Saint Bona of Pisa

Most of what is known of her comes from one early Life. Massimo Salani, writing for santiebeati.it, says the first biography was written by Paul, a monk of the Pulsano congregation who died in 1230, and survives as Codex C 181 in the archive of the cathedral chapter of Pisa. ² The New Catholic Encyclopedia lists the Acta Sanctorum's edition of the material for May 29 among its own sources. ³

She was born about 1156 in the parish of San Martino, in the Kinzica quarter on the south bank of the Arno. ²³ Salani gives the parish its old name, San Martino in Guazzolongo. ² Her mother, Berta, came from Corsica and settled in Pisa, where she married a merchant named Bernardo; Bona was their only child. ² When she was three her father sailed away and did not come back, and Berta was left a foreigner in the city, alone and in great poverty. ² Lentini, the second biographer on santiebeati.it, says the child found her comfort in church. ²

The canons regular of Saint Augustine served San Martino, and the encyclopedia says that Bona, known for her piety from childhood, was received among them as a young woman and from then on lived in a house near the church. ³ John XXIII's letter of 1962 describes her the same way, as given to the canons at San Martino "as a devout woman and sister," in our translation of its Latin. ⁴ Salani tells it with more detail: a first vision of Christ at the age of seven, a priest of the canons named Giovanni who took her in hand, and her consecration to God by the prior at the age of ten. ²

Salani says she was hard on herself from the start, taking on harsher and harsher penances and in the end wearing a hair shirt. ² He also reports a vision at ten that marked the rest of her life, in which she saw Christ and Mary with Saint James. ² It is the saint of Compostela, and the vision points to the road she would take. ²

After a vision of Christ, the encyclopedia says, she went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. ³ Salani dates the departure to 1170, after three years of prayer and penance following her consecration, which would make her about thirteen; Lentini says she went at just fourteen, alone, hoping to find her father, who had left with the crusaders. ² There a hermit named Ubaldo taught her about the holy places she was to visit, and in time told her when to go home. ²³ Salani says he became her spiritual father. ²

The journey home was dangerous. The encyclopedia says she was wounded by Saracens and molested by robbers. ³ Salani says she was wounded in the side and captured by Saracens with some of the women traveling with her, and ransomed by Pisan merchants. ² He has her back in her little room at San Martino about 1175. ² Lentini says instead that she stayed in Jerusalem ten years before setting out. ²

Back in Pisa she lived as a recluse, the encyclopedia says, apart from her journeys. ³ Salani tells of another vision in which Saint James, with Christ, invited her to join a party of pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela. ² It was a real adventure, he says: the journey took about nine months, pilgrims knew they might not come home, and it was normal to make a will before setting out. ² Bona, slight and worn by her own penances, went anyway. ²

Salani describes her work on the road: to hold people up when it was hard, encourage them at the worst moments, give what medical help she could, and call all the pilgrims to prayer and penance. ² Lentini says she became their official guide. ² Both say she reached Santiago nine times, and the encyclopedia agrees. ²³ She also visited Rome, often, by the encyclopedia's account, at the tomb of Saint Peter; santiebeati.it adds the shrine of Saint Michael on Monte Gargano. ²³ The Martyrology remembers her for exactly this: the frequent pilgrimages she made to the Holy Land, to Rome and to Compostela. ¹

Lentini adds that the pilgrims credited her prayers with healing wounds and converting criminals on the way. ² Salani says the many miracles told of her show her care above all for the weakest and the poorest. ²

At about forty-eight, Salani says, she had to give up the journeys. ² She died at Pisa on May 29, 1207, and is buried in San Martino. ²³

In 1962 the parish priest of San Martino asked John XXIII to place Italian air hostesses under her protection, and the Archbishop of Pisa, Ugo Camozzo, supported the request. ⁴ The pope's letter, dated March 2, 1962, speaks of the young women who look after travelers in an age when, thanks to new technology, journeys for work, for pleasure and for devotion had multiplied, and calls their work useful but exposed to difficulties and dangers. ⁴ It chooses for them a holy virgin of Pisa, "Bona by name and in fact," in our translation, who lived when pilgrimages were just as common. ⁴ The letter names her patroness of the Italian women who assist travelers, "commonly called hostesses." ⁴ Lentini says that every May 29 a group of flight attendants gathers at San Martino to honor her. ²

Saint Bona is the patroness of Italian air hostesses, by the apostolic letter of John XXIII of March 2, 1962. ³⁴ santiebeati.it also lists her as patroness of women pilgrims and travelers, and Lentini adds tourism workers, tour guides and couriers. ²

Saint Bona's feast is May 29, the day she died in 1207. ²³ The Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, commemorates her at Pisa on that day. ¹

Her father went to sea and did not come back, and she grew up poor, the child of a foreign mother. ² Her parish church became her home, and its canons the community she belonged to. ²³

Then she spent most of her life away from it. ²³ Her biographers do not remember her for what she founded or wrote, because she founded and wrote nothing they mention. ²³ They remember her for walking beside other people on long and dangerous roads, keeping them going and praying with them. ²

The pope who named her patroness eight centuries later was thinking of young women at work on airplanes, a world away from the road to Compostela. ⁴ His letter saw the same thing in both: people a long way from home, and someone whose job was to look after them. ⁴