1476- 1544
FEAST November 15
Lucia Brocadelli wanted to become a nun, but when she was 15, her family arranged her marriage to a count. After three years the marriage was not consummated, and her husband freed her. As a Dominican tertiary, she joined communities in Rome and Viterbo, where she received the stigmata, which church investigations found genuine. Meanwhile, the Duke of Ferrara, who wanted a mystic for his town, built Lucy a convent in Ferrara. The move was ill-fated. Lucy endured resentment from other nuns, the death of her patron and loss of the stigmata; she was replaced as superior and spent her last 40 years in obscurity. She was beatified in 1710.