Ubaldesca Taccini

About Ubaldesca Taccini

Ubaldesca Taccini was a woman of medieval Pisa remembered for caring for sick people. Ubaldesca Taccini is venerated as a saint by the Order of Malta, which includes her among the women remembered in its religious family.

The local account places her birth in Calcinaia in 1136 and her death in Pisa. That birth year belongs to the received chronology; it is not established by a contemporary birth record in the sources reviewed here.

Historian Kristjan Toomaspoeg, drawing on Gabriele Zaccagnini’s study of her life, challenges the familiar account that she entered the Hospitallers as a professed nun. He identifies her instead with a community of penitential women, probably following the Benedictine Rule. According to this research, her community became attached to the Order after her death. Later Hospitaller accounts therefore preserve the history of her veneration, but cannot simply be read as contemporary evidence of her institutional membership.

The Order’s liturgical calendar remembers Ubaldesca through her care for the sick. It describes many years of service in an infirmary at Pisa, interpreting that work as love of God expressed through care for other people. The calendar also names her a patroness of the city. Its account belongs to the Order’s devotional remembrance of her, rather than resolving the questions raised by modern historians about the community in which she lived.

In Pisa, local memory also connects Ubaldesca with the church of Santo Sepolcro. The municipal history describes her care for pilgrims and points out a small well traditionally associated with her. It recounts an angelic vision while she was baking bread and a story in which water became wine after her blessing. These are devotional legends. Their survival shows how the city remembered her generosity; they should not be mistaken for independently verified events.

The early life survives through an indirect textual history. Toomaspoeg explains that Zaccagnini’s reassessment drew on a sixteenth-century translation of a now-lost biography, together with other previously unpublished material. His discussion places her death in 1205 or 1206. The uncertainty is a reason to avoid giving an exact chronology where the surviving evidence does not support one.

Her veneration also acquired a documented place in Malta. Historian Giovanni Scarabelli describes Grand Master Ugo de Loubens Verdala’s request to Pisa for a relic in 1586. Relics were formally examined and entrusted to representatives of the Order for transfer to Valletta. In September that year, Sixtus V permitted an office in her honor at the conventual church of Saint John, with the observance on May 28. This authorization concerned her cult in that church; it should not be treated as the date of a universal canonization.

Calcinaia continues to honor Ubaldesca as its patron saint. Its municipal programme for 2026 announced a procession with a relic, worship in the church of San Giovanni Battista and a historic rowing regatta in her honor. The programme listed a solemn Mass on May 28 to commemorate her passing. Such observances keep her memory within the shared life of the town, as well as within the religious tradition that has carried her name beyond it.