Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
In another letter from the Madonna, Francesca had to say “that the Lord placed Maria Luisa’s soul in the hands of Father Confessor Peters; indeed, as he slept, his soul would be transported to paradise and united with the soul of Maria Luisa.” Other letters from the Virgin were written in response to the Jesuit padre’s replies. From these, Maria Francesca gleaned “that Padre Peters was asking the Virgin to tell him why he had thus far been unable to feel any good effects from such a union. On the contrary, he had felt his emotions become rebellious, and other evil effects. Maria Luisa answered in the name of the Madonna, demanding that he submit to her. This was simply the way it was, and nothing bad was in it. Then I illustrated this union with the symbol of an eagle carrying a dove, and with two lit candles, the better one lending the weaker one its warmth.”
Further letters revealed exactly what was meant by this union of the confessor and the novice mistress.
These letters said that Padre Peters was an extraordinary servant of this soul (this was the Madonna speaking). He kissed her in the mouth, and through this act God disclosed himself to her in extraordinary ways. They said Padre Peters, or the Lord, kissed her on the heart, and that there was a special connection between hand and heart. The Madonna also ordered him to give Maria Luisa the extraordinary blessing, which I did not understand—but I learned that this meant the permission or the command that the Madonna gave to Peters, as eternal father and protector of this soul, so that she might visit her accompanied by Jesus Christ.
This
bacio in bocca
, the kiss in the mouth, was nothing less than a divine injunction to perform a French kiss. Catholic moral doctrine
strictly forbade this kind of kissing, viewing it as the expression of unbounded lust and animal instincts. Not even a husband and wife were permitted such an intimacy. And here the Mother of God was inviting Peters, an educated theologian, to dispense special heavenly gifts and blessings via a French kiss. This was completely unheard of, and must have aroused his suspicion.
And other letters contained similar commands—as always, written in the name of a guardian angel, Jesus Christ, or the Madonna. “The love of Padre Peters for God has grown so great that, if he presses this soul (
Maria Luisa
) to his heart, he will receive an extraordinary communion.” And Francesca went on: “I wrote this several times. Nothing was explained in more detail in the letters; they just said ‘you understand,’ and other such things.”
Maria Luisa was clearly inviting Padre Peters to initiate sexual contact with her. But the Jesuit apparently didn’t understand—or perhaps refused to understand—these ambiguous invitations. The heavenly letters expressed Maria Luisa’s disappointment over this in no uncertain terms, as Maria Francesca related.
“A few months previously, Peters had spent the night in the convent, to care for Maria Agostina, who then died. At that time I wrote Peters a letter in the name of the guardian angel, which said: ‘You have not become acquainted with your first-born daughter: the Lord did not arrange your stay in the convent so that you might care for Maria Agostina, but so that He might disclose Himself to you in an extraordinary way through his first-born daughter.’ ” In plain English: this death gave you the unique chance to spend the night in the convent, but instead of coming to my cell, you wasted your time on the Office for the Dead. Over the period that followed, Maria Luisa staged several illnesses, which were announced to the confessor in letters from the Virgin. This finally put him where Maria Luisa wanted him: alone with her in her cell, over the course of many nights, where he could provide her with (spiritual) succor. The abbess and the first confessor, Leziroli, gave their express permission for this.
Maria Francesca continued to pour out the contents of these letters in her third hearing. She had written them using the Virgin’s handwriting and signature, and they were addressed to Peters.
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Physical intimacy, and the blessings to be gained through this erotic experience, was a running theme. Again and again, the letters pressured
the confessor into performing this “extraordinary communion.” But there was also another development: the Virgin now announced that the devil would take Maria Luisa’s shape and do bad things to damage her favorite daughter. At the same time, she presented this as a divinely willed test of Maria Luisa’s “pure soul.” Was this a reference to the poisoning of Katharina von Hohenzollern?
Finally, the letters from the Virgin didn’t just legitimate the intimacies between Maria Luisa and her confessor; they also attempted to justify the nuns’ lesbian practices. Maria Francesca stated:
During the time when the princess was ill, Maria Giacinta was also lying ill in the novitiate. And, as mentioned above, I wrote a letter to Padre Peters in the name of the most holy Virgin Mary, saying that the devil had taken on the shape of my best-beloved daughter Maria Luisa, and had been to Maria Giacinta’s bed to commit immodest acts. In order to discredit my best-beloved daughter, he had led Maria Giacinta into temptation, and made her say that she had fallen and given in to these immodest acts. I wrote that the Lord permitted Maria Giacinta to do these things, to quash her pride.
The witness continued:
Now I will tell of what I saw with my own eyes. As I stood in Maria Giacinta’s cell, when she was lying ill in bed, I saw Maria Luisa come in. Based on what I saw, I took her to be the devil. She leaned over Maria Giacinta’s bed and stroked her face and breast, and they embraced and kissed each other. Maria Giacinta meanwhile raised her waist a little, and I realized that she was exposing herself—then I went out and prayed, and banished the temptation. Sometimes I would see the above-mentioned person come into Maria Giacinta’s cell and throw herself at once onto the bed, in a very licentious manner. Then things would proceed as described above, and I would go away. It seemed to me that this went on for the whole of advent, when Maria Giacinta was ill. Sometimes another novice was also present, but I don’t remember it all that well now. Since I thought the mistress so reticent and delicate in these matters, I was convinced that the devil was committing these obscenities in her form. The novice Agnese Celeste also said to me:
“Remember those things that Maria Luisa did in bed with Maria Giacinta? Padre Peters told me it was the devil, who took on her shape.”
But Maria Giacinta very soon began to feel pangs of conscience, and increasingly doubted the truth of the Virgin Mary’s commands, as Maria Francesca stated during her final hearing.
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Initially, Giacinta had been thoroughly jealous of Katharina von Hohenzollern. When Katharina first entered the convent, the novice mistress had paid a great deal of attention to her—apparently neglecting Giacinta, who had previously been her favorite. In an attempt to soothe her, Maria Luisa told Maria Francesca to write a letter from the Virgin to Peters, saying: “This little daughter of mine was chosen as the companion of my first-born daughter, after Sister Agnese Eletta went away. But reveal nothing of the great things of the mistress to this little daughter.” When this piece of flattery didn’t do the trick, the Virgin Mary sent a letter to Peters during Advent 1858, instructing him to: “remove the proud Maria Giacinta from her Mother.” This was done straightaway, as Maria Francesca recalled.
Sallua managed to coax a statement on the whereabouts of the letters out of Franceschetti: Maria Luisa had handed them over to him when the Apostolic Visitation arrived. He was unsure what to do with them. The abbess and Leziroli declared themselves in favor of burning the letters (a task that Padre Peters would perform), and the lawyer finally left the packet of letters with him.
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Sallua was very satisfied with this result. He had not only exposed Maria Luisa as a false mystic, but unmasked her as a forger of “heavenly” letters from the Virgin. But the extremely problematic contents of these letters also suggested that this case of feigned holiness wasn’t confined to the areas of faith and religious experience. It also seemed to have affected the realm of practical and sexual behavior.
PASTORAL CARE IN BED
The Madonna’s letters ordered Padre Peters to take special care of the beautiful young novice mistress, Mary’s “first-born daughter.” He was to inhale the scent of the Virgin’s favorite daughter, press her
heart to his, and receive further divine blessings through union with her. Following Maria Francesca’s interrogation, it was clear to Sallua that the heavenly letters reflected Maria Luisa’s erotic fantasies and sexual desires. But did this heavenly temptation really succeed?
Sallua was able to drum up several nuns who had observed a close relationship between the confessor and the young novice mistress.
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Agnese Celeste, Giuseppa Maria, Maria Gesualda, Maria Fortunata, and the abbess all provided juicy details. Sister Agnese Celeste said:
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When Maria Luisa had a headache, Padre Peters would care for her for most of the day, until late at night. Once he spent the whole night in her cell. I recall that on this night somebody closed the door curtain several times, which I kept opening again during the night. I heard noises in the mistress’s cell.… I was able to see Padre Peters going into the
clausura
and shutting himself in a room near the parlatory with the mistress. In the door to this room there is a glass window to let in light. This happened almost every day; it was very rare that it did not happen.… I noticed that they stayed in there a long time, sometimes for half a day.… I remember that Maria Ignazia told me that once, when Peters went to the mistress for her headache, she was restless, tossing about in bed, and she was uncovered. When Maria Ignazia tried to cover her up, the padre said to her:
“Leave her, she is still covered by her bodice.”
Sister Agnese Celeste, who was only nineteen, did her best to banish the evil suspicion that there was a sexual relationship going on between Maria Luisa and Padre Peters. Her fellow nun, Giuseppa Maria, was less scrupulous in her hearing on March 31, 1860.
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These headaches usually started in the mornings when it was time to rise, which was at 4 o’clock, and the first thing we had to do was send for Padre Peters, who was called at once. Apart from the midday meal, he would spend the whole day there. When I went to wake her one morning at the usual hour, I found Peters there, and learned that he had spent the whole night with her. She had been speaking to the mother founder, and Peters alone was to hear this speech, so none of the sisters came into that room, and the two of them remained alone for the most part.… Peters
stayed overnight in the convent for around two months, and slept in another cell.… However, Maria Luisa visited him frequently in this cell.
I, having noticed the frequency of these visits, was able to observe the following: one evening, after the mistress had reassured me that no danger lay in store on this night (the abbess was also present), she said that Peters could be sent to sleep in his usual cell. She convinced the abbess to go to bed, and said that she would go to the novitiate. I, who spent the night in the cell of a nun who was ill, noticed that Maria Luisa was the last to withdraw, but after she had gone in the direction of the novitiate, I saw her turn back and go on tiptoes to Peters’ cell. When she saw me, she came into the sick nun’s cell and gave me a thorough scolding. She ordered me not to leave the sickroom again. I had to obey, particularly because at the time I was still only a novice, but I suspected she would come back to Peters, so I carried on watching without her seeing me. And indeed I could see very clearly how, after walking past the Padre’s cell, she came back on tiptoes and went in. Meanwhile, the sick woman settled down, and I was plagued by thoughts of the mistress and Peters, who were together in this room.
After a few hours or when the night was already half over, the sick nun woke up, and I used the opportunity to divert her attention, by pretending to be afraid that the sick nun might be choking again. Then I banged on the wall with my fist, and Padre Peters came, and when he saw that the sick woman did not need anything, he asked me why I had called him. I answered that I had not been calling him: I wanted the mistress to come and see if anything was needed, so that she could then call the Reverend Father.
He looked unsettled, and answered: “But don’t you know yourself if something is needed? And where is the mistress, then?”
And I answered: “The mistress is in your cell, Father.”
At which he said: “But she’s not in my room.”
And I said: “She is—I saw her go in.”
Meanwhile, I left the room to fetch something, but he quickly called me back to the sick nun’s cell and said that I was not allowed to enter his cell, and that if I needed something I should knock for him to come, but I should not leave the sickbed.
During the night I went barefoot to the door of Peters’ cell and
leaned against it very carefully, and I could hear them talking in muffled voices, but I could not make out the words.
Maria Luisa often spent time in Peters’ cell, either alone or with him; sometimes the abbess knew, and then they would leave the door open, but otherwise they shut it, so that nobody, not even I, would know that they had shut themselves in there. After the mistress had been with the padre on these nights, and particularly on the above-mentioned night, when she came to the sick woman, I noticed as she came closer to me that her hands, shoulders and head smelled very strongly of tobacco. She herself did not consume it, but Peters did, in large quantities. When I kissed the mistress’s hand, I said to her: “my mother mistress, you reek of tobacco, did the padre touch you with his tobacco-covered hands?” She did not answer, but smiled. I asked her this question several times. Maria Giacinta asked her the same thing, when she noticed the smell just as I did. Due to the affection that the mistress showed to me and to Maria Giacinta, I also kissed her shoulders, and her head, and everywhere she stank of tobacco.