ABSTRACT
The Franciscan hagiographer Vito da Cortona recorded in his vita of a Florentine holy woman Umiliana de’Cerchi (1219–1246) that one day she was deeply troubled as she had had her ability to weep taken away:
But God wanted to reveal her fervor and did not give himself, whom she awaited with such longing, to her so quickly; rather he showed her a certain hardness, for she was unable to weep at her devotions. She could not bear this and applied quicklime to her own eyes, so that she thought that she had blinded herself. She did this so that God, moved by pity, would grant her pious tears, and, well knowing herself, feared that this had happened because of the vice of her eyes. And because she sometimes lamented the death of her kin, she vowed to God that she would never weep in future unless because of the memory of her own sins or because of the grace of God or the Passion of the Lord. After a few days, God poured out on her such a great grace of tears that they seemed not tears but rivers. 1
