Note 47 — Chapter III · CATHERINE FIESCA ADORNA’S LIFE, UP TO HER CONVERSION; AND THE CHIEF PECULIARITIES PREDOMINANT THROUGHOUT HER CONVERT YEARS

Although the Church and Monastery belonged, as Catherine’s Will of 1509 puts it, to “the Order of St. Benedict of the Congregation of Saint Justina in Padua”—a Congregation founded from Monte Cassino between 861 and 874—yet the community were evidently closely bound up with the Augustinian Canons Regular of the Lateran, or at all events with the foundation of the Convent of Augustinian Canonesses at Santa Maria delle Grazie. For the concession of Pope Nicolas V for the latter Convent is addressed to his “Beloved sons of Saint Theodore of Genoa” (Augustinian Canons) “and of Saint Nicolas in Boschetto.” And this close connection with, and action for, a Church and Convent so dearly loved by Catherine, will have necessarily been one of the causes of her affection for the Benedictine country-side Church.