THE PERSON BEHIND THE ACCOUNT
She began a teaching congregation before she could walk again
Julie Billiart and her companions founded the Sisters of Notre Dame in February 1804. The congregation dates her reported recovery of the ability to walk to June of that year. The sequence deserves attention: she had already helped begin the work while living with a serious disability. Her capacity to lead did not begin with a cure. [1]
A friendship that could survive separation
In Amiens in 1794, Julie met Françoise Blin de Bourdon. The heritage centre traces their friendship through letters during 1795–97, when Françoise was away caring for her ill father. Their collaboration developed through that separation and family responsibility, before they could share the later educational project. [3]
Françoise should not disappear behind the more famous founder. A continuing friendship, sustained through letters, helped make a future congregation possible. The story includes the patient work of maintaining a relationship when people cannot be in the same place.
Founding before the reported recovery
Julie had spent years with severely restricted mobility. The sisters’ retrospective biography reports that she recovered walking after a novena in 1804 and attributes the recovery to divine intervention. It does not provide the kind of clinical documentation needed to diagnose her earlier condition or independently explain the change. [1]
The founding date keeps a common distortion in check. A disabled person’s work does not become meaningful only after a recovery. The educational commitment was already underway.
A school and then an unwelcome departure
The congregation’s chronology records a free girls’ school in Amiens in 1806, a house in Namur in 1807 and the move of the motherhouse to Namur after the sisters had to leave Amiens in 1809. By Julie’s death in 1816 there were about a dozen houses. Françoise succeeded her as superior. [4]
Leaving the place where a shared undertaking began can threaten its continuity. Here the work survived through another location and another leader. The result depended on the community’s ability to carry its educational purpose across that disruption.
IN OUR OWN LIVES
Who gets remembered as capable?
Julie’s foundation is a useful corrective to stories that make disability a pause before someone’s real life begins. She was already building relationships and taking part in consequential work. The later recovery belongs to her community’s memory without becoming the source of her worth.
Her friendship with Françoise offers another point of entry. Institutions often remember a single founder while relying on collaboration, correspondence, caregiving and succession. Looking for those people makes both the history and the educational achievement easier to understand.
THROUGH THE EYES OF FAITH
Faith and daily life
The congregation recalls her emphasis on the goodness of God and education for girls without distinctions of birth or fortune. That belief took an institutional form: women teaching children who might otherwise have few educational opportunities. The religious foundation was a commitment to continue that work together. [1]
Goodness expressed through education
The sisters connect Julie’s confidence in God’s goodness with their mission to educate girls. Their own foundation history identifies education and religious commitment as intertwined from the beginning. Teaching was a way to give that conviction a daily schedule and a public consequence. [5]
For a reader outside Catholic belief, the practical question is still intelligible: what does a community’s account of human worth enable people to learn and do? A school needs that answer to appear in admissions, teaching and the treatment of children.
THROUGH THE LENS OF SCIENCE
The evidence about the remains
The congregation’s heritage centre records flooding that damaged her coffin in 1842, followed by the placement of her remains in a smaller container. Its later timeline describes several relocations. These are accounts of human remains in changing containers, not evidence of an unchanged, complete body on display. [2]
A coffin damaged by floods
Julie died in 1816 and was first buried in Namur’s cemetery. The heritage centre records a transfer to the motherhouse garden in 1817, the damaged coffin in 1842, later reliquaries and movement to the motherhouse’s main church in 2012. Floods and wartime damage are part of the custody history. [2]
The timeline does not identify the material surviving each event or describe preparation and conservation. Its damaged coffin, smaller container and later transfers document a vulnerable history of custody; they cannot support an unchanged whole-body claim. [2]
READER QUESTIONS
Questions and answers
Was the congregation founded after her reported cure?
No. Its own biography places the foundation in February 1804 and the recovery of walking in June. [1]
Was Françoise a cofounder or a later helper?
The heritage centre’s foundation account includes Françoise in the original community with Julie and Catherine Duchâtel. [5]
Do the relics establish that her complete body remains intact?
The heritage timeline describes a flood-damaged coffin, a smaller container and later transfers. It does not publish a complete anatomical inventory. [2]
FOLLOW THE SOURCES
Sources and further reading
- Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur: Saint Julie Billiart
Institutional source
Congregational retrospective biography; foundation, disability and reported recovery.
- Notre Dame heritage centre: Garden chapel and relics
Institutional source
Custodial timeline of burials, flooding, containers and transfers.
- Notre Dame heritage centre: First meeting, 1794
Institutional source
Friendship and correspondence while Françoise cared for her father.
- Sisters of Notre Dame, Belgium: 1804–1816 chronology
Institutional source
Schools, Namur, 1809 departure and succession.
- Notre Dame heritage centre: Foundation of the Institute
Institutional source
Original community and its educational commitment.
Sources checked: 2026-10-27. Suggest a correction or a source.
