Beatrice was one of the eleven children of , the governor of
Campo Maior, Portugal, and of Isabel de Menezes, an illegitimate daughter of
Dom Pedro de Menezes, 1st Count of Vila Real and 2nd
Count of Viana do Alentejo, in whose army her father was serving at the time of her birth. One of her brothers was
Amadeus of Portugal, a noted reformer of the
Order of Friars Minor. She was long thought to have been born in the Portuguese enclave of
Ceuta in
North Africa, where her father was serving as a military commander at that time. Modern research has determined that she was, in fact, born in the family home at Campo Maior. Beatrice was raised in the castle of
Infante John, Lord of Reguengos de Monsaraz. In 1447 Beatrice accompanied his daughter, Princess
Isabel of Portugal, to Castile as her
lady-in-waiting when Isabel left to marry King
John II of Castile and became
Queen of Castile and León. Beatrice was her good and close friend, (and later was to receive her support when she founded the
Conceptionists). Soon, however, her great beauty began to arouse the irrational jealousy of the Queen, who had her imprisoned in a tiny cell. During this incarceration, Beatrice experienced an
apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which she was instructed to found a new
religious order in Mary's honor. Beatrice finally escaped her imprisonment with difficulty and took refuge in the
Dominican Second Order monastery of
nuns in Toledo. Here she led a life of holiness for thirty-seven years, without becoming a member of that order. Beatrice died in the monastery she had founded on 16 August 1492. Her remains are still venerated in the chapel of that monastery. ==Legacy==