A Dictionary of Saintly Women/Alda (2)
B. Alda (2), April 16 (Aldobrandesca, Blanca, Bruna). 1245-1309 or 1310. One of the patron saints of Siena. Represented holding a large nail; or at the feet of the Saviour, who runs a nail into her hand. Daughter of Pier Francesco de Ponzii, an honest merchant of noble birth in Siena, and Agnes de Bolgherini, his wife. Her birth was marked by special signs of the favour of God. At 18 she married Bindo Bellanti, whose piety, as well as his worldly station, was equal to her own. They spent the first eight days of their married life in mortification and devotion, and during the rest of Bellanti's life strove to live like the angels of God. Soon after his death, Alda joined the Third Order of the Humiliati, a branch of the Benedictines, which flourished in the duchy of Milan. Bucelinus calls Alda a nun; but she appears to have belonged, at all events for a time, to the number of the Humiliati remaining in the world. She lived at a little country place of her own, was there favoured with visions, and wrought many miracles. Latterly she lived in the hospital of St. Andrew, afterwards called of St Onofrio; she attended to the sick poor, and converted sinful women, to the great edification of the nuns. A girl named Jacomina, in the hospital, saw two great white candles before Alda, wherever she turned or moved; they were carried without human hands. Jacomina exclaimed, and called the attention of everybody to this prodigy. Alda, who hated human praise, shut herself up in her room, beat herself very severely, remained in seclusion some days, and then returned to her duties. Once she turned water into wine. One morning she did not come to her place in the church at the usual hour; the nuns ran to her cell, and found her standing with her head raised and her mouth open, as if speaking to the crucifix. They thought she was in one of those ecstasies with which they knew the Lord favoured her, and did not suspect her to be dead until a Dominican monk, B. Baptist Tolomei, arrived and said that he had seen her soul, in the form of a dove, conducted to heaven by angels. Alda was buried in the Basilica of St. Thomas of the Humiliati, where she wrought many miracles. Her body was solemnly taken up from the grave in 1489. Papebroch, in AA.SS., from her life by Lombardelli.