PIERANTONI, LIVIA. - In religion Sister Agostina, b. at Pozzaglia (Perugia) on 27 March 1864, d. at Rome on 13 Nov. 1894.
Having entered the Sisters of Charity in 1886, she was assigned to the Arciospedale of S. Spirito in Sassia, as head of the tuberculosis ward, where she showed toward all an admirable patience and charity and where she wished to remain despite being stricken by the disease and often mistreated and reviled by some of those patients. One of these, convalescent but discharged for wicked conduct, persuaded that it was Sister Agostina who had reported him, decided to take revenge; having entered the hospital unseen, he waited in ambush for his victim and struck her with seven dagger blows, piercing her heart. Sister Agostina had an extraordinary funeral; but it was the beneficent memory of her virtues that led to the beginning of the beatification processes. Her cause was introduced in 1946.
Bibliography2 works
Celestino Testore
his introduction to study (Op., 47: PL 145, 710-715 ccc.) which he began at Ravenna and then perfected at Faenza and at Parma (Op., 51, 13: ibid. 145, 762; Op., 45, 6: ibid. 145, 699-700).
Later he himself acquired a name in teaching, but for a short time, because he entered the hermitage of Fonte Avellana (v.) around the year 1035 (Ep. Agneti imp., cit.). His personality imposed itself in the small group of hermits who lived there; he was requested as a speaker by the abbey of Pomposa, by the monastery of S. Vincenzo di Petra Pertusa and by others and, when he returned to his hermitage of Fonte Avellana, he was elected prior there around 1043 (Vita, 6-7: PL 144, 123-25).
There then originated the wonderful flourishing of this hermitage, which began to propagate daughter houses in the Marches, Umbria, Romagna, Abruzzo, and to give rise to an eremitical Congregation of Camaldolese inspiration, though autonomous in itself (Ep., VI, 32: ibid. 144, 429; Op., 15, prol.: ibid. 145, 335).
Afflicted by the ills of the Church, of which the most evident were simony and the immorality of the clergy, he entered into relations with Gregory VI, the first pope who gave hope of a reform (Ep., I, 1, 2: ibid. 144, 205-207). The injunctions of the emperor Henry III, who wanted him as a collaborator of the German pope Clement II, overcame the last reluctances of his soul, yearning only for contemplation and the mystical life (Ep., 1, 3: ibid. 144, 207-208; Op., 19, 5: ibid. 145, 432); and his work in favor of the Church took concrete forms at the time of Leo IX (1049-54), under whom he wrote the two most famous treatises, the Gratissimus (Op., 6: PL 145, 99-156 and MGH, Libelli, I, ed. L. de Heinemann, Hannover 1891, pp. 15-75) and the Gomorrianus (Op. 7: PL 145, 159-90), although some friction with the Pontiff did not always facilitate his cooperation in the reform (Ep., I, 4: ibid. 144, 208-209). His activity (Ep., I, 5: ibid. 144, 209-10) resumed with Victor II (1055-57), until with Stephen IX (1057-58) he was created, against his will, cardinal bishop of Ostia (Op., 19, prol.: ibid. 145, 423). His friend Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII, thus succeeded in having him at his side in the struggle undertaken. And with him he was present at Siena at the election of Nicholas II (1059-61), set against the intruder Benedict X (Ep., I, 7, 8; ibid. 144, 210-13). Under Nicholas II he carried out his first mission at Milan (1059) for the reform of that Church and of others in Lombardy, and he applied there his theory, not entirely exact in its formulation, but orthodox in its practical conclusions, on the validity of the ordinations of simo-