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78 78 B. ANTONIA pattern nnn. At sixty-Bix she was sent with others to reform the convent of St. Catherine at Ferrara. There she was nnanimously chosen prioress. She governed so well that that convent was soon remarkable for sanctity, and several of her nnns were sent to reform other convents. Several of them are num- bered among the saints; they are BB. Veronica, who died July ♦>, 1511 ; Ce- cilia, who died loll ; Angela (6) Serafina, who died 1512 ; Paula Spez- ZANi, who died Aug. 18, 1 509 ; Perpetua Sardi; and Costanza. Antonia was humble and self-denying, but strict, and at one time some discontented subordi- nates succeeded in deposing her; but the old nuns remonstrated, and had her reinstated. She died in 1507, at the age of a hundred, and was honoured thenceforth as a saint. AAJSS, Eazzi, Predicatori. Pio, Uomini lllustri per Saniiia, B. Antonia (8), or Antoinette d'Orleans, April 22. +1618. Marquise de Belle Isle. Founder of the Bane- dictines of Mount Calvary. She was daughter of the Duke of Longueville, and related to the royal family of France. She married the Marquise de Belle Isle, eldest son of the Duke of Retz, and was left a widow while still young and beau- tiful. She took the veil, at the age of tweuty-seveh, in a Cistercian monastery at Toulouse, where she was buried. She ■founded the nunnery of SS. Mary and ScHOLASTicA, at Poiticrs, and, on be- coming abbess there, restored the primi- tive strictness of the rule of St. Benedict The members of this reformed rule are called the Congregation of Benedictine Nuns of Mount Calvary. Gu^nebault, Diet. (VIcon. AA,SS., April 22, Prseter. Butler's LtV*, note to " St. Benedict," March 21. Henriquez, Lilia, St. Antoniana,,M. with St. Antiga. St. Antonina (l), May 3, V. M. Called "the Disguised," to distinguish her from two other martyrs of the same name. Represented wearing a veil, to indi- cate disguise. At Coustantinople, in the persecution under Diocletian and Maxi- mian, e. 8(^ she was condemned by I Festus, the governor, to the lowest de- gradation. Alexander, a soldier, changed clothes with her, and thus enabled her to escape from the infamous place in which she was. Both were taken, their hands cut off, and they were burned to death. The story of SS. Theodora and Didymus is almost identical with this ; the incident, in their case, happened at Alexandria during the same persecution. St. Ambrose, writing in the 4th century, tells the story with some amplifications, laying the scene at Antioch. He says that file young woman, being ordered to choose between abjuring her religion and being sent to the lupanar^ said, " What I lose by force and against my will is not my sin, and my Lord will not account me polluted if my heart is pure, but if I renounce Him and sacrifice to idols, that which I keep at such a price will profit me nothing.** So they took her to a place resorted to by the wicked. One of her guards changed clothes with her, and she es- caped in safety. Soon afterwards some wicked men came into the room where she had been, and finding a man in her stead, thought the place was bewitched. They said, " Did not the governor send a woman here in this very dress ? Who knows what metamorphosis may befall us if we stay? Lot us escape out of this house while we know what wo are.*' The pious fraud was soon discovered. The soldier was brought before the governor, who condemned him to death for aiding the escape of a prisoner under his care. The Christian maiden, hear- ing of it, came and begged to be put to death instead. The governor seemed willing to consent. The soldier, how- ever, entreated that the sentence already pronounced against him might be exe- cuted, and the woman liberated. The governor said that as they were so anxious to die they might be gratified. Accordingly both were burnt. B.M. Oolden Legend. Quintaduenas says Alexander and Antonina were natives of Ocana, near Madrid, and suffered about the year lOo. The Spanish and other hagiologists occasionally claim as compatriots the saints and martyrs who have become popular among them ; this doubtless