BEMBO, ILLUMINATA. - A Poor Clare of rare learning and virtue, daughter of Lorenzo Bembo, Venetian senator. In 1432 she took the habit of St. Clare in the monastery of Corpus Domini in Ferrara. In 1456, with St. Caterina and fourteen other nuns, she went to Bologna to found there the monastery of Corpus Domini, of which she was subsequently abbess three times.
In 1469 she wrote the Specchio d'illuminazione on the life of St. Caterina da Bologna (autograph manuscript in the monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna), in which, continually referring to her community of life with the saint, rather than presenting an orderly biography, she sets forth her virtues and examples.
The date of her death is uncertain: the Franciscan Martyrology, which calls her blessed, places it in 1496; others in 1493 or 1483.