St. Catherine of Bologna was born on September 8, 1413 and died on March 9, 1463. She was an Italian nun. She had qualities of a good artist and writer.
St. Catherine is the patron of artists and people involved in spiritual work. Her advocacy can be gained when praying against temptations and evil habits. She was widely known and revered for almost three centuries in her native Bologna before her canonization. Her memory is celebrated on the 9th of March.
St. Catherine came from an aristocratic family from Bologna. After the age of nine, she moved to the castle of the Marquis Nicholas IV, who was also the Duke of Ferrara. Her father was an ambassador of this Marquis. St. Catherine was approached as a companion of the young lady Margarita. During the years of her stay there, she was trained in the intricacies of various crafts, fine arts, and studied literature.
In 1431, along with other young women from Ferrara, she founded the Order of St. Clara convent.
St. Catherine returned to Bologna in 1456, when the church and state leadership required her to become the founder and abbess of the convent of the Order, which must be created in association with the church of Corpus Domini.
St. Catherine is the author, among other works, like the "Treatise on the seven spiritual weapons necessary for spiritual battle." Her gift is attributed to have brought her visions of God and Satan, which are discussed in detail in the same treatise, and are supplemented by evidence of the performance of miracles by God's intervention.
Some of the paintings and manuscripts of St. Catherine managed to survive, including the drawing of St. Ursula from 1456, located in the gallery "Academica" in Venice. There are historians and art critics who call her style naive and simple. The fact that to this day her works have been preserved, perhaps due to their huge honor gives them a value almost equal to relics.
When St. Catherine died, at 49 years of age, she was immediately buried. For eighteen days, miracles happened around her grave her, therefore her decomposed body was exhumed and moved to the chapel of St. Clara in Bologna, where it was left for pilgrimages. The saint is dressed in religious garb and sitting upright behind glass.
St. Catherine was declared blessed by the Roman Catholic Church in 1703, and on May 22, 1712 was declared a saint by Pope Clement XI. Today, there are legends about how parying to her relics have healing power and how many people recover completely when visiting the chapel.
Recent discoveries about her life
In recent years, the works of St. Catherine became known.
Here's their description by Cardinal Giacomo Bifi: "The works of St. Catherine of Bologna, many of whom for a long time remained unknown, now reveal their surprising beauty. We can assure all that come to us, she was not unworthy of her fame as a highly cultured woman.
Her legendary image can not be due to a complex set of historical circumstances that marked the era in which she lived. We are now in a position to reflect on a veritable monument of theology that after "Treatise on the Seven Spiritual Weapons" is completed and consists of different and separate parts: "Twelve gardens, mystical work of her youth;" Rosarium "- Latin poem on the life of Jesus, and "sermons", ie words of St. Catherine at her religious sisters ...".
