Jeanne de Lestonnac
French saint
Feast: 2 February (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Jeanne de Lestonnac was born in Bordeaux on 27 December 1556, in the time of the wars of religion; her father was Catholic, her mother became a Calvinist, and her uncle was Michel de Montaigne. As a girl she resisted her mother's efforts to draw her from the Catholic Church. At seventeen, though she longed for religious life, she married at her father's wish.
A wife and mother, after her husband's death she wisely brought up her five children, then founded in Bordeaux the Company of the Daughters of Our Lady, modelled on the Society of Jesus, to form girls.
The miracles
The Dicastery's biography does not describe the miracles approved in the cause.
Why that counted as sanctity
A wife and mother who kept her faith against her own mother and founded schools for girls.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography: Jeanne de Lestonnac
- Wikidata Q288825 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Jeanne de Lestonnac (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.