Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

A Child of Sin—Born 1444—Her Early Peculiarities—Physical Possession by Evil Spirits—Sent to a Convent—A Life of Devotion—Eustochia a Novitiate—A Supernatural Accident—Belief that She Was a Hypocrite—Resignation—The Evil Spirit in Possession-Frightful Torments—Evil Portents—A Sorceress?—Imprisonment—Persecutions by Invisible Powers—Regaining Good Esteem—A Nun—Her Sanctity and Constancy—Her Death and Burial.

The story of her, who was baptised by the name of Lucrezia Bellini and is now revered by the Church under that of Eustochia, which she assumed on becoming a Benedictine nun, in the year 1461, is one of the very strangest that even the Italian Quattrocento has to show. For it is the story of a child of sin who was tormented all her days by the Adversary of mankind, and who was yet a saint.

In these, our own latter days, when the world at large is recovering somewhat from the prolonged epidemic of materialism from which it had been suffering during the greater part of the Nineteenth Century, the fact of supernatural “possession” is coming to be recognised by many of the strongest scientific intellects as the only possible and rational explanation of certain among the numerous cases of mental perversity that fill our modern prisons and asylums. Even—so I have been given to understand—the “Salpêtrière” itself has been known to express opinions favourable to the theory of possession in some instances. So that the story of Eustochia may not be deemed to be unworthy of attention—even by those persons who ordinarily find it difficult to believe anything unless it has already received the endorsement of their fellow-creatures’ belief.

The natural daughter of a dissolute citizen of Terra di Gemola in the Veneto, Lucrezia was born in shame and secrecy in the year 1444, at Padua, and was sent at once to her father, Bartolomeo Bellini, at Gemola. Bartolomeo Bellini was, alas! a married man with a lawful wife and family of his own; none the less, he received the child with some show of gladness and immediately saw to her being properly baptised, giving her the name of Lucrezia; after which he handed her over to a nurse under whose care the little Lucrezia remained until she was four years old, when Bellini sent for her to come and live with him and his family in his own house. By this time she had become very pretty, as well as being already endowed with considerable charm and brightness of spirit.

On seeing her again, her father came to love Lucrezia with an especial tenderness; but, to his wife, not unnaturally, the sight of the little girl was gall and bitterness, in its reminder of her husband’s infidelity to her; and the Signora Bellini soon grew to hate the presence of Lucrezia.

Nor were Bellini’s own good sentiments towards his daughter suffered to endure for long.

It seemed to those with whom she was in daily and hourly contact that there was something odd about Lucrezia; for all her charm and goodness, the child, in some indefinable way, was not as other children, but rather as one mysteriously marked down by Providence for some especial purpose of Its own.

And then, suddenly, Lucrezia’s peculiarities began to take definite shape, and to manifest themselves in the most disconcerting manner by a nervous inability to control the movements of her own limbs—as it were a kind of Saint Vitus’ dance. Even against her express wish, she would constantly find herself compelled to do this or that; she was even, occasionally, raised bodily by some invisible force above the ground. Her confessor declared himself of the opinion that she was under some strong preternatural influence, but of what kind, precisely, he was unable at once to determine. For, although she was frequently moved to certain movements by some will other than her own, yet her mind was entirely subject to her own control; consequently, one cannot quite think her to have yet been actually in a state of possession, her condition appearing to approximate rather to one of slight epilepsy.

But this was only the beginning of Lucrezia’s long trial. In spite of her very real sufferings, her spirit maintained the calm of a constant recollection in God, together with the unceasing interior practice of the most meritorious acts of resignation and faith. As time went on, however, the fact of her physical possession by evil spirits became self-evident, and Lucrezia herself an object of the utmost aversion—nay, of fury—to her father, who refused to recognise in his child’s condition the anger of Heaven upon himself for the sin of her birth.

So matters came to the point of Lucrezia’s being brought to the Bishop—Monsignor Pietro Donato, I fancy—that he might exorcise the spirit that tormented her; which, as it seemed at first, he successfully did, for during some weeks after the exorcism Lucrezia was able to pursue the practice of her religion without let or hindrance; so that she was considered permanently healed.