Life
Catherine came from an aristocratic Bolognese family, raised from the age of nine at the court of the Marquis Nicholas IV, Duke of Ferrara, whose ambassador was her father. In 1431 together with other young women of Ferrara, she founded a Monastery of the Order of Poor Clares.
She returned to Bologna in 1456 when her superiors and the governors of Bologna requested that she be the founder and Abbess of a monastery of the same Order, which was to be established in association with the Church of Corpus Domini. Catherine is the author, among other things, of Treatise on the 7 Spiritual Weapons Necessary for Spiritual Warfare. She was attributed with having visions both of God and of Satan, which are discussed at length in Treatise, and with performing miracles.
Some of her art and manuscripts survive, including a depiction of St. Ursula from 1456, now in the Galleria Academica in Venice. Some historians have called her style naif. That these works of Catherine de'Vigri remain existent might be due to their status as relics of a saint.
When she died at the age of 49, Catherine was buried and after eighteen days of alleged graveside miracles, her incorrupt body was exhumed and relocated to the chapel of the Poor Clares in Bologna, where it remains on display, dressed in her religious habit and seated upright behind glass.
Read more about this topic: Catherine Of Bologna
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