GAMBACORTA, CHIARA, blessed. — Born at Pisa in 1362 to Pietro G., governor of the city. At the age of seven she was betrothed to the young Simone di Massa; but she had already offered herself to God, fasting, praying, and devoting herself to the service of the most repulsive of the sick. She was barely fifteen when Simone died prematurely: she then cut her hair, abandoned her rich garments, and took refuge in a convent of Poor Clares, where she relinquished her name of Tora (a diminutive of Teodora), assuming that of Chiara. But her brothers, who viewed the young lay sister’s ardent vocation with disfavor, dragged her violently from the convent and kept her prisoner for five months. Yet, faced with their sister’s heroic inflexibility, they finally consented to her entering the Dominican community of Pisa.
The tragedy that shortly thereafter brought ruin upon her noble family reduced her to a state of such acute prostration that her life was despaired of. Once recovered, she wished, with evangelical charity and the noble generosity of her spirit, to assist those very Appiani who had inflicted so much harm on her loved ones. In 1584 she founded the Pisan monastery of S. Domenico, with a very rigorous rule, to which she herself was the first to submit, despite her frail physical constitution, giving a remarkable example of self-denial, zeal, and holiness of life. She died young on 17 April 1419. Pius VIII approved her cult in 1830. Her religious activity and sincere faith are attested by several Lettere (cf. the edition edited by C. Guasti, Livorno 1871), in which a poetic Franciscan simplicity alternates with Caterinian attitudes and cadences.