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B. MARY MAGDALENE MARTINENGO

altar for the first time. The foundresses renewed their solemn profession, and the provincial pronounced the new monastery 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 obedience 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 confessor to let her depart, begging only that she might wait until she had first blessed 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 obedience. If the good Jesus wants to have you with Him in everlasting glory, in the name of obedience, go." So he spoke and she died instantly.

She had already long been looked on as a saint and credited with miraculous gifts of clairvoyance, prophecy and healing; 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 blessed corpse. The funeral was impeded by 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 combined 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. 19.

A.R.M. Her Life by Padre Anselmo di San Luigi Gonzaga, Definitor Generalo dei Carroelitani Scalzi. Rome, 1865.

B. Mary (71) Magdalene Martinengo da Barco, July 27, 1687-1737, O.S.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 devotion 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 relations of this distinguished family were present at her beatification, on June 9, 1900, by Leo XIII. The 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 Bridegroom. Galla, an ill-tempered man, was furious. He locked her up, and only when a long term of punishment and disgrace had failed 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 remained in her father's house and continued 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 accomplished a great deal more work than all of them. She was often ill in consequence of overwork. Her father and some priests and others considered her a hypocrite. She bore their scorn and unkindness with the greatest humility. After the death of her mother, whom she nursed with devoted tenderness, her confessor let her 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 suffer the death agony and the pains of purgatory instead of her