Elena Valentinis

Elena Valentinis (1396 - 23 April 1458) was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious from the tertiaries of the Order of Saint Augustine.

[4] In her adolescence in 1411 she married the Florentine knight Antonio del Cavalcanti and the pair had six children - three males and three females.

Valentinis later attended a sermon that Fra Angelo da San Severino gave at the Augustinian church of Santa Lucia and decided then and there to join the order.

[4] Valentinis became bedridden in 1455 after fracturing both her femurs in a fall and she preferred a pallet of stones and straw to an actual bed.

[3] Her local 'cultus' - otherwise known as popular veneration to her - received official ratification from Pope Pius IX on 27 September 1848 which allowed for him to issue his approval for her beatification.