Yvette of Huy

Life

She was born into a wealthy but not particularly religious family, close to the bishop of Liège, and from an early age tried to live a religious life from her home. Her father was a tax collector. Yvette was forced into an arranged marriage aged thirteen and had three children (one died while still an infant) before she was widowed at eighteen. She used the opportunity to retire to a leper derelict hospital in Statte, close to Huy, on the heights of the river Meuse to tend to the inmates, and more fully follow her religious calling.

She left her two sons in the care of their grandfather. Ten years later, she became an anchoress and was enclosed in a chapel cell near the colony in a ceremony conducted by the abbot of Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Orval. From there she offered guidance to pilgrims who considered her a prophetess in the apostolic sense of having insight into the divine. She summoned priests and even the dean of the local church to her presence and confronted them about their behaviour. She was responsible for the conversion of her father and one of her two surviving sons. After a time, her power threatened the male clergy and canons. She was denounced.. Yvette died on 13 January 1228 in Huy, Belgium.

Her life was recorded by the Premonstratensian Hugh of Floreffe.