The matter ended in her obtaining a judicial separation from the Marquis, who soon became involved in another and even darker iniquity—the case of Madame de Brinvilliers—through his intimacy with the truly diabolical Sainte-Croix; an intimacy that all but obtained him the public services of the executioner.
A Child of Sin—Born 1444—Her Early Peculiarities—Physical Possession by Evil Spirits—Sent to a Convent—A Life of Devotion—Eustochia a Novitiate—A Supernatural Accident—Belief that She Was a Hypocrite—Resignation—The Evil Spirit in Possession-Frightful Torments—Evil Portents—A Sorceress?—Imprisonment—Persecutions by Invisible Powers—Regaining Good Esteem—A Nun—Her Sanctity and Constancy—Her Death and Burial.
The story of her, who was baptised by the name of Lucrezia Bellini and is now revered by the Church under that of Eustochia, which she assumed on becoming a Benedictine nun, in the year 1461, is one of the very strangest that even the Italian Quattrocento has to show. For it is the story of a child of sin who was tormented all her days by the Adversary of mankind, and who was yet a saint.
In these, our own latter days, when the world at large is recovering somewhat from the prolonged epidemic of materialism from which it had been suffering during the greater part of the Nineteenth Century, the fact of supernatural “possession” is coming to be recognised by many of the strongest scientific intellects as the only possible and rational explanation of certain among the numerous cases of mental perversity that fill our modern prisons and asylums. Even—so I have been given to understand—the “Salpêtrière” itself has been known to express opinions favourable to the theory of possession in some instances. So that the story of Eustochia may not be deemed to be unworthy of attention—even by those persons who ordinarily find it difficult to believe anything unless it has already received the endorsement of their fellow-creatures’ belief.
The natural daughter of a dissolute citizen of Terra di Gemola in the Veneto, Lucrezia was born in shame and secrecy in the year 1444, at Padua, and was sent at once to her father, Bartolomeo Bellini, at Gemola. Bartolomeo Bellini was, alas! a married man with a lawful wife and family of his own; none the less, he received the child with some show of gladness and immediately saw to her being properly baptised, giving her the name of Lucrezia; after which he handed her over to a nurse under whose care the little Lucrezia remained until she was four years old, when Bellini sent for her to come and live with him and his family in his own house. By this time she had become very pretty, as well as being already endowed with considerable charm and brightness of spirit.