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375 B. HELEN 375 left hand showed a thread of gold and a little effigy of a lily. She never could read, but knew the office of the Virgin and the Psalter by heart. When she was praying, severiEd times crosses or images came from the altar and placed themselves in her hand, and could not be removed until her ecstasy of some hours was over. She is worshipped in her own order and diocese, on account of her sanctity and miracles. Her story is given by Eazzi and by Pio in their histories of Dominican saints. Castillo, Hist, gen, de Sancto Domingo^ Part 1., bk. iii. ch. 7, p. 456. St. Helen (15), Havydis, of Clair- font. B. Helen (16), duchess of Qalicia, YOLAND (3). BB. Helen (17) and Flora (4), of Todi, March 3. + c. 1310. Two famous courtesans of Todi, converted about the year 1285, by St. Philip Benizi, general of the ServiteS) and shut up by him in a place near the convent of his order, at Porcaria, between Nami and Todi. They observed the rule of the Servites, and attained, through penitence, to such a degree of sanctity as to deserve the vene- ration of the fjEiithful after their death, which happened about the year 1310, in the said convent. This is the earliest con- vent of Servite nuns known with any certainty, although sisters of that order are mentioned during the life of the seven founders. AA,SS,yFrset€r, Helyot. B. Helen (18), April 23, of the Third Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, + 1458. Helen Valentini was bom at Udine, in the province of Friuli, and married at fifteen to Antonio Cavalcanti, a noble knight at Florence, with whom she lived very happily for twenty-seven years. They had many children. When An- tonio died, she cut off her hair, which was very beautiful, and buried it with him. She spent her widowhood in sorrow and devotion in her own house until she heard a sermon from a certain monk of the Hermits of St. Augustine setting forth the advantages of that order and the indulgences to be obtained in it. She took the habit, gave all her money to the poor, and her jewels and fine clothes to the Church of St. LuoY of the same order. She became a mirror of penance, wore a hair shirt, and a crown with iron spikes to remind her of the crown of thorns; she drank vinegar mingled with gall; she com- pelled her maids to tie her hands behind her, and lead her about by a dirty rope tied to her neck. She wore thirty-three pebbles in her shoes as penance for having danced in her youth and in memory of the thirty-three years of Christ's weary walking about on the earth for our advantage. When the festival of the order was held, she went with several other women of the same rule to the Provincial, who, having heard of her great piety, desired her to ask what she would of the order, and it should not be refused her. She answered that she required nothing but a command of perpetual silence, so that it should not be allowed her to speak to any one except by express command of her con- fessor. Notwithstanding her silence and almost perpetual solitude, the devil molested her, by making, a frightful noise in her room while she was at prayer. He afterwards used to appear in a bodily form, chasing her round her room, and beating her until she fell ex- hausted with terror and fiEitigue. Several visions and miracles are recorded in her Life. At her death, the brothers of the order obtained authority to have all the bells in the town rung ; but when they attempted to ring the one which was usually tolled for the death of a criminal, its tongue fell out. The other bells were all rung, and an immense concourse assembled at her house and accompanied her body to the Church of St. Lucy, where it lay for two days. The second night, being the eve of her burial, as two friars were watching the body, she said to them, '^ Do not bury me near the high altar; if you do, I will not stay there; bury me in my own oratory in the corner of the church, and do not keep me longer above ground, but restore earth to earth." AA.SS.^ from her Life by Simone Eomano. B. Helen (19), Sept. 23, called also Lena dall' Oguo (in Latin, ab Oleo), 1462-1520. Helen was the daughter of