MONTALDI, PAOLA, Blessed. - Clarisse nun, b. at Volta Mantovana in 1443, d. 18 Aug 1514. As a girl she was called the “little saint.” At the age of 14, in 1458, she entered the monastery of S. Lucia in Mantua, belonging to the Urbanist branch of the Clarisse, where she soon attained high mystical peaks, with ecstasies and raptures. Her fellow nuns elected her abbess, to their great spiritual profit. As her fame for holiness spread, many came to seek her prayers and advice. Pius IX approved her cult on 6 Oct 1866.
BIBL.: A. Baccanti, Vita e gesta della b. P. M., monaca professa nel monastero di S. Lucia in Mantova, Casalmaggiore 1772; Positio super cultu imm., Rome 1866, and Super Officio et Missa, 1867; Analecta iuris pontificii, 9 (1867), cols. 390-91; Acta SS. Octobris, VI, Paris 1869, pp. 207-25; P. Leone, Aureola serafica, IV, Quaracchi 1900, pp. 211-13; Wadding, Annales, ad ann. 1380, n. 31, 1460, n. 31, 1514, n. 11; Martyrologium Franciscum, Vicenza 1939, 18 Aug. Felice da Mareto