Sibillina Biscossi

Blessed Sibyllina Biscossi was born in Pavia, in the Lombard plain of northern Italy, in 1287. She was left an orphan at a tender age and was placed in the household of a local family as a domestic servant. When she was about twelve years old she lost her sight entirely. The community of Dominican tertiaries in Pavia took pity on the blind girl, received her among them, and clothed her in the habit of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. Not long afterward she sought and obtained permission to embrace the life of a recluse. At approximately fifteen years of age she was enclosed in a small cell built against the church of the Dominican friars in Pavia, an arrangement typical of the urban anchoresses of late medieval Italy.

There she remained for sixty-five years. Her life was one of prayer, fasting, and recollection. Though she could not see with her bodily eyes, those who knew her credited her with unusual spiritual discernment. She was especially devoted to the Holy Spirit, and later accounts of her life describe visions in which the Holy Spirit appeared to her, at times in the form of a beautiful child or youth. People of the city and travelers came to the little window of her cell to ask her prayers and to seek counsel. She was said to perceive the state of souls, to warn sinners, and on occasion to foretell events. Healings and other graces were attributed to her intercession while she still lived.

Sibyllina's long enclosure spanned much of the fourteenth century, a time of political instability in Lombardy, of the papacy's residence at Avignon, and of recurrent plague. She herself left no writings; knowledge of her rests on Dominican tradition and on the materials later gathered for the recognition of her cult. She died in her cell in Pavia on 19 March 1367 and was buried in the adjoining church of the Friars Preachers. Veneration at her tomb persisted through the early modern period.

On 17 August 1854 Pope Pius IX confirmed her immemorial cult, an act equivalent to beatification, and she is therefore honored as Blessed. Her feast is celebrated on 23 March, a date that avoids the liturgical coincidence with the solemnity of Saint Joseph on the anniversary of her death. Within the Dominican family and in popular devotion she has been invoked by the blind, by those afflicted with diseases of the eyes, and by servants. She stands as an example of contemplative perseverance and of patience in bodily affliction.