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Feb. 28th, 2010 02:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichMartyrs of the Plague at Alexandria (d. 262) A group of Christians cared for the sick during a great epidemic in Alexandria; Dionysius of Alexandria describes their selfless work and deaths. They were entered into the Roman Martyrology under this day.
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Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Poland, matron (1399) - married at age thirteen to a non-Christian, she converted him by her example, and the two of them set off to convert many Lithuanians. Jadwiga was the daughter of Casimir, the last Piast king of Poland. Her husband, Jagiello, was ruler of Lithuania. His conversion, and that of his people, deprived the Teutonic Knights of much of their claim to be on crusade against the pagans. And their defeat at Tannenberg also reduced the military power of the knights. The vehement polemics of John Falkenberg, the apologist for the knights, were denounced by the Poles to the Council of Constance as heretical.
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Antonia of Florence (Bl.; d. 1472) Antonia was married young and widowed young. Although she had a son to care for, she opposed her family's insistence that she remarry and instead, influenced by the preaching of St. Bernardino of Siena, became a Franciscan tertiary in a recently founded monastery in her native Florence. From 1430 to 1433 she was at various Franciscan houses in Umbria and from 1433 to 1447 she was abbess of a Franciscan convent at today's L'Aquila in Abruzzo. In the latter year, acting with the assistance of St. John of Capestrano, she established an Observant-oriented house of Poor Clares in the same city, becoming its abbess and living with even greater austerity than before. Miracles were reported immediately after her death and a cult arose. Five years after her death, when her body was discovered to be incorrupt, her cult was approved by the local bishop. Papal confirmation followed in 1848.
And what of Antonia's son? Well the story is that he came to L'Aquila to be near his mother and then, with the assistance of St. John of Capestrano, became a Franciscan at Campli, also in Abruzzo. He is venerated as the Bl. Battista of Florence and his remains are kept at the Santuario di Maria Santissima delle Grazie at Teramo.
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Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Poland, matron (1399) - married at age thirteen to a non-Christian, she converted him by her example, and the two of them set off to convert many Lithuanians. Jadwiga was the daughter of Casimir, the last Piast king of Poland. Her husband, Jagiello, was ruler of Lithuania. His conversion, and that of his people, deprived the Teutonic Knights of much of their claim to be on crusade against the pagans. And their defeat at Tannenberg also reduced the military power of the knights. The vehement polemics of John Falkenberg, the apologist for the knights, were denounced by the Poles to the Council of Constance as heretical.
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Antonia of Florence (Bl.; d. 1472) Antonia was married young and widowed young. Although she had a son to care for, she opposed her family's insistence that she remarry and instead, influenced by the preaching of St. Bernardino of Siena, became a Franciscan tertiary in a recently founded monastery in her native Florence. From 1430 to 1433 she was at various Franciscan houses in Umbria and from 1433 to 1447 she was abbess of a Franciscan convent at today's L'Aquila in Abruzzo. In the latter year, acting with the assistance of St. John of Capestrano, she established an Observant-oriented house of Poor Clares in the same city, becoming its abbess and living with even greater austerity than before. Miracles were reported immediately after her death and a cult arose. Five years after her death, when her body was discovered to be incorrupt, her cult was approved by the local bishop. Papal confirmation followed in 1848.
And what of Antonia's son? Well the story is that he came to L'Aquila to be near his mother and then, with the assistance of St. John of Capestrano, became a Franciscan at Campli, also in Abruzzo. He is venerated as the Bl. Battista of Florence and his remains are kept at the Santuario di Maria Santissima delle Grazie at Teramo.
