Due to a number of miraculous events claimed during her life, she is venerated as a patron saint of women seeking to conceive, expectant mothers, and sick children.

In September 1402, Colette received the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis[4] and became a hermit under the direction of the Abbot of Corbie, living near the abbey church.

In October 1406, she turned to the Antipope Benedict XIII of Avignon who was recognized in France as the rightful pope.

Benedict received her in Nice, in southern France, and allowed her to transfer to the Order of Poor Clares.

Additionally, he empowered her through several papal bulls, issued between 1406 and 1412, to found new monasteries and to complete the reform of the Order.

From there, her reform spread to Auxonne (1412), to Poligny (1415), to Ghent (1412), to Heidelberg (1444), to Amiens, to Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, and to other communities of Poor Clares.

For the monasteries which followed her reform, she prescribed extreme poverty, going barefoot, and the observance of perpetual fasting and abstinence.

According to biographers, Colette performed numerous miracles, including multiplication of food or wine and effecting cures, partly after her death.

After the pope had authorized Colette to establish a regimen of strict poverty in the Poor Clare monasteries of France, she started with that of Besançon.