BIOGRAPHY of ST GEMMA GALGANI - Get a Free Blog

say more than this, that there were beasts all round it. How fearful! How ugly it was!' The vision suggested
the making of a resolution: 'With the help of Jesus, I hope never to commit sin again.' This was not an
astonishing resolution for one who considered herself' vile and the fruit of sin.' 'That is my name,' she said.
Gemma carried the exercise of the virtue of humility so far that the very word pride filled her with alarm.
Father Germanus wrote to warn her to be on her guard against pride, and this is how she answered:
'0 my God, do You have pity on me; do You have pity on Thy ungrateful child! It is true, it is indeed true that
pride is in me. Listen, scarcely had I read your letter, and had come to the word pride, when the Devil used it
to cast me almost into despair. For about an hour I felt very miserable. The moment came when I could bear
no more, and I ran away to cast myself before the Crucifix with my head upon the ground. . I asked His
forgiveness repeatedly, and at His holy Feet I asked Him to let me die, but He would not.'
Gemma could climb high up on the mountain of sanctity, because her virtue was solidly founded upon the
rock of humility. Her maxims were: ‘I know that whoever desires to mount very high, slips immediately and
falls again to the plain. ' ‘Jesus drives away from Him all proud souls. ' 'When Jesus desires to elevate a
soul, He first humiliates it greatly.'
LADY POVERTY
Poverty is a sister virtue to humility, and poverty shone so brightly in Gemma that a Franciscan named
Father Gentile Pardini did not hesitate to compare her to St. Francis of Assisi. 'Gemma loved and practiced
poverty like St. Francis,' he said. 'To see her made one think of a little shepherdess who had not a care in the
world.' The words, , a little shepherdess,' was no doubt an allusion to the way she dressed. 'She could not
have gone more poorly dressed,' deposed Sister Julia of St. Joseph. 'Everyone knew her by her poor and
modest little mantle,' said Don Andrew Bartoloni. 'When she had grown up,' her brother Guido declared, ' she
always preferred to dress like a nun.' 'Even as a child,' said her teacher in catechism, Isabel Bastiani, 'she
was indifferent to what she wore, and never once did I hear her talk about clothes. I never saw in Gemma the
little natural defects which one finds in children. As regards this, she appeared to be a grown woman and not
a child; she was as one sees her now in the little picture of her, with her hair parted in the middle, and tied
behind her head with a piece of ribbon. . . . And she wished it to be combed in that way. Whenever Aunt
Cecilia asked her to let her hair come down over her forehead, she would answer: " I like to have my hair this
way.'" And thus she continued to behave. The Gianninis would have been only too pleased to get her
whatever she wanted, but she wanted nothing but her poverty.
Witnesses have described for us the singular manner in which Gemma dressed, but let Don Robert
Andreuccetti speak for all: 'She loved poverty, not making a virtue of necessity, but out of pure love of virtue.
She never complained, and always wore the simplest clothes, that is, a dress, a little mantle, and a straw hat;
all of these were black. In the dyes of the world she appeared ridiculous, but for all that she never altered her
style of dressing.'
We have already quoted the description of her famous mantle, given by one witness. Another witness called
her hat' an antiquated school hat.' She never wanted anything new. Sometimes her aunt at Camaiore sent
her various articles of dress, but these she exchanged for old garments belonging to the elder girls of the
Giannini family. When a new ribbon was bought for her hair, she wore it once out of obedience, but then
immediately took it off. Signor Matthew asked Gemma to help his daughter Euphemia to pass an
examination in French, saying that if she passed he would give Gemma a new dress. 'I shall do my best to
help her pass the examination,' she answered, 'but I do not want the dress.'
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that some people should have asked the Gianninis why they kept a girl
so poorly clothed. 'People used to ask us,' deposed Signora Justina, 'why we were not ashamed to have with
us a girl so simply dressed.'
Basil Morelli, the Giannini butler, declared: , People were astonished that Signora Cecilia should maintain
and go out with a girl who was so poorly dressed as to make herself ridiculous. I heard this spoken about in a
public vehicle.' 'It is not necessary for me to speak about her clothes,' said the lawyer, Joseph Giannini. 'They
seemed ridiculous in their form and simplicity, not to say anything of their poverty. I shouldn't have gone out
with her.'
At the time when Gemma was dividing her day between the ' Mantellate' Nuns and the Giannini household,
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