Saint Beatrice of Silva

Beatrice of Silva (Campo Maior, Portugal ca. 1424 – Toledo, Castile, 16 August 1492), born Beatriz de Menezes da Silva, was a Portuguese noblewoman who became the foundress of the monastic Order of the Immaculate Conception (known as the Conceptionists). Amadeus of Portugal's younger sister, she is honored as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Beatrice was one of the eleven children of Rui Gomes da Silva, the governor of Campo Maior, Portugal, and of Isabel de Menezes, an illegitimate daughter of Dom Pedro de Menezes, 1st Count of Vila Real and 2nd Count of Viana do Alentejo, in whose army her father was serving at the time of her birth. One of her brothers was Amadeus of Portugal, a noted reformer of the Order of Friars Minor. She was long thought to have been born in the Portuguese enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, where her father was serving as a military commander at that time. Modern research has determined that she was, in fact, born in the family home at Campo Maior. Beatrice was raised in the castle of Infante John, Lord of Reguengos de Monsaraz. In 1447 Beatrice accompanied his daughter, Princess Isabel of Portugal, to Castile as her lady-in-waiting when Isabel left to marry King John II of Castile and became Queen of Castile and León. Beatrice was her good and close friend, (and later was to receive her support when she founded the Conceptionists). Soon, however, her great beauty began to arouse the irrational jealousy of the Queen, who had her imprisoned in a tiny cell. During this incarceration, Beatrice experienced an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which she was instructed to found a new religious order in Mary's honor. Beatrice finally escaped her imprisonment with difficulty and took refuge in the Dominican Second Order monastery of nuns in Toledo. Here she led a life of holiness for thirty-seven years, without becoming a member of that order.