Cecilia Ferrazzi (1609 – 17 January 1684) was an Italian Counter-Reformation Catholic mystic whose life was extensively involved with the establishment and maintenance of women's houses of refuge in seventeenth century Italy.
[1] Unfortunately, her plans went astray due to the sudden death of her parents and most of her family during a plague epidemic, apart from her younger sister, Maria, who did enter a convent and rose to high clerical rank within her chosen Carmelite order.
[4] While her clerical associates lauded her piety, her secular charges were not as impressed, and many complained about the alleged lack of adequate housing, constant poverty, abusive punishment and Ferrazzi's own authoritarianism.
On reaching a verdict in 1665, the presiding ecclesiastical authorities decided that Ferrazzi was engaging in 'feigned sanctity,' impersonating saintly attributes.
'[6] Given her affluent Italian background, Schutte argued that Ferrazzi may have been literate, and tried to shape public perceptions of her own social role, piety and religious vocation through active emulation of near-contemporaries such as Saint Teresa of Avila.