160 B. CATHERINE Oct. 20, 1387. Helyot, Ordres Manas- tiqueSy part iii. chap. 55, 56; Drane, Catherine of Sienna. B. Catherine (G) Carreria, Aug. l, of Mantua, O.S.D. Michele Pio, the historian of tho Dominican Saints, says that at the age of forty-two, after a very pious life, she shut herself up in a narrow cell, or rather hetween two walls, and never came out for thirty- eight years, to the great admiration of all good people. She was buried near the spot. When the cathedral of Mantua was built on the ground where her cell and grave had been, her body was placed in a handsome tomb in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the cathedraL An inscription setting forth her sanctity, and telling that she was of the Third order of Preachers, was seen there by Serafino Eazzi, another historian of the Order, but the date of her death is un- known. AA.SS., Prseier. St. Catherine (7), Nov. 20, V. of Tartary. +1414. Carried captive to Naples, and presented by the queen to St. Cathebinb (4), who gave her her own name in baptism, and eventually took her to Wadstein. She lived there as a Brigittine nun until her death. Oatilbumus, a holy priest, saw her soul carried to heaven in the form of a very bright star; at the same time it was revealed to him that she was the daughter of a prince of Tartary. Vastovius, Vitis Aquilonia, Oynecseum, B. Catherine (8) Mancini, Mart {54) Mancini. St. Catherine (9), March 9, of Bo- logna. 1413-1463. O.S.F. Abbess, painter, and author. Patron of artists and of the Academy of Painters at Bo- logna. Only child of John de' Vigri, •or Vegri, a member of one of the prin- -cipal families of Ferrara ; it became ex- tinct in 1 6 1 9. Her mother was Benvenuta Mammolini. John being at Padua in the autumn of 1413, Benvenuta went to stay with her own relations at Bologna for her confinement, and there Catherine vraa born, Sept. 8. When she was nine or ten years old, she was placed at tho oourt of the Marquis of Ferrara, and educated with his daughter, the Princess Margaret of Este. It was during her residence there that the tragedy occurred which Byron has described in his poem Parisina." This may have deepened her mistrust of worldly life, and accen- tuated her inclination for that of the cloister. She placed herself under the care of a devout woman named Lucia Mascheroni, who had already edified all Ferrara by her virtuous training of many secular young women. About this time Lucia, with edl her pupils, went to live in a house which had been partly built for a monastery, but had never been finished. At first they followed tho rule of St. Augustine, without any vow of seclusion. Here Catherine lived for fifteen or sixteen years ; here she endured those horrible struggles with the devil, and obtained those graces and heavenly visions which are described in her book. Spiritual Combats. In 1432, when Lucia and her disciples adopted the rule of St. Clara, the convents of Assisi and Mantua were the only communities of that order. The life was so ascetic that few women were able to endure it : some died, and nearly all were more or less dangerously ill. Pope Eugenius lY., in 1446, modi- fied their austerities, authorizing the nuns, among other indulgences, to wear wooden sandals and woollen socks ; their fasts also were to be less rigorous. In 1456 Catherine was chosen superior of fifteen or, by some accounts, twenty- three of her companions to go and settle in the new convent of Corpo di Cristo, at Bologna, where she established the rule of St. Clara in its original severity. Two years later, Julius II. permitted her to take her mother into the convent to give her the attention her age and blindness required. Catherine resigned the government of the convent in 1460, but was reappointed the following year, and remained in of&oe until her death, March 9, 1463. Nineteen days after- wards her body was disinterred and found worm, and with a look of youth and freshness it had not worn of late years. It was set up in the choir for the vene- ration of the public, and there worked miracles. The people of Bologna revered her as a sain t from that time . Her canoni- zation took place about two hundred years later.
