Eloïsa de Coulombs

Who they were

Elisa, also called Eloisa, was a French noblewoman, wife of Count Hugh of Meulan and, after being widowed, of a second husband. Deeply devout, she gave much of her inherited wealth to the Benedictine abbey of Notre-Dame de Coulombs near Chartres, including two parish churches with their revenues in 1033.

After her second husband's death she withdrew for good to live as a recluse at Coulombs, in a narrow cell against the basilica wall, where she may have remained walled in until her death, which occurred in the odour of sanctity before 1060; the Chartres cathedral obituary records the exact day as 8 January. Her tomb was already lost by the seventeenth century, though her skull was kept among the abbey's relics. Her feast is kept on 11 February.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

French noblewoman, twice widowed, who became a recluse at the Benedictine abbey of Coulombs, to which she had given much of her wealth; her tomb was lost by the seventeenth century.

The cause