Clare Gambacorta

Daughter of the lord of Pisa, Tora Gambacorta was married at twelve and widowed at fifteen. She refused the remarriage imposed on her, fled to the Poor Clares and took the name Clare; her brothers came and took her back by force, keeping her shut up for five months. Her father eventually relented and built her the convent of San Domenico, which she made one of the centres of Dominican reform in Tuscany. In 1392, when the murder of her father and brothers had delivered Pisa to Jacopo d'Appiano, she took the murderer's family into her convent. She corresponded with Catherine of Siena and was beatified in 1830.