son, John Baptist,
detained a hostage. Her soul remained calm amidst all those storms: she
said with Job: "_God hath given, and God hath taken away._ I rejoice in
these losses, because they are God's will. Whatever he sends I shall
continually bless and praise his name for." The schism being
extinguished by the council of Constance, and tranquillity restored at
Rome, her husband recovered his dignity and estate. Some time after,
moved by the great favors St. Frances received from heaven, and by her
eminent virtue, he gave her full leave to live as she pleased; and he
himself chose to serve God in a state of continency. He permitted her in
his own life-time to found a monastery of nuns, called Oblates, for the
reception of such of her own sex as were disposed to embrace a religious
life. The foundation of this house was in 1425. She gave them the rule
of St. Benedict, adding some particular constitutions of her own, and
put them under the direction of the congregation of the Olivetans. The
house being too small for the numbers that fled to this sanctuary from
the corruption of the world, she would gladly have removed her community
to a larger house; but not finding one suitable, she enlarged it, in
1433, from which year the founding of the Order is dated. It was
approved by pope Eugenius IV. in 1437. They are called Collatines,
perhaps from the quarter of Rome in which they are situated; and
Oblates, because they call their profession an oblation, and use in it
the word offero, not profiteer. St. Frances could not yet join her new
family; but as soon as she had settled her domestic affairs, after the
death of her husband, she went barefoot, with a cord about her neck, to
the monastery which she had founded, and there, prostrate on the ground,
before the religious, her spiritual children, begged to be admitted. She
accordingly took the habit on St. Benedict's day, in 1437. She always
sought the meanest employments in the house, being fully persuaded she
was of all the most contemptible before God; and she labored to appear
as mean in the eyes of the world as she was in her own. She continued
the same humiliations, and the same universal poverty, though soon after
chosen superioress of her congregation. Almighty God bestowed on her
humility, extraordinary graces, and supernatural favors, as frequent
visions, raptures, and the gift of prophecy. She enjoyed the familiar
conversation of her angel-guardian, as her life and the