May 10
BD BEATRICE OF ESTE, VIRGIN (A.D. 1226)
The childhood of Bd Beatrice of Este cannot have been a happy one. Her mother died when she was an infant, her father, the Marquis Azzo of Este, when she was six; and her elder brother, Aldobrandino, her natural protector, was poisoned when she was ten. The charge of the little girl devolved partly on her stepmother and partly on a paternal aunt. From the time of her father's death Beatrice would only wear the simplest clothes, absolutely refusing to put on the adornments which belonged to a girl of her rank. As she approached a marriageable age her relations, desirous of extending the power of the great house of Este, began to consider a suitable match for her, in spite of her protestations that she wished to live the religious life. Despairing of overcoming the opposition of her surviving brother, Beatrice secretly left home and made her way to the Benedictine abbey of Solarola, where she received the habit at the age of fourteen. A year and a half later, she and ten other sisters were transferred to Gemmola, a quiet place less exposed to warlike attacks and worldly interruptions. There Beatrice spent the remainder of her short life, dying when she was in her twentieth year. In 1578 her relics were translated to Padua, where they are held in great veneration. Her cult was approved in 1763.
[Her niece of the same name was the wife of King Andrew II of Hungary.]
A life by a contemporary one, Albert, a religious at Verona, was printed for the first time by G. Brunacci in 1767. The narrative in the Acta Sanctorum is translated from the Italian of Bishop Tomasini, who wrote in the middle of the seventeenth century. See also P. Balan, La B. Beatrice d'Este (1878).
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(Butler's Lives of the Saints, Christian Classics, 1995)
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