Late Middle Ages (14th–15th century)
Feast: March 9
A Roman noblewoman who wanted to be a nun, was married off instead, and discovered that holiness could be built around a family dinner table.
Frances Bussa de’ Ponziani wanted to enter a convent. Her father wanted her married. She was thirteen when she wed Lorenzo de’ Ponziani, a wealthy Roman nobleman. She spent the first year of her marriage crying. Then she discovered that her sister-in-law Vannozza shared her desire for a devout life, and the two women began praying together, visiting the poor, and nursing the sick — while still managing their households, raising children, and fulfilling their social obligations. Frances buried two of her children during plague epidemics. She survived the sack of Rome by Ladislaus of Naples, which destroyed part of her family’s property and took her son hostage. Through all of it, she kept the household running and kept serving. She reportedly could see her guardian angel walking beside her, providing light when she read at night. After Lorenzo’s death in 1436, she finally got her wish — she joined the community of oblates she had founded years earlier at Tor de’ Specchi. She lived there only four years before dying in 1440. She became the patron saint of motorists because of the angel’s light — the logic being that the angel illuminated her path, as headlights do for drivers.