Saint Verdiana

Verdiana was a recluse, and recluses leave few records. The Roman Martyrology gives her one sentence: near Castelfiorentino in Tuscany, Saint Verdiana, virgin, who lived in enclosure from childhood to old age (translated here from the Italian). ¹ The two fuller accounts used here, Piero Bargellini's for santiebeati.it and the saint of the day of the Vatican City State, tell the same life, and both mark its best-known episodes as tradition: "it is said," "according to tradition." ²³

Her name is spelled Verdiana, Veridiana and Viridiana. ² Bargellini begins by warning readers that she is a very different figure from the heroine of Luis Buñuel's film. ²

santiebeati gives her birth at Castelfiorentino in 1182, which would make her the same age as Saint Francis of Assisi. ² The Vatican City State says historical sources place it in 1178. ³ Her early years fell in a time when the Valdelsa was drawn into conflict with the German emperors, and the Vatican City State notes that the Tuscan Guelph League against the Empire was sealed in its parish church of San Ippolito on December 4, 1197. ³

The two accounts describe her family differently. Bargellini says she was born of the Attavanti, a noble family that had come down in the world but still had some standing, and that a rich relative took her into his household to manage it. ² The Vatican City State says that popular tradition makes her "a young servant in the household of the Attavanti family," who tended flocks as a child and was later taken into the house for good. ³

Both tell the story of a famine. The head of the house, her uncle in Bargellini's account and Jacopo Attavanti in the Vatican's, had laid in a store of food to sell when prices rose. ²³ When the buyer came for it the storeroom was empty, because Verdiana had given it all to the poor. ²³ Faced with his anger she asked him to wait a day, and the next morning, the story goes, the store was found whole again. ²³ The Vatican City State calls it "the miracle of the beans." ³

As an adult she went on pilgrimage. Both sources send her to the tomb of the apostle James at Santiago de Compostela; the Vatican City State adds that she perhaps went to Rome as well, to venerate the tombs of the martyrs. ²³ It describes her journey outward turning, on her return, into "a radical choice to turn toward a reclusive inner life." ³

Bargellini says that her townspeople, wanting to keep her among them, built her a small cell on the bank of the Elsa, against the oratory of Saint Anthony. ² The Vatican City State names it the oratory of Saint Anthony Abbot, and says the building was also used to isolate the sick in time of plague. ³ She entered the cell, it says, on the first Sunday of Advent in 1208, and stayed there for thirty-four years. ³ Through a small window she followed the Mass in the oratory, spoke with visitors, and received the little food she lived on. ²³

Both accounts connect her with Saint Francis, and both call the connection tradition. Bargellini writes that, according to tradition, Francis visited her in 1221 and admitted her to the Franciscan Third Order. ² The Vatican City State says that tradition has her meet him through her window while he was passing through the Valdelsa, and that what is certain is that before her death she saw the new Franciscan church going up not far away. ³

The Vatican City State also names a bishop who came to her: Ardingo, bishop of Florence, a leader of the reform of the Church in his time, who "listened to her words and counsel until the end of his pastoral life." ³

In her last years, both sources say, two snakes got into her cell through the window and stayed with her. ²³ Bargellini says they tormented her, and that she never told anyone they were there, as an added mortification; he notes that painters took up the story. ² The Vatican City State calls it "a harsh trial," endured in silence, and says she never wished to reveal it. ³

She died on February 1, 1242. ²³ Tradition says that her death was announced by the bells of Castelfiorentino, all ringing at once with no one to ring them. ²³

Bargellini writes that her cult was approved by Clement VII in 1533 and is still popular in Tuscany, and that she is represented in the habit of the Vallombrosan congregation. ²

Saint Verdiana is the patron of her own town. santiebeati lists her patronage as Castelfiorentino, in the province of Florence. ² No source used here names any other patronage, and this page does not supply one.

Saint Verdiana's feast is February 1, the day of her death. ¹² The Roman Martyrology commemorates her that day, and the Vatican City State keeps her as its saint of the day for February 1. ¹³

The first story told of her is of giving away food that belonged to somebody else, in a famine, and asking the angry owner to wait a day. ²³ Whatever happened the next morning, the giving is the part of the story about her.

Then she went to Compostela and came home and shut herself in. ²³ The cell her neighbors built was against a chapel and beside a building where the sick were kept apart, and it had a window. ³ Through it she heard Mass and talked with whoever came, a bishop of Florence among them. ²³

Her last years are remembered for a suffering she told no one about. ²³ The sources do not explain the snakes, and this page does not try to.