Venerable Clothilde de France

Marie-Clothilde of France (1759-1802), Queen of Sardinia, was one of the daughters of Louis, Dauphin of France and Marie-Josèphe de Saxe. Two of her siblings, Louis XVI and Madame Elisabeth, as well as her sister-in-law Marie-Antoinette, died on the guillotine, after a long ordeal during which they clung to their Faith. Nevertheless, it is Clothilde who in 1808 was declared a Venerable of the Church by Pope Pius VII. The political maelstrom into which the King and Queen of France and Madame Elisabeth were thrust has perhaps created an obstacle to the public acknowledgment of their heroic virtues. Clothilde, on the other hand, although she had many sorrows, was not in the middle of the French Revolution. She was not forced to make fateful political decisions amid apocalyptic disasters. Her life, however, was not free from strife.

Orphaned as a small girl, Clothilde, like her sister Madame Elisabeth, received a pious upbringing at the hands of their governesses Mesdames de Marsan and de Mackau. Clothilde, who always had a weight problem, was nicknamed Gros-Madame as a young girl. At sixteen, she was married by proxy to the heir of the Sardinian throne, Charles Emanuel. (Charles Emanuel's sisters married Louis XVI's brothers, becoming Marie-Antoinette's difficult sisters-in-law, the Comtesses de Provence and d'Artois.)

According to an article on Charles Emanuel:

Charles Emanuel and his new wife met for the first time on September 6, 1775, when they renewed their marriage vows in the Chapel Royal at Les Echelles, Savoy. In spite of the political reasons for the union, the couple were well-matched; they shared a profound attachment to the Catholic faith. The fact that they were not blessed with children was treated by them as the will of God to which they should resign themselves. After seven years of married life, they chose to live together as brother and sister.

Charles Emanuel was deeply troubled by the French Revolution whose effects were being felt throughout western Europe. In 1793 his brother-in-law King Louis XVI was executed. The following year his sister-in-law Queen Marie Antoinette met the same fate and the armies of the French Republic stormed into his father's dominions. Charles Emanuel took solace in his faith. In 1794 he became a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, taking the name Charles Emanuel of St. Hyacinth.

At the death of his father, King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia, October 16, 1796, Charles Emanuel succeeded as King Charles Emanuel IV of Sardinia. It was a most difficult time to be a new monarch; Charles Emanuel referred to his throne as a "crown of thorns"....

When Napoleon attacked Sardinia, Clothilde and Charles Emanuel had to seek refuge in Rome and later in Naples, where she died in 1802 of typhoid fever, her saintliness recognized by many, especially by Pope Pius VII. In honoring Clothilde, it can perhaps be said that the pontiff indirectly paid homage to those members of her family who had died violent deaths. Share