The Church of Saint-François-des-Cordeliers was constructed as part of a monastery under Duke René II of Lorraine following the Battle of Nancy, next to the Palace of the Dukes of Lorraine. It was consecrated in 1487. The monastery was Franciscan and the French name term cordelier refers to the simple rope belts the monks would tie their cassocks around. Since the monastery was under the patronage of the dukes, the church had close ties to the House of Lorraine and a number of its members were laid to rest there. Previously members of the family were laid to rest in St George's Collegiate Church, which does not exist anymore.
The church continued to keep its connection to the ducal house after Lorraine passed under royal French rule. Marie-Antoinette of Austria stopped at the church to pray on her way to Paris for her marriage to her future husband King Louis XVI of France. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria also came to pray here in 1867.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).