But it was not fated to be so; her foe had only changed his tactics, and now, although still capable of constant interior acts of devotion, the hitherto gentle girl began, to the amazement of all who knew her, to show herself undocile, rough of speech, and extremely resentful of the Signora Bellini’s unkindness to her. This new development, which was altogether contrary to her own inclinations, only brought upon her the increased anger and dislike of her father, who, together with his wife, proceeded to treat her so harshly as to bring her more than once to the verge of the grave. Beaten, starved, and neglected, the friendless child knew not where to find refuge from her misery save only in God, to whom she had completely given herself.
She was now seven years old, timid and crushed by suffering, but with her heart full of charity and faith; nevertheless, her father, being tempted by the father of lies, fell into the belief that Lucrezia, in revenge for his cruelty to her, was minded to poison him—and so he resolved to murder her. From this intention, however, the tempter, having no mind presumably that Lucrezia should be killed and pass in all her innocence to a better world—dissuaded Bellini, so that he changed his mind and sent her instead to the Convent of San Prosdocimo, in the city of Padua, there to finish her education.
Now, during the latter half of the Fifteenth Century, in Italy it was not unusual to find convents of religious orders in which the strict practice of the rules laid down centuries earlier for their guidance by the holy founders of those same orders had become in the course of time somewhat relaxed. The Rule—the very backbone, so to speak, of a religious community—had grown, through long, indulgent gentleness on the part of Superiors, so mild as to be no longer suitable to the special necessities of the enclosed life; there was too much intercourse allowed with the outer world, the affairs and interests of which had come in consequence to occupy too large a part in the thoughts and natural sympathies of those called by their vocation to lead the higher spiritual existence of the cloister. And so we find that many bishops and abbots and abbesses devoted themselves particularly to the task of bringing back their “houses” to the close observance of their various original “Rules”—Franciscan, Dominican, Benedictine, and others.