Lucy of Narni - Conflict

Conflict

Lucy's departure precipitated a conflict between Ferrara and Viterbo which would continue for two years. Viterbo wanted to keep the famous mystic for themselves, and the Duke wanted her in Ferrara. After extensive correspondence between the parties, on April 15, 1499 Lucy escaped secretly from Viterbo and was officially received in Ferrara on May 7, 1499. Thirteen young girls immediately applied for admission to her new community; the construction of the monastery began in June and was completed two years later, in August 1501. It contained 140 cells for sisters and the novices, but to fill it with suitable vocations proved to be very difficult.

Lucy expressed the wish to have there some of her former friends from Viterbo and Narni. Duke Ercole, in September 1501, sent his messenger to Rome asking for the help of the pope's daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, who was preparing to marry the Duke's son, Alfonso. She collected all eleven candidates whom Lucy had indicated, and sent them as a special wedding present to Lucy and the Duke, a few days ahead of her bridal party. She herself solemnly entered Ferrara on 2 February 1502.

The Duke petitioned the local bishop for some help for Lucy in governing her new community, and the bishop sent ten women from a local monastery to join Lucia's convent. For better or worse, these women were members of the Dominican Second Order, who were canonical nuns and were thus permitted to wear black veils, something Lucy and the other Sisters of the Dominican Third Order community were not. The differences in canonical standing and requirements between the two groups was to cause friction in the convent.

Tensions were heightened when one of these veiled outsiders, Sister Maria da Parma, O.P., was made the prioress of the convent on September 2, 1503. When Duke Ercole died on 24 January 1505, the new prioress quickly found Lucy to be guilty of some unrecorded transgression (most probably of her open and public the support for the Savonarolan church reform), and placed her on a strict penance. Lucy was not allowed to speak to any person but her confessor, who was chosen by the prioress. The local Prior Provincial of the Dominican Order would also not permit any member of the Order to see her. There are records that at least one Dominican, Catherine of Racconigi, did visit her, evidently by bilocation, and that Lucy's earlier visitations by departed saints continued. In response to Lucy's insistent prayer, her stigmata eventually disappeared, which caused some of the other members of the community to question whether they had ever been there at all. This punishment was to last her entire life, or at least until 1541, when a niece of Girolamo Savonarola was elected prioress. When Lucy died in 1544, many people were surprised to find that she had not died years earlier.