VERDIANA, saint. — Recluse virgin, born at Castelfiorentino in Tuscany (in 1827), to parents of modest means. For some time she served a wealthy relative of hers, belonging to the Attavanti family.
After a pilgrimage to S. Giacomo di Compostella and to the tomb of the Apostles in Rome, she settled in Castelfiorentino in a small cell built beside the oratory dedicated to s. Antonio Abate. She remained there for 34 years in the strictest austerity. It has not been proved that V. belonged to the Vallombrosan Congregation, nor even to the Franciscan Third Order, to which, according to Mariano da Firenze, she was admitted by s. Francesco himself. She died in 1242, or perhaps considerably earlier (1236?), at the age of 64 according to the biographers. V. cell, which was transformed into a chapel; from there her relics were transferred to the church of S. Lorenzo around the year 1378. Clemente VII, on 20 September 1533, approved the liturgical cult of the Saint, whose name was entered in the Roman Martyrology by decree of 3 December 1672. Feast day: 1 February.
Busseto, Genoa, and the Villa di S. Agata (at Vidalenzo, near Busseto). Shortly after the death of his second wife, Giuseppina Strepponi (1897), having gone to Milan to spend the Christmas holidays there, he died of hemiplegia. In addition to his vast and immortal operatic output, comprising around thirty masterpieces, from Oberto (1839) to Falstaff (1893), in which, if not always the whole subject (as in Nabucco, I Lombardi, Giovanna d’Arco), the following stand out—