Paolo Ricordati had asked for. She expected recognition of others for being the recipient of extraordinary grace and was to be sadly disappointed. Nothing had changed, and for two years, Benedetta suffered in the quiet obscurity of a monastic communal life of prayer, fasts, and manual work. In 1617, her visions resumed. But instead of encounters with Jesus and angels, Benedetta now was pursued at night by handsome young men who wanted to kill her and who beat her all over with iron chains, swords, sticks, and other weapons. She also experienced excruciating physical pain. The men in her visions urged her to come with them and leave the Theatines, telling her by persevering in her monastic life she would only make herself ill without being certain of the salvation of her soul. One of them even asked Benedetta to be his bride, and when she refused, he tried to take her with brute force. The attacks took place several times a week and lasted for six to eight hours. One night, instead of enduring the visions, Benedetta called other nuns for help. After that, her superiors assigned her a young companion, Bartolomea Crivelli, to help her in her battles with the devil. Bartolomea was to share Benedetta's cell and to keep an eye on her at all times. If at this point the confessor and the mother superior had any further concerns about the validity of Benedetta's claims, they did not voice them. Instead, the convent was now seen as being graced by the presence of a mystic whose body was the battleground between supernatural forces. The confessor and mother superior became extremely solicitous of her welfare and, because of her weakened condition, excused her from participation in many of the daily routines of the community. In 1618, construction of a new monastery building was coming to a close. The resettlement to the new convent building was a solemn procession. Benedetta walked in an ecstatic trance, seeing the angels of Pescia paying homage to her and scattering flowers along her path as if she were the image of St. Dorothy, the patron saint of Pescia, which was being paraded in its annual procession through town. Once they arrived at the gates of the convent, the Madonna greeted her and gave her companion two guardian angels. No one other than Benedetta could see the flowers and angels, but many citizens