ON BL. LUCIA BARTOLINI RUCELLAI, FOUNDRESS OF THE CONVENT OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA, O. P., AT FLORENCE IN TUSCANY,
IN THE YEAR MDXX.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Lucia Bartolini Rucellai, of the order of Friars Preachers, at Florence. (B.)
BY V. D. B.
§ I. The writers on Blessed Lucia. That she was a disciple of Savonarola does not prevent her being numbered among the blessed in heaven.
Among the forty-nine convents of girls which, according to the census of Benedetto Varchi Storia Fiorentina, book IX, volume III, page 104, Milan 1803., existed at Florence in the year 1527, Many have written of Blessed Lucia, the monastery of St. Catherine of Siena held not the lowest place. Begun at the end of the fifteenth century through the care of Blessed Lucia under the rule of the Third Order of Preachers, it soon had so great a fame for goodness that before the completion of the year 1520 one hundred and three novices had been admitted to it Brocchi, Vite de' santi e beati Fiorentini, part II, volume II, page 341., and afterwards for some time one hundred and fifty nuns lived together Seraf. Razzi, Vite dei santi e beati dell'ordine de' FF. Predicatori, page 629.. Holiness corresponded to the number Piò, Delle vite degli huomini illustri di S. Domenico, column 398, edition 1607.. In this praise there shone forth above all Blessed Lucia, Bartolomea di Ludovico Martini, Lorenza Lorini, Teodora di Giovanni Landi, Raffaella de' Sassoli, Benedetta de' Ligi, Maurizia di Francesco Ghinetti, Petronilla di Pietro Nelli and Agostina de' Medici; the Lives of all of whom, according to the notes communicated to him by his sister Maria Angelica Razzi, Serafino Razzi briefly wrote in the Lives of the saints and blessed of the Order of St. Dominic. Most of them were inserted by Giovanni Michele Piò in the earlier and the later edition of the Lives of illustrious men and women of the Order of Preachers. The Life also of Blessed Lucia Rucellai of Florence was seen to the press by Jean de Ste-Marie among the French Lives of the saints and blessed women of the second and third Order. Likewise Domenico Marchese in the Italian Dominican sacred Diary at the 29th day of October, and at the same day Emmanuel de Lima in the Portuguese Dominican Hagiology, and Arthur du Monstier in the Gynæceum. But all these followed the footsteps of Razzi. Giuseppe Maria Brocchi, however, went his own way in the second part of the Lives of the Florentine saints and blessed, using two manuscript codices in which the beginnings of the monastery of St. Catherine of Siena are narrated Vite etc., volume II, page 341.. And with these aids we shall try to illustrate the chief deeds of Blessed Lucia; so that, where we produce no witness, Brocchi is to be understood as going before us.
[2] a disciple of Savonarola. He, seeing the public evils, And since the most holy woman was a disciple of Girolamo Savonarola, a few things must first be observed about him, so that it may be perceived that this connection does not prevent Blessed Lucia from being numbered among the blessed in heaven. That Savonarola was eminent for purity of life, uncommon knowledge and ardour of zeal, no one any longer denies. But he could not command the imaginative power of his mind. He saw all Italy submerged in sins; he knew that clerics, religious and nuns daily violated the laws of chastity; he saw the faith of marriage shamelessly broken, trade wickedly carried on, and men's lives exposed to continual dangers of vengeance; moreover he had before his eyes flocks of philosophers and literary men who attributed more authority to Plato than to Christ, more to Horace than to St. Paul. The Florentine historians of that age seem to be describing Sallust where he pursues the depravity of Rome at the time of the Catilinarian war: for the citizens, as if, shame being lost, they had nothing left to lose, were seen to be melting away in the foulest pleasures, ruined by wine, dice, luxury, given over to the basest loves and untimely banquets, covered with every kind of crime and wickedness; the greatest impunity was placed in contempt of laws and courts, the praise of courage in audacity and rashness; that of good nature in slackness and indulgence of mind; that of agreeableness and elegance in slander and sharp tongues; everything was done languidly, dissolutely, softly, and with the greatest sloth and inertia [Bruto, Historia Florentina, in Bzovius, Continuation of the Annals of Baronius, at the year 1492, number 19.]. Several prelates of the Church were said to have in no way gone before the clergy with good example [Compare Raynaldus, Continuation of the Annals of Baronius, at the year 1484, number 42, in the earlier edition. Likewise Mansi's edition, volume XI, number XXII, page 197.]. The morals of Alexander VI were bad; of which pontiff, in the words of Mansi Notes to the Continuation of the Annals of Baronius, volume XI, page 415., it is easier to keep silent than to say anything moderate. In him all vices were extreme, the virtues moderate, if you would not better say none. The pontifical dignity, which he obtained by evil arts, he retained by no better ones. I have so far met no writer who praises him, neither a contemporary of those times nor a more recent one. But lately there has arisen one who has attempted the defence of that man. What does the pleasure of advocacy not persuade? Of greater weight is the authority of Pope Adrian VI, who in the instruction which he gave to Francesco Chieregati, his internuncio to the Germans, did not hesitate to confess that perhaps all this evil of the Lutheran rebellion proceeded from the curia, and that in this holy see for some years now there had been many abominable things, abuses in spirituals, excesses in commands, and in short everything changed into perversity [Raynaldus, at the year 1522, number 70; in Bzovius, at the same year, number 34, page 471. Compare Civiltà cattolica, Series VIII, volume IX, page 718 and following.]; all of which were above all the sins of Alexander VI: which sins are the more to be deplored because that pontiff, whatever Mansi may have said, shone not a little with gifts of nature not to be despised Ibid., page 732.. But why do I pursue these things? Whoever would understand something of the evils of the Church and above all of the Roman curia, before Pope Pius IV, breaking through all difficulties, promulgated the decrees of the council of Trent, must read the Libellus on reform (especially the fifth part), which was given to Leo X not by slanderous and insolent men, but by Blessed Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini, both most holy and most benevolent Camaldolese hermits [Mittarelli, Annales Camaldulenses, volume IX, column 612 and following, especially columns 706 and 707.]; and only then will he know how many and how great diseases had to be cured in the middle of the fifteenth century and after, and how great a mercy God showed the Church in the sixteenth century.
[3] he announced the vengeance of God, Savonarola therefore saw that a reform of all the orders of the Church was necessary; nor did he err in this, as all the best men felt Bossuet, Histoire des variations, book I, chapter I.. But he seems to have expected nothing good from ecclesiastics, unless they were compelled by the popular will to betake themselves to amendment. From the pulpit therefore he exposed the Roman pontiff, bishops, priests, regulars; which extreme remedy pleased not only the common people but even very wise men, because of the inveterate sickness. And that by so great a lust of sinning the vengeance of God could not fail to be roused, human reason, experience and sacred Scripture cry out. And since his mind was imbued with these things, according to the eagerness of his imagination he saw the evils hanging over Italy as though present. These, therefore, which seemed to him heavenly visions, he began to announce publicly, first by reasoning, then (after credit had been given to his words) in prophetic manner; using from the beginning this sentence as a watchword: Behold the sword of the Lord upon the earth, soon and swiftly. Shortly the city was split into two parties, the one of the Piagnoni, the other of the Arrabbiati; of which the former contained the common people and all the most religious, the latter the politicians and the lovers of depraved customs. Among all the persecutors of Girolamo, says Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola Vita R. P. F. Hier. Savonarolæ etc., edited by Jacques Quétif, Paris 1674., the fiercest were found to be those of the worst morals, and above all the prelates of the Church, whose most foul life had filled the whole world with its stench, and those Florentine citizens who obstinately devoted their efforts to usurious depravity and wallowed more intently in the mire of vices. Amid so great favour of the good and so great hatred of the wicked, who would keep modesty and fortitude in equal measure? Savonarola did not keep them, believing himself to be a prophet of God, not because he was raving or was a fraudulent man; but because he had been deceived by false images and carried away by the ardour of an uncontrolled mind [Compare L'Osservatore Fiorentino, volume II, part II, pages 135 and 136; Perrens, Jérôme Savonarole, page 322 and following]: how often and how easily this happens is explained by ascetic authors writing on the discernment of spirits, and by philosophers on the powers of the imagination.
[4] and he slipped into schismatic tenets; More than once, therefore, he was disobedient to the Roman pontiff, excusing himself from rebellion by scholastic quibbles; and when at last he was excommunicated by Alexander VI, whom until then
he had acknowledged as pontiff, he pronounced him not to be legitimate, and sent to the emperor, to the kings of France and Spain and to other princes [Perrens, Jérôme Savonarole, page 373 and following. Civiltà cattolica, series II, volume X, page 317 and following.] letters in which he admonished and adjured them on the part of almighty God to see to it that a solemn council be held at once in a free and safe place, lest the church should fall into so great a peril of souls without a shepherd, … since this Alexander the Sixth was by no means pontiff nor could be, not so much because of his simoniacal and sacrilegious election, or because of his crimes which stand openly before all, as because he was not a Christian, nor had any form of faith, from which this worst of all mortals was entirely averse. Some have wished to deny the genuineness of these letters; but they have lost their oil and their labour Perrens, pages 235 and 236., and the most recent learned defender of Savonarola among the Dominicans, Vincenzo Marchese [Lettere inedite di Fra Gerolamo Savonarola, in Archivio Storico Italiano, appendix XXV, page 86 and following. Compare Villari, Jérôme Savonarole et son temps, translated by Gruyer, volume II, page 312; Civiltà cattolica, series IV, volume XII, page 371 and following.], agrees and demonstrates that these letters are plainly genuine, having confessed that the judgment on Savonarola's life depends on them. Some writers have indeed wished to explain them away; but in vain. Grant that the election of Alexander VI was simoniacal and so null; which seems to have been the view of many Catholics Raynaldus, Continuation of Baronius, volume XI, at the year 1492, number 26.; yet he had a title (as they call it) coloured, since he had been acknowledged as legitimate pontiff by all nations. For this reason Savonarola himself, who had for some time held him to be true pontiff, wrote that he lacked right not so much because of his wicked election, but because he was not a Christian, as being an unbeliever. Which was a manifest calumny.
[5] Yet he was honoured by saints. But because these letters were not known to all, or because Alexander VI, on account of his crimes, really seemed to many to be an antipope, the love of the more ardent followers of Savonarola by no means cooled. And so, when he was burned in the fire as a heretic by the renewed magistracy of Florence, in the presence of the legates of Alexander VI, on the 23rd day of May of the year 1498, in some convents of Tuscany his Office began to be celebrated yearly, as of a martyr. One of these offices, printed in the year 1860 at the expense of count Carlo Capponi in forty copies, we have before us; whose title is: Office of the venerable servant of God in Christ, brother Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara, martyr of the Order of Preachers [Compare Villari, volume II, page 440; Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 May 1863, page 463.]. What was the devotion of Saints Philip Neri and Catherine de' Ricci, Florentines, has been widely related. But this extended much more widely, as may be seen in Perrens and Pasquale Villari, and better in the Proem of that Office. Moreover, to this very day most of the members of the Order of Friars Preachers proclaim Savonarola blessed in words, books and deeds. But what concerns us most is this: when Prospero Lambertini, promoter of the faith, in the discharge of his office, was trying to close the way to canonization for St. Catherine de' Ricci, who had prayed to Savonarola and had kept his image and finger in her cell as of a martyr, Pope Benedict XIII removed the difficulty together with the dispute, lest the question of the justice or injustice of Savonarola's condemnation, once raised and almost extinguished, should revive. This decree Clement XII confirmed, and Lambertini himself, having become Pope Benedict XIV; since he enrolled the blessed virgin among the saints, although she had been a devoted client of Savonarola [L'Officio proprio per Fra Girolamo Savonarola e i suoi compagni, scritto nel secolo XVI e ora per la prima volta pubblicato con un proemio. Prato, 1860, page 11. Compare Acta SS., volume V of May, page 234.]. If anyone considers these things, not forgetting the heat of the Florentine parties and factions, he will assuredly not impute it as a fault to Blessed Lucia that she adhered to the Piagnoni and for some time gave herself over to the discipline of the unhappy Girolamo. But it is now necessary to relate these things in detail.
§ II. The separation of bed between Blessed Lucia and her husband. Her labours in establishing the monastery of St. Catherine of Siena. The fortunes of this house.
Blessed Lucia, born into an illustrious, Blessed Lucia was born at Florence on the 16th day of October of the year 1465. Her father's name was Domenico Bartolini, her mother's Ermellina Corbinelli; both of the most noble houses of Florence. Her paternal grandfather, named Neri, in the year 1434 was numbered among the lords of Florence; five years later he was Gonfaloniere, and at one time also one of the Ten of the Balìa and ambassador to Pisa; and her maternal grandfather, called Antonio, son of Bartolomeo Corbinelli, had taken to wife in his first marriage Antonia, daughter of Piero, son of Brancazio Rucellai or Oricellari; and in his second Margherita Borromei. Blessed Lucia had three brothers, Carlo, Francesco and Antonio, and two sisters, Francesca, married to Bartolomeo, son of Angelo Carducci, and Marietta, wife of Francesco, son of Francesco Davanzati. But of the Bartolini family, which, because the name Davanzo was frequent in it, was also called Davanzi, and for another reason Scodellari, Brocchi has given the genealogy in part. Blessed Lucia bore the name Camilla in the world; she was given in marriage about the year 1484 to Ridolfo, son of Filippo, son of Paolo Rucellai or Oricellari. And this house was very powerful, having acquired riches and its name from the use it introduced of dyer's lichen (commonly Oricello, in French tournesol) in the woollen industry; and so great that, when Bernardo Rucellai married Nannina, daughter of Piero de' Medici and granddaughter of Cosimo, a public and most splendid banquet was prepared before the palace of the Rucellai for five hundred men of both houses [L'Osservatore Fiorentino, volume I, part II, page 55 and following; Grand guide de Florence, 1838, page 127 and following.]; nor was it less distinguished by the splendour of its marriage alliances, the greatness of its offices and its studies of humane letters [Compare Scip. Ammirato, letter to Palla Rucellai, in Opuscoli dell'Ammirato, volume I, page 735 and volume II, page 161; Roscoe, The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, volume II, page 257, Heidelberg, 1825.]. When Brocchi was writing in the eighteenth century, it was still known at Florence in what place Blessed Camilla, or Lucia, had lived with her husband, namely in the Vigna, which was almost opposite the loggia * of the Rucellai (a kind of building which the nobles then used so that, safe from the heat, they might carry on their affairs and be present at the games of their children); which Vigna was five houses distant from the palace of the same Rucellai towards the loggia of the Tornaquinci: but afterwards an embankment was built there for the use of the palace of the marquises Corsi.
[7] is led to perpetual chastity by her husband, who becomes a Friar Preacher, For many years Ridolfo and Camilla lived there, cultivating piety in the midst of a perverse nobility. When therefore Girolamo Savonarola had come to Florence a second time in the year 1490, and was already openly urging from the pulpit the reform of the city and of the Church in head and members, the noble pair was not the last among the most fervent disciples of the preacher; and although little by little many fell away from his party, they were in no way moved. Since the city was foul with the vice of luxury, the reformer was much in commending chastity; and he persuaded the celibate life not only to the unmarried, but also to those joined in marriage; so that many are related, after their nuptials had been most holily contracted and celebrated, to have resolved by mutual consent on the first day to keep perpetual virginity [Burlamacchi, Vita di Ger. Sav., in Mansi, Miscellanea of Baluze, volume I, page 550.]; and he is said Perrens, Jérôme Savonarole, page 137. not to have kept within the bounds of the Apostle, who instructs spouses not to defraud one another except perhaps by consent for a time, that they may give themselves to prayer; but to have permitted wives to refuse the marital debt in Advent, in Lent, and when they were about to go to church: but I should think he rather stood by the ancient canons. In the Florentine convent of St. Mark he had established an exact observance of discipline, piety and the study of the liberal arts V. Marchese, Memorie dei pittori etc. Domenicani, volume I, page 509.. Thither therefore novices flocked, even from the most noble families, the Rucellai, Salviati, Albizzi, Strozzi and Medici: so that shortly there were two hundred and somewhat later two hundred and fifty religious Perrens, page 80.. And since Ridolfo Rucellai and his wife Camilla were without children (certainly none are assigned to them in the genealogy which was drawn up by Brocchi), they too resolved to cultivate perfect chastity. On the 8th day of May 1496, therefore (or 1494, as Razzi has related), in the church of St. Mark, before the vicar of archbishop Rinaldo Orsini Compare the Decretum of Gratian, chapter Si vir 23, cause 27, question 2. and a huge multitude of people, they made a solemn and public divorce, the instrument being written by Giulio di Lorenzo da Ripa, archiepiscopal notary of Florence; and immediately Ridolfo, taking the name of Fr. Teofilo (or Timoteo, as some writers relate), received and put on the habit of St. Dominic in the same convent of St. Mark from the hands of Savonarola, the prior. The same was done, if he had not done it already before, by his kinsman Pandolfo Rucellai, who was also called Fr. Santi Compare Burlamacchi, in Mansi, volume I, page 542..
[8] but he does not persevere in his purpose. But although Fr. Teofilo had been the author of that separation of bed, to which his wife had consented only when wearied by many and long-continued entreaties, he soon grew weary of the new life, either because many of the institutes which the reformer had introduced into the house of St. Mark seemed to him childish, or at least little suited to a man of mature age Ibid., pages 539 and 540., or because he longed for the delights of the world. After seven months of novitiate, therefore, he threw off the habit he had taken and returned home. Meanwhile Camilla, who was then only in her thirty-first year, had not abused her freedom. She could not indeed be said to be so old and barren that she could remain in the world without suspicion; but since she was of unblemished reputation, so that there was no suspicion that she wished to pass to second vows, or that she would live less continently, as the canons say Chapter Cum sis and chapter Uxoratus, de conversione conjugatorum., she had not entered the cloister, as Razzi, Piò and others of their followers wrongly relate; but, having professed the third rule of St. Dominic, she had dedicated herself wholly to God, spending her time in prayer, the visiting of churches, the reading of spiritual books and other exercises of piety. To bring her back under the conjugal roof Ridolfo left nothing untried. But in vain: for Camilla, using the faculty which her husband, solemnly renouncing every right of use over her body,
had given her, stood firm in her purpose. Which her husband took so ill that, when he died somewhat later, he left his wife nothing but her dowry, ordering that the furniture and all the things of which he had so far granted her the use be deducted from it.
[9] She herself begins a monastery and is set over it. And in the year 1500, two years after the death of Savonarola, Camilla resolved to embrace a more perfect kind of life and to begin a new monastery of Tertiaries. To this the wishes of her heart impelled her, and still more the example of the Blessed Beatrice and Dorothea, foundresses of the monastery of St. Catherine of Siena at Ferrara, whose fame for holiness was then great Compare Piò, Vite etc., pages 483 and 484, edition 1607.. Sharers in that design were three most devout girls of the house of Roselli; whose father, named Francesco, gave his houses, situated in the via del cucumero * not far from the house of St. Mark, to be converted into a convent F. del Migliore, Firenze illustrata, volume I, page 206.. Opportunely there came Sister Caterina, daughter of Andrea de Basso of Cutigliano, a nun of the convent of St. Catherine of Pistoia, which had been built with public money in the episcopate of Niccolò Pandolfini, but had long since been changed into a refuge for foundling girls [Compare Brocchi, volume II, page 340; Rosati, Memorie p. s. a. s. de' Vescovi di Pistoja, page 140 and following; Tolomei, Guida di Pistoja, page 103.]; there came likewise from Piacenza Sisters Petrina and Corona di Cosimo, to be mistresses of regular observance by word and example. It seemed next to a miracle that these three nuns, at no one's invitation, with no communication of plans having been made, and having been told nothing of Blessed Lucia, arrived at Florence at the same time, to direct the beginnings of the new house Del Migliore, Firenze, volume I, page 206.. The name of St. Catherine of Siena, who was said to have come to Florence often in former times and to have lived there, was given to it, no doubt in memory of the house of Pistoia. And nothing was more necessary to the Florentine convents of virgins than walls; which, however, noble sacrilegious men and adulterers sometimes climbed over with silken ladders; the beginning of the building of the walls was therefore made on the 30th day of September of the year 1500, Fr. Matteo, prior of St. Mark's, blessing the first stone, by permission of Fr. Gioacchino Torriani, master general of the Order Ibidem, volume I, page 207.. But Caterina di Andrea was advanced in age and little by little began to sink back into a second childhood. In her place Blessed Lucia was elected prioress by the votes of all: (for she had taken this name with the new habit). But Sister Lucia cried out that she was unworthy, and would in no way consent, until at length, overcome by the prayers of the Sisters and the command of her superiors, she understood that God so willed. With wonderful diligence she managed the convent, which soon became as it were the mirror and norm of the other convents of virgins. Thither therefore flocked all the best girls, even from the first nobility of Florence; all distinguished in piety, adds Brocchi, following notes that are probably contemporary.
[10] She takes care to introduce religious institutes Yet they had neither enclosure nor the vows of religion, since they wore only the habit of the third Order, procuring their food by collecting alms and by labour, though subject to the prior of St. Mark's. But in many places Dominican Tertiaries, or Sisters of penance, lived collegially, observing a certain rule approved by Innocent VII; and that their state might be firmer, Tommaso de Vio Cajetan, master of the whole Order, asked of Pope Julius II in the years 1509 and 1510 the faculty of admitting them to the three vows of religion, without their being bound to enclosure or to the divine office more than they were bound by their rule of the third habit; enjoying all the privileges of the Order of Friars Preachers. When Pope Julius had granted these things, the prioress, Mothers and Sisters of the college of St. Catherine of Florence of the third Order of Preachers in the year 1513 humbly set out to Cajetan, who was staying at Florence, how they desired to bind themselves with a closer bond, so that they might more readily advance in the way of God, namely to vow poverty, chastity, obedience, and to profess the manner of living according to the Rule of Blessed Augustine. On the 6th day of November of the year 1513 Cajetan assented to these things, subjecting the house to the vicar of the Congregation of St. Mark, forbidding under pain of mortal sin that a nun alone should be with a man alone, and confirming other ordinances previously approved by him for this convent [See the Diploma of Cajetan in Bremond, Bullarium Ordinis Prædicatorum, volume IV, pages 395 and 396. Compare Masetti, Monumenta et antiquitates Ordinis Prædicatorum, volume II, page 94.]. Hence a new spur was added to Blessed Lucia; but she perceived above all that the Rule of St. Augustine, which contains very general precepts and admonitions, and the Rule confirmed by Innocent VII, laboured under the same fault, and were plainly not sufficient. Wherefore little by little many other laws and customs were introduced; which, proved by experience and reduced to the form of constitutions and augmented with others, at length in the year 1542 received force and firmness from apostolic authority Bremond, volume VII, pages 142 and 143..
[11] into this most prosperous house. When Blessed Lucia was made prioress, thirty-three girls seem already to have been admitted; and she herself with her own hands clothed seventy others in the habit: (among whom were two daughters of her brother Antonio, who in the year 1505 had been chosen among the lords of Florence: the one named Maria Lorenza, enrolled at the age of eighteen years on the 26th day of October of an uncertain year, and dead on the 21st day of February of the year 1517; the other Elisabetta, at the age of seventeen years, having taken the name of Caterina, enrolled on the 7th day of January of the year 1506 and dead on the 4th day of December of the year 1562); and so in the year after the death of Blessed Lucia there were more than eighty nuns, flourishing in fresh observance under the habit of that third Order. Leo X himself, a Florentine by birth, gave them this testimony, for this reason. Since in that city there were, besides the men's monasteries of St. Mark and of St. Mary Novella, not only five convents of virgins of the second Order, namely St. James of Ripoli, St. Dominic at Cafaggio, St. Peter Martyr, St. Mark and St. Lucy Quétif, Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum, volume II, page IV., but moreover several of the third Order, in all of which the same habit was in use, on the 13th day of May of the year 1521 they obtained from Pope Leo X the faculty of wearing, after the manner of the nuns of the second Order, a white scapular over a white tunic; so that, since because of the number of the Sisters they most of all needed alms, they might be distinguished from others in collecting contributions Bremond, Bullarium, volume IV, page 395.. On which occasion the pontiff gave them that praise. Del Migliore Firenze illustrata, volume I, page 207. will give other early glories of this house; which, suppressed with other monasteries in the year 1808, was three years later changed into an annex of the academy of liberal arts, containing an archive, a library, schools of music, of the mechanical arts and others [Gargiolli, Description de Florence, volume I, pages 98 and 296; Formigli, Guida per la città di Firenze, page 63; Grand guide de Florence, volume I, page 42; Fantozzi, Nouveau guide de Florence, page 413; Repetti, Dizionario geografico della Toscana, volume II, page 255.].
Annotata* loggia
* Cocomero
§ III. The virtues of Blessed Lucia, her spiritual gifts, illnesses, death, cult.
The virtues of Blessed Lucia, her predictions, That Blessed Lucia, in those most difficult times in which most of the old religious institutes in Italy, far from returning to amendment, were going daily more to ruin, so excellently established the new ascetery of St. Catherine, was brought about not so much by her singular prudence and carefulness as by the illustrious examples of her chastened life. For she continually exercised her body with the harshest torments and fasts; never however more than on the Thursday of Carnival *: on which day she most ardently prayed God that men blinded by the deceits of the world might come to their senses. And whenever she prayed, so great was her fervour that sometimes she was rapt into ecstasy; and then it very often happened that a fire appeared above the monastery, the people running up to put it out. By which miracle it was plain to all how great was the ardour of divine charity in the breast of the handmaid of God. Her guardian angel came to her several times; with which favour Bartolomea Martini and Lorenza Lorini were also honoured while dying. Blessed Lucia also foretold many things, to which the event gave credit: for example, all the things that would befall her husband; then that Sister Gabriella, daughter of Francesco dello Scappella, would die at such an hour of the night, on the 9th day of October of the year 1520; which came to pass: that Sister Francesca, daughter of Angelo, son of Donato Rucellai, would die nine years after her own death, Arcangela Buonamici being prioress; and in fact she died on the 19th day of June 1529: that of all the nuns present Sister Diamante di Maso degli Albizzi would be the last to depart from life; and indeed she died after all the rest: and lastly that her own body would not be found after her death; and in fact, although it has often been sought, and it is certain that it was buried in the church of St. Catherine, it has nevertheless never been found.
[13] continual illness, courtesy, death, But whatever sweetness there may have been in those heavenly communications, God did not will her to be free of pain. As long as she lived in the monastery, she suffered greatly from an internal wound; but however bitter the ill was, she endured it with a steadfast mind, committing herself to God's will and rejoicing that she was made a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. Nor did that disease prevent her body from giving forth a most pleasant odour, drawing all to venerate and love her. But she was also so courteous and charming in human intercourse that no one could either see or hear her without being taken by her sweetness. This gift she used very much to bring sinners to penance, to rouse the lukewarm to the service of God, the fervent to perfection. And when at length she felt that death was at hand from that internal wound, she called together all the Sisters; whom she asked pardon for the faults committed in her office. Then, having most devoutly received the last sacraments of the Church, she passed to paradise, her fifty-sixth year of age scarcely begun. For of the year of her death there is no doubt: by the consent of all she died in the year 1520. But Brocchi hesitates about the day, laying down that she died either on the 20th day of October, or on the 28th (or rather the 29th), on which her commemoration is made and on which she is said to have died by Razzi, Piò and their followers. It is very probable that Brocchi's doubt arose from this, that somewhere he had seen XX written in place of XXIX.
[14] perpetual cult. And immediately the public cult of Blessed Lucia was begun, so that it easily precedes the Urbanian decrees by a hundred years. For on the next day, the rumour having spread that the prioress Lucia had died and that her body was exposed for all to venerate in the church of St. Catherine, the people ran together,
and the one voice of all was that she was BLESSED: which title she has kept to this day. For, to point out a few out of many, she is called blessed by Razzi, Jean-Marie, Arthur, Domenico Marchese, Emmanuel de Lima and Brocchi, whom I adduced at the beginning; likewise by Carlo Guido Forti in the Catalogus hagiologicus Hetruscus Agiologium Hetruscum, page 29. and by Ludovico Santoni in the more recent sacred Ephemerides of Florence Guida sacra per le feste principali etc., 1854, page 107.. And before the body was committed to the tomb, her image was painted, surrounded with rays, by order of Lorenza Ginori, wife of Paolo Rucellai and a very close friend of Blessed Lucia: which image somewhat later was rendered in engraving and multiplied by the press. In Brocchi's time the painted image was still kept among the heirs of Paolo Rucellai. And around the engraved image, met with in many places, these words are inscribed: Bl. Sr. Lucia de' Rucellai, foundress of the monastery of St. Catherine of Siena of Florence. Her image too, says Brocchi, has been painted and exposed to public veneration in some churches of the Order of Preachers, and especially in the church of St. Catherine at Florence, where her body was deposited in a place hitherto unknown. Through the intervention of Alessandro Rinuccini, prior of St. Mark's, the nuns of St. Catherine obtained from the master general Tommaso de Vio Cajetan certain prayers in honour of Blessed Lucia; which prayers, interrupted for some time, the excellent nuns were again reciting daily about the year 1750. From which piety we gather that the devotion towards Blessed Lucia at some time suffered loss, but flourished again in the middle of the eighteenth century. The prayers recited in her honour we add by way of a crowning conclusion.
HYMN.
Loving mother, and lowly, Mindful of our fragile nature, Amid the waves of this life Guide us by your prayers.
We beseech you, more abundantly Increase it in our senses To know nothing at all Of the wounds of corruption.
Be, O Christ, most loving King, Glory to Thee and to the Father, With the Spirit Paraclete, Unto everlasting ages.
Amen.
Antiphon. Come, my chosen one, and I will set my throne in you, for the king has desired your beauty.
℣ Pray for us, blessed mother Lucia.
℞ That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray. O merciful God, enlighten the hearts of Thy faithful, and by the glorious prayers of blessed mother Lucia make us despise the prosperity of the world and ever rejoice in heavenly consolation. Through our Lord, etc.
Annotata* Berlingaccio