BEMBO, Illuminata. — A Clarissan of rare culture and virtue, daughter of Lorenzo Bembo, a Venetian senator. In 1432 she entered the habit of St Clare in the monastery of Corpus Domini in Ferrara. In 1456, together with St Catherine and fourteen other nuns, she went to Bologna to found the monastery of Corpus Domini there, of which she was later three times abbess.
In 1469 she wrote the *Specchio d’illuminazione* on the life of St Catherine of Bologna (an autograph in the monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna), in which, continually recalling her own life in communion with the saint, rather than weaving an orderly biography, she sets forth the virtues and examples of her subject.
The date of her death is uncertain: the Franciscan Martyrology, which calls her blessed, places it in 1496, while others give 1493 or 1483.