Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal (21 page)
The matter turned out to be even worse than the Dominican had first feared. He quickly concluded that the confessors were the real
initiators of the Firrao cult. “Over many repeated hearings, the nuns stated that everything they had learned, said, taught, read and practiced with regard to the life, miracles, extraordinary holiness, veneration, teachings and spirit of the so-called Blessed Mother, had come from the suggestions of the confessors, in particular Padre Leziroli.” And this was in spite of the fact that Leziroli and Peters “knew of Firrao’s conviction and her abjuration,” as well as the fact that she had been banished and prohibited from contacting the nuns. This meant the confessors had knowingly defied a judgment from the highest religious tribunal—a particularly serious offense in the eyes of the Inquisition.
Under questioning, the abbess emphasized how united she and the confessors had been in their veneration of the mother founder. Padre Leziroli always carried with him a cap that had belonged to Firrao, with which he blessed the sick both inside and outside the convent, healing them via the intercession of “saint” Maria Agnese. Sister Maria Giuseppa spoke of several apparitions of the
Beata Madre:
“When the nuns were renewing their vows and taking Holy Communion, the mother founder appeared to Padre Leziroli as he was laying his hand on their heads.” Sister Maria Serafina told how Padre Leziroli had healed a man who had been mortally ill, but was cured through the intercession of Agnese Firrao. Sister Maria Ignazia said: “Padre Leziroli told us nuns that when a padre of the Society of Jesus had been ill, he had taken a little piece of paper with the mother founder’s signature upon it, and torn it into tiny pieces. He gave it to the padre to drink. Then he said that this man was healed by her signature.” The lawyer Franceschetti confirmed that it was the confessors who were really responsible. He also described Padre Peters’s attempts to keep letters from the founder, and the memoir written by Padre Leziroli, out of the Inquisition’s hands.
A glance at Leziroli’s work,
Sulle memorie della vita di Suor Maria Agnese di Gesù
, convinced Sallua of the pivotal role the confessors had played in the Firrao cult. Leziroli wrote repeatedly of the mother founder’s miracles and blessings. “Thus one reads that she flew to heaven, innocent as a newly-baptised child, and later appeared in order to reveal how she had been glorified.”
152
For the Roman Inquisition’s investigating judge, this sealed the question of the confessors’ guilt in the forbidden cult of Firrao. Padre
Leziroli seemed to be the main culprit, while, judging by the witness statements, Padre Peters appeared to be more of an accomplice.
The Inquisition spent more than a year interrogating the nuns, the other witnesses, and the lawyer Franceschetti. By January 1861, Sallua believed the first charge was clearly proven: Maria Agnese Firrao had been venerated as a saint. There were relics; her texts were treated as if they had been inspired by God; she had been the convent’s secret abbess, leading it from exile in Gubbio; she had acted as “mother confessor.” The facts of the matter were clear: this was without doubt the offense of venerating a forbidden saint. Sallua was, of course, assuming that the Inquisition’s judgment of 1816 was still valid. This claim should first have required proof: Leo XII’s brief of 1829, and the chronology of the Regulated Third Order sisters’ reform by Maria Agnese Firrao, cast the story in a rather different light. It could be argued that the cult of Firrao was no longer forbidden. Why did Sallua once again bypass this crucial question? Was it simply to protect the Roman Inquisition from having to admit it had made an error of judgment?
CHAPTER FOUR
“Wash Me Well, for the Padre Is Coming”The Madre Vicaria’s Pretense of Holiness
VISIONS ON THE ROAD TO POWER
Madre Vicaria Maria Luisa’s pretense of holiness was the second of the three main charges considered in the informative process.
1
Over roughly three dozen hearings with the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio, Sallua was repeatedly confronted with this issue, in more or less unconnected statements. And very soon, a focal point emerged: Maria Luisa was said to have had ecstasies, visions, and other supernatural experiences that bordered on mystical translation.
2
The testimonies, particularly those of the older sisters, all agreed that Maria Luisa’s career as a visionary had begun very early. She was taken into the convent as a postulant at the age of thirteen, and received her novice robes in 1847. People spoke of her even then as “a soul particularly favored by God.” During her first year in the convent, Maria Luisa told Maria Veronica, the nun who was then novice mistress (and who later became abbess), that she had had a vision of “the Lord Jesus pierced through with many lances.”
The world of ideas in which this young nun was operating was clearly still influenced by the Sacred Heart of Jesus cult, promulgated by Pius IX. In the nineteenth century this symbol, printed on thousands of holy cards and used enthusiastically in religious instruction, was a standard element of Rome-oriented Catholic faith.
3
But Maria Luisa must soon have started having other, very different, visions. The late abbess, Maria Maddalena, under whose aegis she had entered the convent, seemingly appeared to her frequently. But in her letters from Gubbio, Agnese Firrao cast doubt on the authenticity of these visions. She warned the convent’s superiors about Maria Luisa, urging Padre Leziroli to keep a particularly close eye on her, “because this woman seems to be deceived and betrayed by the devil.” After Agnese Firrao’s death in October 1854, Maria Luisa told the whole convent that the mother founder had appeared to her in a vision, and had “begged her forgiveness for questioning her virtue and favor while she was still alive.”
A few weeks later, in December 1854, the current abbess (Agnese Celeste della Croce) also died. Just a few hours after her death, Maria Luisa went to the novice mistress, Maria Veronica, to report something the dead woman had just told her in a vision: Agnese Celeste della Croce had been too mild and gentle. “For this she would have to spend several years in purgatory, and only the intercession and mercy of the mother founder Maria Agnese could free her. The dead woman said: ‘Above all, the new abbess must ensure strict adherence to the rules.’ Her command was that Maria Veronica should become the new abbess. The novice mistress should become the vicaress, and Maria Luisa should be made novice mistress.” This vision was relayed to Padre Leziroli, who—as the nuns’ testimonies confirm—spoke at length about it to the voters, instructing them that it was “their duty” to do what the vision had commanded. And so Maria Luisa was elected novice mistress, on the basis of a divine command that she alone had received. Maria Veronica became abbess, for which she ultimately had Maria Luisa to thank.
Sister Maria Gesualda was one of the few witnesses who took a skeptical view of these “divine” appointments, and cast doubt on Maria Luisa’s visions. During her witness examination on May 7, 1860, she said:
When I was a novice, Maria Luisa read me part of a letter from the mother founder, in which she reprimanded her for her headaches and visions—things she took for tomfoolery. And in fact, as long as Agnese Celeste della Croce was alive, Maria Luisa was kept in check. But after the deaths of Agnese Firrao and Agnese Celeste
della Croce, Maria Luisa began to speak openly about her supernatural experiences. They included a vision of the mother founder, pleading for forgiveness because she had not believed her. Even as a novice, Maria Luisa showed a desire for power. She said: “let me be mistress for a single hour, and I will make everything right again.”
Three years later, in 1857, the vicaress died. Maria Luisa brought a note to the abbess, Maria Veronica, telling her the Madonna had “dictated this to her and commanded” she give it to the confessor. He should then “proclaim the will of the Virgin to the electoral committee.” The note read: “It is the will of the Blessed Virgin Mary that Maria Luisa should be elected as vicaress, and at the same time remain novice mistress.” Once again, Leziroli completed his task without hesitation, and without calling into question the authenticity of these commands. This time, however, there were difficulties. Some of the nuns resisted; they thought Maria Luisa far too young to take over both convent offices simultaneously, and they doubted the truth of the revelation. But the confessor forced them all “to suppress their judgment and remain silent,” as Sallua put it. He added that a few of the sisters were now well aware of Maria Luisa’s “artfulness.”
A valid election could take place only in the presence of the cardinal vicar, the protector of Sant’Ambrogio.
4
Maria Luisa therefore had another vision of the Virgin Mary, who gave her a message for the cardinal. The Virgin said that if he didn’t come to Sant’Ambrogio on the day of the election, he would be “poisoned with chocolate” at home by a servant who had been possessed by the devil. Satan apparently had a deep hatred of Patrizi, because he had campaigned “so hard for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.” Leziroli also acted as postman on this occasion, and Patrizi did in fact come to Sant’Ambrogio on October 17, 1857, for the election. As was only to be expected, the vote fell just as the Virgin had wished.
5
Maria Luisa had used her visions to put her career plan in Sant’Ambrogio into action. At just twenty-four years of age, she was already novice mistress and vicaress. The next step was to aim for the office of abbess. But for this she would have to wait for the present incumbent to die or step down, or found her own convent.
This accumulation of roles was highly unusual in the history of religious orders: the offices of vicaress (the convent administrator),
and novice mistress (the new sisters’ spiritual leader), weren’t really compatible. The fact that Patrizi gave consent to this double election shows how convinced he was of Maria Luisa’s qualities.
Maria Luisa also used her supernatural gifts to allocate tasks in Sant’Ambrogio, to influence the convent’s philosophy, and, above all, to recruit new blood. A series of younger sisters made corroborating statements to the effect that Maria Luisa had used her hotline to heaven to “entice young women into the convent,” and to decide which of the novices were allowed to profess their vows. A few of the witnesses claimed that the very first time they met, the novice mistress revealed she had seen them in spirit long before they entered the convent, and could thus communicate God’s will to them. Several of them were admitted to the novitiate, or were even clothed, without having fulfilled the necessary requirements.
Maria Crocifissa provided a telling example of this method of recruitment. On April 25, 1860, the twenty-two-year-old nun gave the following statement:
6
I entered this convent thinking that I would leave it again immediately, as one of my sisters was quite ill. But after a few days I changed my mind, which happened by a miracle, as I learned afterwards. When I entered the novitiate, Agnese Eletta, a friend of Maria Luisa’s, told me … that when Maria Luisa had been in the choir at a novena for the Mother Comforter, Jesus Christ had appeared to her. He told her that if I left the convent even for a short time, I would never return. It was His express wish that I remain a nun in this place, and He would therefore show my family special favor if they declared themselves to be in agreement. In confession, Padre Leziroli spoke to me of this same favor, and Maria Luisa’s vision—and he added that he himself had delivered a letter to my home, in which this vision and the favor were mentioned. He said this letter had not been signed, and he had named neither the convent nor the person who had given him the letter. He urged me never to speak of it, and never to say who had written the letter. There is no doubt that this was true, because my mother and my uncle told me of it when they came to the convent.
Maria Luisa also claimed that Christ himself had worn her cloak during a vision. Padre Leziroli preserved this cloak as a contact relic, to
be brought out whenever important decisions had to be made. Some of the novices claimed that, after the reading of the Rule, Maria Luisa “breathed upon” their faces, “to instill in them the spirit of the institute.” In a vision, she herself had been “thrice breathed upon” by the mother founder. Agnese Firrao “thus instilled her spirit in her.” Maria Luisa was drawing on the Bible, where Christ breathes on his disciples, saying “receive ye the Holy Spirit.”
7
This claim was a signal that the founder had passed her authority on to Maria Luisa, in the same way that Christ gave it to his apostles. But once again, Maria Luisa went beyond the biblical paradigm: a single breath, like Jesus, wasn’t sufficient—it had to be three.