nd relations of St. Thomas of
Canterbury. By this brother's advice she made her profession in the
Cistercian nunnery at Laon, where she died in odor of sanctity in
1192. See Henriquez ad eum annum.

{349}

FEBRUARY IV.

SAINT ANDREW CORSINI

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR.

From his two original lives, written, the one by a disciple, the other
by Peter Andrew Castagna, a friar of his Order, one hundred years after
his death. See the same compiled in Latin by Francis Venturius bishop of
San-Severo, printed at Rome in 1620, in quarto, and abridged by the
elegant Jesuit Maffei.

A.D. 1373.

THIS saint at his baptism was called Andrew, from the apostle of that
name, on whose festival he was born in Florence, in 1302. The family of
the Corsini was then one of the most illustrious of that commonwealth.
This child was the fruit of the prayers of his pious parents, who
consecrated him by vow to God before his birth. But notwithstanding the
care his parents took to instil good principles into him, he spent the
first part of his youth in vice and extravagance, in the company of such
as were as wicked as himself. His devout mother Peregrina never ceased
weeping and praying for his conversion, and one day said to him, with
many sighs, in the bitterness of her grief: "I see you are the wolf I
saw in my sleep;" giving him to understand, that when with child of him
she had dreamed she was brought to bed of a wolf, which running into a
church, was turned into a lamb. She added, that she and her husband had
in a particular manner devoted him, while in the womb, to the service of
God, under the protection of the blessed Virgin; and that in consequence
of his being born not for them, nor for the world, but for God, a very
different kind of life from what he led was expected from him. This
discourse made so strong an impression on his heart, that he went
immediately to the church of the Carmelite friars, and having prayed
there for some time with great fervor before the altar of our Lady, he
was so touched by God, that he took a resolution upon the spot to return
no more to his father's house, but to embrace the religious state of
life professed in that convent. He was readily admitted, in the year
1318, and after a novitiate of a year and some months, during which he
eluded the artifices of his worldly companions, and resolutely rejected
the solicitations of an uncle who sought to draw him back into the
world, he made his so