VALMARANA, DEIANIRA (Dianira). — Foundress of the Congregation of the Dimesse or Modeste, young women or widows of the Venetian state, born in Vicenza in 1549, died there on 3 February 1603.
After the death of her husband and son, in 1572 she donned the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis and withdrew to a religious life in her own house with four other ladies under the direction of the Observant Franciscan friar Antonio Pagani. Her widowed cousin Angela V. followed her example, retiring to a house adjoining Deianira’s with other pious women. For the two houses, Fr. Pagani wrote common rules, which were approved in 1584 by the bishop of Vicenza and by the apostolic visitor Cardinal Agostino Valerio, bishop of Verona. The institute came to be called that of the Dimesse or Modeste. The members lived in community, taught catechism to women, and assisted the sick in hospitals. They were permitted to leave the Congregation to marry.