ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates Cantelma's motivations for establishing this monastery, her role as its founder and the unique status of the Augustinian canonesses under whom the convent was administered. As many scholars have shown, by the early sixteenth century, the founding of a monastery on the part of wealthy aristocratic widows was a popular personal and public commemorative act and there are numerous examples of monasteries founded by women in this period. Lucrezia's activities at San Benedetto would certainly have been known to Isabella dEste and Margherita Cantelma, since all women moved in the same social networks. Lucrezia della Mirandola maintained a house in Mantua and left substantial bequests to the Franciscan Convent of Corpus Christi and to the Church of San Giovanni delle Carrette in Mantua. The foundation documents for the Cantelma monastery show that it was indeed founded under the jurisdiction of St Bartholomew in Mantua, with the permission of the Lateran Canons at the provincial headquarters in Piacenza.
