Blessed Osanna of Mantua

Osanna of Mantua (also "Hosanna") (17 January 1449 – 18 June 1505) was an Italian Dominican tertiary who gained notice as a stigmatic and mystic. Osanna was the daughter of the nobles Niccolò Andreasi, whose family had originated in Hungary, and of Agnese Gonzaga. She was reported to have had a vision of angels at age six. Feeling called to consecrated life, she rejected a marriage arranged by her father. Unable to explain her attraction to religious life to her father, in 1463, at the age of 14, she secretly received the religious habit of the Third Order of St. Dominic. She had been drawn to this Order from her admiration of two members of the Order, Catherine of Siena, and her contemporary, Friar Girolamo Savonarola, who both represented to her lives of strict self-denial. Returning home, Osanna explained that she had made a religious vow and had to wear it until she had fulfilled her promise., which is an ancient custom. She waited 37 years to complete her vows so she could care for her brothers and sisters after the death of her parents. A legend states that Osanna, like Catherine of Siena, miraculously learned to read and write. One day she saw a piece of paper with two words and said, "Those words are 'Jesus' and 'Mary.'" Allegedly, from that time on, anything relating to the spiritual was within her grasp. When Osanna was thirty years old, she received the stigmata on her head, her side and her feet. She also had a vision in which her heart was transformed and divided into four parts. For the rest of her life, she actively experienced the Passion of Jesus, but especially intensely on Wednesdays and Fridays. Osanna confided these things in her biographer and "spiritual son," the Olivetan monk, Dom Jerome of Mount Olivet, as well as the fact that for years, she subsisted on practically no food at all. Osanna was a mystic who would fall into ecstasies whenever she spoke of God, and a visionary who saw images of Christ bearing his cross.