heckyeahorderofpreachers: Blessed Diana degli Andalò
(1201 – 10 June 1236) The most colorful of the three was undoubtedly Sister Diana, the spoiled and beautiful daughter of the d’Andalò family, of Bologna, who lost her heart to the ideal of the Order when listening to Reginald of Orleans preach. She espoused the cause of the friars, who were new to Bologna, and begged her father until she obtained from him the church of St. Nicholas of the Vineyards, of which he had the patronage. Having established the brethren, she wanted a convent of Dominican Sisters in Bologna. When St. Dominic came there on his last journey, she talked to him, and all her worries departed. She knelt at his feet and made a vow to enter the Dominican Order as soon as it should be possible to build a convent in Bologna. St. Dominic, going away to Venice on a trip from which he would only return to die, made sure before leaving that the brethren understood about Diana. Four of the fathers from the community of St. Nicholas were under obedience to see that her convent was built. In the meantime, Diana’s father refused her permission to enter the convent. Stealing a leaf from the life of St. Clare, she ran away to the Augustinians, outside the city. In full armor, her brothers came after her, and Diana was returned, battered but unconvinced, to the paternal home. She nursed a number of broken ribs and several explosive ideas in silence. The death of St. Dominic was a great grief to her, as she was still living in a state of siege in her father’s house, waiting for some action on the question of the new convent. However, she soon acquired a new friend, who was to be her greatest joy in the years of her mortal life - Jordan of Saxony, master general of the Order, succeeding St. Dominic, and a future blessed of the Church. Jordan, as provincial of Lombardy, inherited the job of building the sisters’ convent in Bologna, but his relations with Diana were not to be merely mundane. Their friendship, of which we have the evidence in Jordan’s letters, is a tribute to the beauty of all friendship, and a pledge of its place in religious life. Diana was nothing if not resourceful. She made another attempt to elope to the convent. This time her family gave up in despair. She remained peacefully with the Augustinians until the new convent was built in Bologna. In 1223, Diana and several other young women received the habit of the Order from Jordan of Saxony. Diana was the prioress for a time, but perhaps Jordan felt she was too volatile for ruling others, because, as soon as the sisters came from St. Sixtus, he established Sister Cecilia as prioress. Diana, who was used to being not only her own boss, but the one who told others what do do, seems to have made no protest. Text: Excerpt from St. Dominic’s Family: The Lives of Over 300 Famous Dominicans, by Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, O.P. Image: La professione della beata Diana nelle mani di san Domenico - Prospero Fontanta, 1597, Museo di San Domenico a Bologna
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