Saint Humility

Saint Humility (Italian: Umiltà), born Rosanna Negusanti, was a thirteenth-century Italian recluse, abbess, and foundress of the female branch of the Vallombrosan Order. She was born in 1226 at Faenza in the Romagna to the noble Negusanti family. At about the age of fifteen she was married to Ugolotto (also called Ugoletto) dei Caccianemici, a nobleman of the same city. Traditional accounts of her life record that the couple had two children, both of whom died in infancy. After a period of ordinary married life, Ugolotto fell gravely ill. Following his recovery, both spouses resolved to leave the world: he entered monastic life, and she took the religious name Humility and embraced a life of prayer and penance.

Humility first lived among religious women and then, with the approval of Vallombrosan superiors, had herself enclosed as an anchoress in a cell adjoining the Vallombrosan church of Sant'Apollinare near Faenza. She remained in reclusion for twelve years, practicing austerity and becoming known as a spiritual counselor to those who sought her out. The abbot of the Vallombrosan congregation later called her from her cell to organize women under the Vallombrosan form of the Benedictine rule. She established a community at Faenza and thereby became the foundress of the Vallombrosan nuns.

In 1282 she went to Florence, where she founded a second monastery, dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, and governed it as abbess. A distinctive feature of this later period is that she preached to her nuns. Nine sermons, dictated in the Italian vernacular to a secretary, survive, together with a small number of letters and verses. These texts are among the few authentic writings of a thirteenth-century Italian woman religious and reflect Vallombrosan devotion, meditation on the Passion, and the formation of monastic life.

Humility died in Florence on 22 May 1310 and was buried in the monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista that she had founded. Her memory was kept by the Vallombrosans and in Faenza and Florence. She is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on 22 May. The precise circumstances of any papal confirmation of her cult are not clearly established in standard historical summaries, but she has long been venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.