St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) spent her years from sixteen to nineteen in voluntary enclosure in a small room of her parents' house in Siena, taking the Dominican habit but living as a recluse. At the end of these three years, on the last Sunday of Carnival 1366 or 1367, she received a great vision in which Christ formally espoused her in mystical marriage.
Mary, with David playing the harp, Paul and John, and Dominic, witnessed the ceremony. Christ placed on Catherine's finger a ring set with a great diamond surrounded by four pearls. The ring remained invisible to all others throughout her life, but Catherine herself perceived it on her finger always and could see it physically. After the espousal, she emerged from enclosure into the immense public ministry that would consume her remaining years — letters to popes and princes, nursing the plague-stricken, mediation of Italian wars, the return of the Papacy from Avignon to Rome. The vision is recorded in detail by her confessor Bl. Raymond of Capua in the Legenda Maior.