Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/78

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66 B. MARY MAGDALENE MARTINENGO altar for the first time. The fonndreBses renewed their solemii profession, and the provincial pronounced the new monas- tery to he that of St. Joseph. Mary was not present. She wonld have liked to hide herself in her new house, hut the king and the people desired her presence in Turin, so she had to remain at St. Christina's, and direct the new com- munity for fourteen years from thence. Her dying illness was very edifying. She had often recovered in ohedience to the commands of her superiors. At last, seeing her in perfect peace and ready for death, the nuns knowing there was no hope of her recovery, asked the con- fessor to let her depart, hegging only that she might wait until she had first hlessed them all. He, holding the crucifix in his hand, said to her, Mother Mary of the Angels, you have lived until now for the sake of ohedience. If the good Jesus wants to have you with Him in everlasting glory, in the name of ohedience, go." So he spoke and she died instantly. She had already long heen looked on as a saint and credited with miraculous gifts of clairvoyance, prophecy and heal- ing ; and as soon as her death was known, crowds flocked to the convent, bringing crosses and rosaries with which they entreated the nuns to touch the hlessed corpse. The funeral was impeded hy the concourse of devotees. The Court musicians came to play and sing at the mass. The belief in her sanctity was so widely spread that her canonization began the very next year to be discussed in high quarters ; but divers causes com- bined to put it off for more than a century, when — her miracles increasing and her " heroic virtue " having already been testified by Pius VI. in 1777 — she was solemnly beatified by Pius IX. in 1865. Her day in the Mart, of her Order is Dec. 1 9. A,B,M, Her Life by Padre Anselmo di San Luigi Gonzaga, Definitor Gcneralo dei Carroelitani Scalzi. Rome, 1865. B. Mary (71) Magdalene Martin- engO da Barco, July 27, 1687-1737, O.8.F., was a native of Brescia. In 1705 she became a nun and afterwards abbess in the Capuchin convent of Santa Maria della Neve, where she spent the rest of her life. She had a deep de- votion to the sacred crown of thorns and secretly wore a crown of needles, which torture was only discovered after her death. The Count and Countess Martinengo and other members and re- lations of this distinguished family were present at her beatification, on June 9, 1900, by Leo XIIL Hie Tablet, June 16, 1900. St Mary (72) Frances of the Five Wounds, Oct. 6, was bom at Naples in 1715 and died there in 1791, O.S.F. She was christened Anna Maria Bosa Nicoletta. Daughter of Francesco Galla and Barbara Businsin. Her father dealt in gold embroidered ribbons, and she helped industriously to make them and also to do all kinds of housework. At sixteen he ordered her to marry a rich young man who proposed for her; but she was for the first time disobedient, for she had chosen the immortal Bride- groom. Galla, an ill-tempered man, was furious. He locked her up, and only when a long term of punishment and disgrace had fSfdled to change her resolution, did he, in 1731, consent that she should be enrolled under the strict rule of St. Peter of Alcantara, which was a branch of the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi, and called the Strictest Observance or Minori Scalzi, She re- mained in her father's house and con- tinued to work as hard for her parents as before. . She spent more time in prayer and less in work than her sisters, but, to their astonishment, she accom- plished a great deal more work than all of them. She was often ill in conse- quence of overwork. Her father and some priests and others considered her a hypocrite. She bore their scorn and unkjndness with the greatest humility. After the death of her mother, whom she nursed with devoted tenderness, her confessor let lier go and live with Maria Felice, an estimable woman of the same Order. Here she had more time for prayer and contemplation. She received the five wounds more unmistakably than almost any one else. She prayed that she might suifer the death agony and the pains of purgatory instead of her