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| Saint Zita | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1218, Monsagrati |
| Died | April 27, 1272, Lucca |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Canonized | 1696 |
| Major shrine | Basilica di San Frediano, Lucca |
| Feast | April 27 |
| Attributes | Bag, keys |
| Patronage | Lost keys, maids, servents, waiters |
| A short hymn or prayer | Dear follower of the Son of God, you desired to become a servant and died the death of a slave. You were not only a faithful maid-servant but a practical lover of the poor. Like Mary you could have said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Prompt domestics to be just and charitable, seeing in their employers children of God and setting an example for them as servants of God. Amen|
Saint Zita (c. 1212 - 27 April 1272) is the patron saint of maids and domestic servants. She is also appealed to in order to help find lost keys.
She was born in Tuscany, Italy, in the village of Monsagrati, not far from Lucca where, at the age of 12, she became a servant in the Fatinelli household. She was unjustly despised, overburdened, reviled, and often beaten by her employers and fellow servants for her hard work and obvious goodness. The incessant ill-usage, however, was powerless to deprive her of her inward peace, her love of those who wronged her, and her respect for her employers. By this meek and humble self-restraint she at last succeeded in overcoming the malice of her fellow-servants and her employers, so much so that she was placed in charge of all the affairs of the house. Her faith had enabled her to persevere against their abuse, and her constant piety gradually moved the family to a religious awakening.
She used often to say to others that devotion is false if slothful. She considered her work as an employment assigned her by God, and as part of her penance; and obeyed her master and mistress in all things as being placed over her by God. She always rose several hours before the rest of the family and employed in prayer a considerable part of the time which others gave to sleep. She took care to hear mass every morning with great devotion before she was called upon by the duties of her station, in which she employed the whole day with such diligence and fidelity that she seemed to be carried to them on wings, and studied when possible to anticipate them.
The story goes that she gave her own food or that of her master to the poor. On one morning, Zita left her chore of baking bread to tend to someone in need. Some of the other servants made sure the Fatinelli family was aware of what happened. When they went to investigate, they claimed to have found angels in the Fatinelli kitchen, baking the bread for her.
St. Zita died peacefully in the Fatinelli house on April 27, 1272. It is said that a star appeared above the attic where she slept at the moment of her death. She was 60 years old, and had served and edified the family for 48 years. By her death, she was venerated by the family. After one hundred and fifty miracles wrought in the behalf of such as had recourse to her intercession were juridically proved, she was canonized in 1696.
Her feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is April 27. To this day, families bake a loaf a bread in celebration of St. Zita's feast day.
Notes
- Butler states that: “she happily expired on the 27th of April, in 1272, being sixty years old.” If he is correct, her date of birth becomes 1212 or 1211, rather than the c. 1215 which we give. The Catholic Encyclopedia prefers 1271 as the year of her death but is silent on her age at that point and on when she was born.
- So Butler asserts, rather baldly.
References
- (Online edition hosted by Eternal Word Television Network *.) This is a straightforward piece of nineteenth-century popular hagiography. It cites its sources thus: “See her life, compiled by a contemporary writer, and published by Papebroke, the Bollandist, on the 27th of April, p. 497, and Benedict XIV De Canoniz. lib. ii. c. 24, p. 245.”
- St. Zita from the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. (Online edition hosted by New Advent). It states as sources: "The earliest biography of the saint is preserved in an anonymous manuscript belonging to the Fatinelli family which was published at Ferrara in 1688 by Monsignor Fatinelli, ‘Vita beatfZitf[sic virginis Lucensis ex vetustissimo codice manuscripto fideliter transumpta’. For his fuller ‘Vita e miracoli di S. Zita vergine lucchese’ (Lucca, 1752) Bartolomeo Fiorito has used this and other notices, especially those taken from the process drawn up to prove the immemorial cult."
Further reading
- Recipe for St. Zita's Bread from Cook's Blessings, The by Demetria Taylor, Random House, New York, 1965. (Actually a perfectly modern recipe: it makes no claims to resemble loaves made in thirteenth-century Lucca.)
- St. Zita is a short account of Zita’s life published by St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, Picayune, MS, USA. It gives no sources.
- (Online edition hosted by The Order of the Magnificat of the Mother of God * from the Monastery of the Apostles, Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada.) This book for children is a “compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources.”
1212 births | 1272 deaths | Natives of Tuscany | Italian saints | Medieval women
"Zita"