BEATRICE de SILVA MENESES, blessed. – Born in Ceuta (1424) to Portuguese nobility. Sister of Blessed Amedeo. A lady-in-waiting to Isabella of Portugal, queen of Castile from 1447, she withdrew some time later to the Cistercian monastery of Toledo. In this city, in 1484, she founded the Order of the Conceptionists, approved by Innocent VIII (1489). She died in 1490 (or, according to others, in the summer of 1491). Her cult was approved on 28 July 1926. The Franciscan Order celebrates her feast on 18 August.
BIBL.: E. Gelin, Relatio de vita et virtutibus b. Beatricis de S., in Acta Ordinis Pratum Minorum, 28 (1909), pp. 467-470; AAS, 18 (1926), pp. 496-99; R. Conde, Vida de la b. Beatriz de S., 1931; C. Silva-Tarouca, s. V. ENOCH. Ital., VI, p. 446. Giovanni Meseguer