Benedicta of Assisi

She entered the Poor Ladies of Assisi in 1214, in the lifetime of Francis and Clare, and spent nearly forty years in their shadow — abbess at Siena about 1227, then at Vallegloria near Spello from 1240 to 1248. When Clare died in August 1253 it was she who took her place at San Damiano. Brother Leo and Brother Angelo, the last companions of Francis, then handed her the founder's own breviary: the gesture says enough of what they thought of her. Her abbacy was that of the great building works. In 1257 the sisters obtained the church of San Giorgio, where Clare's body lay, and the basilica was begun; on 3 October 1260 that body was moved beneath the high altar. Benedicta commissioned for the new church a great painted crucifix and had herself shown kneeling at the foot of Christ, beside Francis and Clare, a purse of coins in her hand — the signature of the woman who was paying. The inscription still runs along the foot of the cross: Lady Benedicta, first abbess after Saint Clare, had me made. She died that same year. Her relics were moved in 1602 into the basilica she had brought into being.