Abstract

“She is the second St. Clare.” These words were inscribed by poet Jehan Le Fèvre as a tribute to his neighbor and living contemporary, the fourteenth-century Minorite sister Jehanne de Neuville , abbess of Longchamp from 1375-87. By invoking the example of Clare, the first Franciscan woman religious, to adorn his thirty-five-line portrait of Jehanne, Le Fèvre produced a conventional and orthodox encomium to both women. The context, however, is decidedly secular and even surprising for this type of material.This essay will begin with a translation and discussion of Le Fèvre’s tribute to Jehanne de Neuville and two other nuns of her abbey, in relation to their literary and ..