Sperandia was born at Gubbio in Umbria in 1216. Tradition holds that she may have been a foundling, for the name "Sperandea" — "she who is to hope in God" — was commonly given to abandoned infants; popular memory in Gubbio also claims her as a kinswoman of the great bishop Saint Ubald Baldassini, though no document confirms it. Whatever her origin, her whole life would prove an unfolding of the hope written into her name. Accounts of her childhood say that she was drawn early to prayer and the practice of virtue, and that the comforts of home soon became a hindrance to the life of penance to which she felt God calling her.
While still young she left everything and withdrew to the solitude of a grotto on Monte Acuto, above Gubbio, where she gave herself to prayer, fasting, and hard penance offered for sinners. Tradition adds that in this hidden life she received visions and revelations; one account relates that she was instructed to clothe herself in a tanned pigskin worn with the bristles against her flesh and girded with a chain — a harsh mortification she accepted without complaint, hiding heroic austerity under the appearance of a poor, strange garment.
After these hidden years she was moved to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to walk where Christ had walked. The ten years that followed she spent as a wayfarer for God, visiting the holy places, the shrines of Rome, and sanctuaries throughout Italy. She did not travel in silence: passing through the villages of Umbria and the March of Ancona, she exhorted the people who gathered around her to conversion and penance, so that her pilgrimage became an apostolate.
Her wandering ended at Cingoli, near Macerata, where she asked admission to the small Benedictine monastery of San Michele. The abbess, it is said, recognized her sanctity at once and received her. Within the cloister Sperandia distinguished herself by exact observance, by charity toward her sisters, and by an ascetical life pursued with conscientious steadiness rather than display. In time the community elected her abbess, and she governed them for many years, joining the care of souls and of temporal affairs to the same penance she had practiced alone on the mountain.
A beloved legend of Cingoli tells that in the middle of January, when laborers came hungry to the monastery and there was nothing to give, Sperandia obtained from divine providence a basket of fresh, delicious cherries, which she distributed to the townspeople out of season. The wonder is remembered in the painting by Pier Simone Fanelli preserved in the church of Santa Sperandia at Cingoli, which shows an angel presenting the nun with a basket of cherries — an image of the God who feeds the poor through the hands of those who hope in Him.
Strengthened by the prayers of her community, Sperandia died at Cingoli on 11 September 1276, passing from this world in a manner her sisters found deeply edifying, with an odor of sanctity said to have filled the whole convent. The grateful townspeople, who had lived under the shelter of her prayers and penances, soon claimed her as patron of their city; she is venerated at Cingoli together with Saints Exuperantius and Bonfilius.
Her tomb became a place of wonder. Her body was first examined two years after her death and found fresh and beautiful; it was placed in a new coffin and enshrined beneath the high altar of the convent church. It was inspected again in 1482 in the presence of the bishop, and in 1525 translated to a chapel built expressly for her relics. Further recognitions followed in 1635, 1768, 1834, and 1870, and at the last examination in 1952 the body was reported still intact, flexible, and fragrant, the skin dry but of natural color — a preservation the pilgrims of Cingoli reverently call a "Miracolo Permanente," a permanent miracle.
Her cult was approved in 1635. The monastery of San Michele was afterward renamed for her, and her remains rest in the adjoining church dedicated to her. Lorenzo Lotto painted her in his 1539 altarpiece, the Madonna del Rosario, made for the church of San Domenico at Cingoli: she stands holding lilies and a crucifix between the kneeling Saints Exuperantius and Peter of Verona. Each August the faithful climb to the Grotte di Santa Sperandia on Monte Acuto, to pray where she first hid herself with God. Her feast is kept on 11 September, and in some calendars on 11 August.
May Saint Sperandia obtain for us the hope her very name proclaims, and move us today to one hidden act of penance and one unseen work of charity for the poor at our door.
