“Illustrious Sienese Women Worthy Of Remembrance”

Abstract The science Female monastic tradition is reputed to have begun in 801, when Pepin, son of Charlemagne, ordered the construction of a conventt. I to honor the Roman martyrs Abbondio and Abbondanzio. Angelic intervention determined the very location of the nunnery. It is said that the laborers began to build in a valley near the Tressa river, but on returning to work the next day, they found that the entire foundation had been miraculously transported to a nearby hill. In subsequent centuries, the devout Benedictine nuns of “Santa Bonda” garnered many admirers, among them Blessed Giovanni Colombini (1304-67), the Sienese founder of the Gesuati, and his “companion in poverty,” Francesco Vincenti. Both men entrusted their daughters to the care of the nuns and left the convent substantial bequests in their wills. Colombini also specified his wish to be buried in the nuns’ cloister. In 1575, the apostolic visitor Francesco Bossi found only fifty-one women at SS. Abbondio e Abbondanzio, but seventy or so nuns are recorded by the turn of the seventeenth century, making it one of the city’s most populous convents1.