ST. ISIDORA 417 10,000 martyrs, to whom she had a special devotion. Lopez, Historia general de Sancto Domingo y de 8U orden^ book 3, part 3, chap. 11. B. Isabel (4) do Soto Mayor, 16th century. Daughter of the Connt of BenalcaQar. Called in religion, Isabel de la Pnebla. Nun in the Convent of St. Clara de Benalca^ar, called the Con- vent of the Column, because they had a piece of the pillar to which the Lord was tied when He was econrged. Daga, bk iii. chap. 77. St. Isabel (5) Flores, Rose op Lima. B. Isabel (6) Fernandez, Sept. 10. M. in Japan, 1622. She and her husband, Domenic Jorge or Giorgi, had St. Charles Spinola living in their house, and he was god-father to their son Ignatius, whom ho taught and baptized. Isabel was only twenty-one when, in 1619, Domenic was put to death for harbouring a Christian and adopting his faith. Three years afterwards, Isabel and her little Ignatius were condemned to be beheaded. When they came into the place of execution, Isabel saluted with her handkerchief in the Japanese manner, and Father Spinola, who was standing at the stake where he was to be burned, did not see the child, and fearing he might bo lost to the Kingdom of Christ when deprived of his parents and pastors, called out, <* Where is my Ignaziotto ? " " Here with me," she answered, holding up the child in her arms that the venerable apostle might see and bless him, "I have brought him to be a martyr, to die for his God before he can speak, and to serve Him before he can offend Him." Isabel knelt down with her son in her arms and both were beheaded. By one account, the child was beheaded in his mother's arms, at the third blow; by another, she was decapitated first, and when he saw her head roll off, he bared his own neck for the sword (Analecta Juris Pontificiiy 9mo. serie). The bodies of all the decapitated martyrs wore left on the ground and the heads wero placed on a long table opposite the missionaries. The pictures preserved represent these arrangements. There is, at the church called the Gosu, in Home, a picture done at Manilla about this time, which agrees exactly with the account. {See Luot DE Fbeitas.) Other SS. Isabel. (See Elisabeth). In Latin and German, Isabel is called Elisabeth ; in Spanish, Elisabeth is called Isabel. St. Isbergue or Isbubo, Ida- BEBG (3). St. IsibergSL Idabkrg (3 St. Isidora (l), M., April 17, mother of St. Thecla (11) and sister of St. Nbophyta. Tortured and martyred at Lontini in Sicily. Thecla sent money by Alexander, son of Neophyta, to obtain the bodies of these two saints and their fellow-martyrs, whom she buried, and after the death of Tertullus, the governor, built a church on the spot, called that of the Twenty Holy Martyrs. ^1^1.-8^5. St. Isidora (2), V., May 1. There was once a double monastery on an island in the Nile, called Tabenna, at the ex- tremity of the Thebaid, near Syene. It was inhabited by four hundred nuns, amongst whom was one who appeared to the whole community to be an idiot and possessed of a devil ; so much so that they would not have her to sit at table with them. She did all the kitchen work, and instead of the hood that all the others wore, she had a common cloth twisted about her head. She never was seen to sit down to eat, none of her sisters ever. gave her a piece of bread, she lived on the crumbs and scraps that she got while she was cleaning out the plates and dishes, she never talked or grumbled, although some of the nuns treated her with rudeness and made her the subject of practical jokes. One threw the re- mains of her food at her, another put mustard in her nose, and so on. When this had gone on for a long time, an angel of the Lord appeared to St. Fyo- terius, a holy hermit living in the desert, and said to him, " Gk) to the monastery of Tabenna, and you will see one of the nuns wearing a crown on her head, and you will know that she is the best ; com- pared with her patience under trials you will have a very poor opinion of your own asceticism." He went, and induced the chiefs of the brothers to get him admitted into the house of the women. 1 ^
