plain clothes visited the poor that were sick in the neighborhood, watched whole nights by the bedside of those that were dying, and among other distressed helpless persons, maintained one that was covered with ulcers, which she used to dress with her own hands. The constant sweetness and mildness of her temper showed how perfectly she had already mortified her interior, and subdued her passions. This proved her devotion to be solid, and rendered it amiable to men, as it was perfect before God. St. Francis, whom she visited from time to time at Annecy after his return thither, often admired the entire disengagement of her heart from all earthly things, and the fervor and purity of affection with which she sought in all things the will of God. Every morning she renewed her firm purpose of loving and seeking the holy will of God alone in all her thoughts and actions, desiring always to die to herself and to all creatures, that she might live only to God, and making an oblation of herself to him without reserve. For a token of this total dedication of herself to him, she wrote on her breast near the seat of her heart the holy name of Jesus.

...Before she left the world, she married her eldest daughter to St. Francis’s eldest nephew, the young baron de Thorens, which match was esteemed by all her friends very honorable and advantageous. Her two younger daughters she determined to take with her; and the one died in a short time in her arms; the other she afterward married to the count de Toulonjon, a nobleman of great virtue, prudence, and honor. Her son, the baron de Chantal, was only fifteen years old, and him she left under the care of her father, and of excellent tutors, and showed that his affairs required no longer her presence, except to superintend his education, which she engaged still to do, and promised for that purpose still to visit him, which St. Francis likewise engaged that she should do. Her reasons had perfectly satisfied her father, father-in-law, and uncle the archbishop, who had long opposed her resolution; nevertheless, though they agreed that her design was a call of heaven, and neither against the rules of prudence nor any other duty, yet the tenderness which nature inspired, raised a fresh storm when the time of her parting came. ...

(jump ahead to the end of her life on earth)...In 1638 the dutchess royal of Savoy called her to Turin, to found there the convent of her Order. She was soon after invited to Paris by the queen of France, and, to her extreme mortification, was treated there with the greatest distinction and honor imaginable. In her return she fell ill of a fever, with a peripneumony or inflammation of the lungs, by which she was detained on the road in her convent at Moulins. There it was that, having received the last sacraments, and given her last instructions to her nuns, she, with wonderful tranquility, died the death of the saints on the 13th of December, 1641, being sixty-nine years old. Her mortal remains were conveyed with great honor to Annecy. Among several visions of her glory, St. Vincent of Paul, who had been her confessor at Paris, was favored with one, about which he consulted the bishop of Paris, a judicious monk, and some other learned men. Though he carefully concealed the divine gifts and favors, yet for the glory of this great servant of God, he left an authentic verbal process of this vision, but as of a third person. In it he says he had never been favored with any vision relating to the glory of any other saint, and that he had always the highest opinion of the sanctity of this pious lady. He tells us that upon the news of her sickness he was praying for her with great earnestness, when he saw a little shining ball, as it were, of fire rising from the earth, and meeting in the air another larger ball of fire; both which mounted up to the heavens, and buried themselves in an immense bright fire, which, as an interior voice told him in a very distinct manner, represented the divine essence, and the other two balls the souls of blessed Jane Frances de Chantal, and St. Francis of Sales. Soon after, he heard of her death, and was struck with a sudden apprehension lest she might have committed some venial sin in some of the words she had spoke to him, though he always regarded her as a person accomplished in all virtues, and one of the most holy souls he ever knew. In this fear he prayed for her with greater fervor than before, and he was that instant favored with the same vision a second time. From that moment he was fully persuaded of the certainty of her glory. Several miracles are related by the bishop of Puy to have been performed by her, some whilst she was living, others through her intercession, and by her relics after her death. Among others, he mentions a young nun at Nemers, in the county of Maine, who had been struck with a palsy, and confined to her bed seven weeks in the most deplorable and helpless condition; hut was on a sudden perfectly restored to her health, and the use of her limbs, by invoking this servant of God, who was then lately deceased. Whilst the community was singing the Te Deum for this miracle, another nun, who was grievously afflicted with sickness, and whose legs were swelled to an enormous size, begged the like favor through the intercession of this saint, and found herself no less suddenly sound and well, so that the choir sung a second Te Deum in thanksgiving immediately after the first. Several other miracles were proved before commissaries, and declared authentic in the process for her beatification, which was performed, and the decree published, by pope Benedict XIV, in 1751, who commanded her name to be inserted in the Roman Martyrology. Clement XIV, by a decree, 2nd September, 1769, fixed her feast on the 21st of August.