Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/386

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JEAURAT


328


JEDBURGH


was hated from birth by her father, partly because of her sex and partly on account of her being sickly and deformed. Sent away to be brought up by guardians in a lonely country chateau, and deprived not only of every advantage due to her rank, but even of common comforts and almost of necessities, it was the intense solitude and abjectness of her life that first made Jeanne turn to God for consolation, and that gave her very early a tender and practical devotion to the Blessed Virgin. She is said to have had a supernat- ural promise that some day she would be allowed to found a religious family in honour of Our Lady. The mysteries of the Annunciation and Incarnation, as set forth in the Angelus, were her great delight.

For political purposes of his own, Louis XI com- pelled Jeanne to marry Louis, Duke of Orleans, his second cousin, and heir presumptive to the throne. After her marriage, the princess suffered even more than before, for the duke liatod the wife imposed upon him, and even publicly insulted her in every possible way. She, imagining virtues in her husband that did not exist, loved him tenderly, and when he got into disgrace and was imprisoned exerted herself to miti- gate his sufferings and to get him freed. No sooner, however, was the duke, on the death of Charles VIII, raised to the throne of France as Louis XII, than he got his marriage with Jeanne annulled at Rome, on the ground that it was invalid, from lack of consent, and from the fact that it had never been consummated (see Alexander VI); and the saint's humiliations reached their climax when she found herself, in the face of all France, an imjustly repudiated wife and queen.

But the two special virtues in which Jeanne had re- solved to imitate the Blessed Virgin were silence and humility; hence, though she bravely contested the matter while it was of any use, she accepted the ver- dict, when it came, without a complaint, merely thanking God that it left her free to serve His Mother as she had always hoped to do, by founding an order for her service. She was made Duchess of Berry, and given that province to govern. Going to live at Bourges, its capital, she fulfilled all her duties as ruler with strict conscientiousness and tender care for her subjects' welfare. In 1500, in conjunction with her Franciscan director, Gilbert Nicolas, Jeanne founded the Order of the Annonciades, an order for prayer and penance, whose chief rule was to imitate the virtues of Mary, as shown in the Gospels. The rejected queen found "happiness at last in devoting herself to this work; and towards the end of her life, she took the vows herself, gave up her wedding ring, which she had hitherto worn, and wore the habit under her clothes. In sjiite of bad health and constant suffering, she had done much bodily penance all her life, besides giving many hours to prayer. Up to her death she prayed incessantly for her heartless husband, and left as a legacy to her order the duty of constant prayer for his soul as well as her father's and brother's.

Jeanne died as she had lived, and was lamented by her spiritual daughters and all her people. Many mir- acles, especially of healing, followed her death. In 1514, Leo X allowed the Annonciades to honour her by a special office. Benedict XIV pronounced her Blessed, and extended her cult throughout France; but, though the process of canotiization had been in- troduced in 1614, owing to varinus delays and hin- drances, she has never been actually canonized, though universally known as a saint.

Flavigny, Unc Fille de France; In Bienheureuse Jchanne (I'liris, 18U6); BufHBEnoEn, Kirchliches Uandlexicon, s. v. Jo- imnna v. Valois ; Chevalier, Bio-Bill., s. v.

F. M. Capes.

Jeaurat, Edmond (Edmb), French engraver, b. at X'cimenton, near .\uxerrc, IfjSS; d. at Paris, 17.3S. lie was the elder lirother of Eticnne Jeaurat, the


painter, and the son of an engraver or worker in metal, who on a visit to Paris took his eldest boy with him, and apprenticed him to Bernard Picart. Here Edmond spent many years, and when he left his master's stuilio he wandered away to Holland, and for a few years studied the art of the Dutch painters, earning his living by engraving a few plates after the chief paintings in Amsterdam and The Hague. On returning to Paris he came into contact with his younger brother whom he had not seen for many years, and employed himself in engraving Etienne's paintings, quickly acquiring celerity in execution and a considerable notoriety for accurate and delightful work. He was employed by Monsieur de Crozat to engrave the pictures for his famous collecticn. In Paris he married the sister of the artist Le Clerc, and many of his engravings represented the religious pictures painted by his brother-in-law, Le Clerc the younger. He had two sons, one Nicholas Henry, a painter, usually known as Jeaurat de Bertry or Berty, the other S(^'bastien, who devoted himself to science. There is a fine collection of his engravings in the British Museimi, London, and they can also be studied in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. His finest work is probably "Achilles discovered among the Daughters of Lycomedes", dated 1713, and there are also engravings by him from, works by Poussin, Veronese, and Watteau.

Descamps, La Vie des Peintres (Paris, 1753); Le Carpen- TlER, Galerie des Peintres CrUbres (Rouen, 1815); De Crozat, Receuil d'Etampes (Paris, 1736): Mariette, Ahecedario (Paris, 1746); DussiEUX, Les Artistes franeais a V Etranger {Paris, 1856).

George Charles Williamson.

Jedburgh (eighty-two different spellings of the name are given in the " Origines Parochiales ScotiiB "), August inian abbey, in the town of the same name (capital of Roxburghshire, Scotland), established as a priory by David I, King of Scots, in 1118, and colo- nized by Canons Regular of St. Augustine from the Abbey of St-Quentin, at Beauvais, France. Fordun gives 1147 as the year of foundation, but this seems to have been the date of the erection of the priory into an abbey, when prior Osbert (styled in the Melrose chronicle "primus abbas de Geddeworth ") was raised to the abbatial dignity. Jedburgh soon became one of the greatest Scottish monasteries, deriving impor- tance from its proximity to the castle (now entirely destroyed), which was the favourite residence of many of the Scottish kings. Lands, churches, houses, and vahialile fisheries, on both sides of the border, were bestowed on the abliey by David I, Malcolm IV, William the Lion, and other royal and noble bene- factors; and Alexander III chose to be married in the abbey church to Volande de Dreux in 1285, by which year the monastic l>uildings, including the great church, were probably com])lete.

An opulent abbey so near the English border as Jed- liurgh was sure to suffer much in the constant wars be- tween England and Seiilland. About 1300 the monas- tery became iiiunlial)itablc, owing to repeated attacks made on it, a ndt lie coinnuniity was dispersed. Later on it recovered its prosperity fora time, butin the century and a half jirceeding the Heformation it was devas- tated, plundered, and occasionally set on fire, at least four times by the invading English. In 1559 (John Home beingabbot) the aliliey was suppressed, and its pos.sessions confiscated by the Crown. A Protestant church was afterwards constructed within the nave and used until 1875, when a new church was built by the Marquess of Lothian, whose family has possessed the lordship of .Jedburgh continuously since 1622. Practically tlie whole of the doniestie buildings of Jed- burgh Abbey have disappeared; but the magnificent ehiu'ch is still wonderfully entire. The oldest part is the early Norman choir, of which the two western bays remain; and the nave, 129 feet long, is a very