medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Not to be confused with the earlier Bl. Beatrice d'Este (d. 1226), this member of Ferrara's ruling family is known chiefly from a nearly contemporary account by a monk of Padua, by a sketch in the _Chronica parva Ferrariensis_, and by a seemingly fourteenth-century account from the pen of a nun of her community in Ferrara. A daughter of Azzo VII of Ferrara, she was betrothed in 1249 to a noble who was podestà of Vicenza; his death in battle soon released her from that obligation. Retiring with some other women of the court to Ferrara's island of San Lorenzo, Beatrice founded there a small religious community that accepted the rule of St. Benedict in 1254 and that in 1257 moved into the very nearby monastery of Santo Stefano della Rotta. She was only about thirty-six when she died in 1262.
Today is Beatrice's _dies natalis_. A cult arose very quickly. The water used to wash her body was said to have caused miracles. Until the corpse's dissolution in 1512 the sisters would repeat the washing as needed in order to have a supply of the wonder-working liquid. A new tomb in the monastery cloister became a pilgrimage destination; condensation from it continues to be collected several times a year for distribution to the faithful. Beatrice's cult was approved papally, at the level of _beata_, in 1774.
In 1297 Beatrice's community acquired from the Augustinians the adjacent church of Sant'Antonio. For centuries the monastery has been called Sant'Antonio in Polesine (_polesine_ is a term for a swamp; beyond its use here it famously designates -- again with a capital "P" -- the land in the southern Veneto between the Adige and the Po). Herewith some exterior views of the monastery as a whole and of its originally thirteenth-century church:
http://www.ferraraitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/S-Antonio-monastero.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ye727ey
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3370/3576341918_6533637c68_b.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yccnqt7
The church was divided into two in 1473 (one church for the sisters, one for others). The inner church has frescoes from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some of which are visible here:
http://www.listonemag.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/santantoniopolesine007.jpg
http://www.listonemag.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/santantoniopolesine001.jpg
For some views of individual panels, see the slideshow here:
http://tinyurl.com/jn5hzt6
and the set of photographs starting about a third of the way down this page:
http://medioevo.forumfree.it/?t=45130537&st=15
and the photographs on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/hc2dxtc
Best,
John Dillon
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