Blanche of Castile and the Birth of a Saint

Attribution: from The Secret of the Rosary, Fourth Decade.

Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, grieved for twelve years because her marriage had given her no children. When St. Dominic visited her, he told her to pray the Rosary every day and ask God for the grace of motherhood, and she followed his counsel faithfully. In time she gave birth to a son, Philip, but the child died in infancy.

Rather than lose heart, the Queen turned to the Blessed Virgin Mary more earnestly than ever. She had rosaries handed out through the court and through many towns of the kingdom, and asked everyone to pray with her for a blessing that this time would last.

Her prayer was answered. She gave birth to another son who lived, and that son grew up to become St. Louis, King of France, the model of Christian kings. What she had begged through the Rosary, heaven gave her in full.

---

Source:

Simplified retellings of the miracle and conversion stories that St. Louis de Montfort gathered in The Secret of the Rosary, written in the early eighteenth century. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the traditional English translation but not word for word. Montfort himself called them "ancient but authentic stories about the holy Rosary," collected from earlier authors such as Blessed Alan de la Roche, and offered on human authority, not as articles of faith.