Panacea De' Muzzi

Panacea De' Muzzi (1368–1383) was a young girl martyred at the age of fifteen who was beatified.

Biography Panacea was born in Quarona in 1368, to Lorenzo and Maria Gambino Muzio. With the sudden death of her mother, her father felt his daughter needed a mother and married a woman named Margherita, from Locarno Sesia. She was a widow and mother of one daughter. After the remarriage of her father, Panacea, always devoted to good deeds and care for the sick, began to suffer mistreatment and harassment from the new relatives. It is possible that her charitable activities drew her away from her chores. As described in detail by the most recent biographers, the girl was subjected to the most menial jobs. On one occasion, her father found her badly beaten, but apparently did nothing to intervene.

A spring evening of 1383, Panacea, at the time she was fifteen years old, was far away from home to look after the sheep; her stepmother, not seeing her arrive, went to look for her. She went to the pastures on Mount Tucri overlooking the village and found the girl in prayer in the ancient hermitage of San Giovanni. Furious, Margherita scolded her severely and in the throes of a moment of fury beat Panacea, killing her. Realizing what she had done, Margherita threw herself in despair into a nearby ravine. In the diocese of Novara, her feast day is May 5.