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Ursulina de Parma
“If you do not do what Jesus commands you, you will have noted your site with Lucifer in the eternal flames.”

Introduction
Ursulina de Parma lived 1375 to 1410; her feast day is April 7. She exemplified female sanctity and politically engaged visionaries in the late 14th to early 15th century Italy. She was a visionary mystic (or beata) who advised both Clement VII and Boniface IX during the Great Schism. She eventually gained sainthood after valid accounts of her miracles were recorded under papal right.

Birth
Ursulina was born to Pietro de’ Veneri and his wife, Bertolina on May 14th, 1375. Pietro had been a widower devoted to prayer when a divine message instructed him to remarry. His family name appears in two papal bulls because of this daughter. Several clues—not least of all Ursulina’s ability to travel extensively during her short life—point to the status of this family: they were comfortable but not of the elite class of late-medieval Parma. Ursulina’s father Pietro died soon after her birth, but her mother, Bertolina was her daughter’s companion throughout her whole life. Ursulina was an unusual little girl, although she first spoke at the age of four months, she was small, unable to walk very well until she was five, and unsociable; it was at five that she began to have mystical visions, the first concerning the resurrection of the dead. Ursulina de Parma’s visions continued throughout her life.

At a very early age Ursulina began her mystical relationship with the Lord. At the age of nine, she asked a priest to serve as the first transcriber of seven to explain the visions she received throughout her life. At the age of fifteen Ursulina was called to Avignon; she travelled to persuade the antipope to give up his position and step down. Her and her mother took a side trip to Provence to visit a shrine to St. Mary Magdelene, protected by a man Ursulina recognized as St. John the Evangelist. When the antipope failed to acquiesce, the girl then went to Rome to visit Pope Boniface IX, who sent her back to Avignon. Her diplomacy was had a dangerous cost; Ursulina was imprisoned for sorcery and nearly poisoned at Avignon. After, In 1396, Ursulina was exiled from Parma, she mad a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and several years after her return. Ursulina died shortly after this, seventy-five miles from her hometown in Verona, Italy, 1410.

Adolescence
She was also a young woman of Parma, Italy who was know as a virgin, visionary, and experienced ecstasies. At the age of fifteen she was told by the visions to go to Avignon, France, to convince the antipope there, Clement VlI (1378-1394), to step down and so end the Great Western Schism which had troubled the Church since 1378. Failing in this, she journeyed to Rome and pleaded with Pope Boniface IX (r. 1389-1404) to resign. The pontiff refused, so she made one more unsuccessful attempt to beg Clement to give up his claim. Ursulina then went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and then returned home to Parma. After this incident, she was expelled from the city during some civil conflict. Ursulina travelled to Bologna and then Verona, where she died and where her body stayed for a short time.

Religious Life
Her knowledge of Scripture and theology dazzled those with whom she modestly shared it in her adolescence. When she was fifteen, at divine command she began to dictate her revelations to others, ultimately creating a great cache of writings, none of which is known to survive. In 1393, in Easter Day, the voice of God told Ursulina to prepare for a journey to Avignon. John the Evangelist lead Ursulina and her mother on the long journey, a figure the young beata recognized in her visons. In Avignon, Ursulina found the antipope Clement VII, she spoke with such power that he refused to see her again. Ursulina returned to her home in Parma only a few days before hearing a command to go to Rome and tell her story to Pope Boniface IX. Ursulina’s truthfulness was confirmed by an Avignon monk. After the pope and his court acknowledged her, they sent her off to an embassy in Avignon, with a sealed papal letter urging the Avignon papacy and court to give up its claims to sacred authority in favor of Rome.

In early 1394, Ursulina discovered the Avignon court was plotting against her. The anti-pope’s cardinals viciously attacked Urulina’s character and in 1394, the cardinals pursue her like rabid dogs, and despite the untiring efforts of preaching unity of the church she is framed as a sorceress, imprisoned, then liberated when an earthquake makes her prison crumble. She even escapes an attempt at poisoning her. When the visionary spoke before Clement VII and some of the court prepared to give up its claims. But another faction remained hostile and conspired to ensure that this troublesome Italian teenager would not have further access to sympathetic ears. This group of cardinals tried (unsuccessfully) to trick Ursulina in theological discussions, accused her of witchcraft, attempted to poison her, and finally agreed to kill her slowly when an earthquake destroyed the house in which she was being tortured. The standoff continued for seven months, with Ursulina triumphant against every conspiracy and technique designed to harm her. When Clement VII learned to his surprise that she was still in Avignon, Ursulina took the opportunity to deliver the letter from Rome. But in the end all her exertions on behalf of ending Schism by having the Roman pope prevail come to nothing because Clement dies miserably in September 1394. The anti-pope died in September 1394, a few days later. Just as the plan to reunite the Church looked as if it might succeed, the Avignon college of cardinals elected a new (anti-)pope Ursulina went home with her mother to Parma after her hopes of uniting the Great Schism were destroyed.

Death
Ursulina decided to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, little more than a year after her persecution by the cardinals. For this journey, she received the express consent of the Roman pope Boniface IX when she visited Rome in early 1396; the pope’s bull on the matter, addressed jointly to Ursulina and Bertolina. After an emotional visit to the holiest places in and near Jerusalem, she went home again to Parma via Venice, where she stayed briefly but left a profound memory of holiness. The last phase of Ursulina’s life began with her exile from her native city, part of a series of factional disputes in a time of civic unrest.Departing with her mother and an abbess in late 1404 or early the next year, Ursulina spent a short time in Bologna before settling for three years in Verona, where she lived in obscurity. After a painful illness relieved by many divine visions, she died, most likely in the year 1408.” The presumed date of her death is also her feast day, April 7th.

The well-traveled visionary had one final journey a year and a half after her death. Ursulina’s body was transferred from where she was buried in Verona to the San Quintino monastery in her home city, Parma. Her cult grew across the seventeenth century, encouraged by a series of abbesses of the powerful Sanvitale family, female members of which guided the monastery for over a century starting in 1425, not too long after Ursulina reached her final resting place. The second of these Sanvitale abbesses, Magdalena, asked Simone Zanacchi to write a formal account of her life, which he completed in 1472. Miracles that had begun in Ursulina’s lifetime continued through the early modern period and in 1786, Pope Pius VI declared her a saint. Now Ursulina’s body is buried at the parish church of San Quintino in Parma.

Other Beatas
Constance de Rabastens (active 1384–86)

St. Bridget of Sweden

St. Catherine of Siena

Reviews
Luongo,Thomas F. (Tulane University): Review of Two Women of the Great Schism, Catholic Historical Review, Jan. 1st 2012

Internal/External Links
1.) Catholic Publisher. "Bl. Ursulina of Parma - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online." Bl. Ursulina of Parma - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online. Catholic Publisher, n.d. Web. Apr. 2016.

2.) Library of Congress Authority File. "Ursulina, of Parma, Blessed, 1375-1410." - LC Linked Data Service (Library of Congress). Library of Congress, 26 May 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.

3.) Rigney, Melanie. "Wednesday’s Woman: Blessed Ursulina of Parma." Melanie Rigney RSS. Word Press Admin, 8 Apr. 2015. Web. Apr. 2016.

4.) Virtual International Authority File. "VIAF." 106748277. OCLC, 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.