Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
According to Maria Luisa’s testimony there was a tradition going back to Agnese Firrao, of Sant’Ambrogio’s abbess performing lesbian initiation rites with each new entrant to the convent—particularly if they were already sexually experienced. Sallua must have been delighted with this testimony, particularly as it supported his historical reconstruction of the original case against Firrao. Sexual intercourse had taken place, under the pretext of purifying the novices’ sexual organs, during which vaginal fluid—the “liquor”—was exchanged. The requirements for the offense of female sodomy were thus fulfilled. As the vicaress and novice mistress, Maria Luisa was a senior nun, and she therefore engaged in this element of Firrao’s “reform program” as a matter of course. She believed that sexual purification was one of the essential features of the Regulated Third Order of Holy Saint Francis at Sant’Ambrogio, independently of the specific people involved.
This argumentation, however, didn’t completely convince the tribunal. The mention of Maria Maddalena’s sexual practices, which were so widely known in the city that ordinary people had written rude verses about them on the convent wall, set the inquisitors thinking. After all, Maria Luisa had entered the convent under the aegis of this abbess. Was her induction to these practices really just theoretical?
SEXUAL ABUSE
On July 20, 1860, Maria Luisa was finally ready to tell the whole truth.
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When I was in the convent of Santi Quattro Coronati, I received the writings of the mother founder and her spiritual guides to keep safe. When I read these, I came across descriptions that she had given to her father confessor. She said the Lord had appeared to her and entrusted the institute to her, with the solemn injunction to oversee the keeping of the vows, and chastity most of all. For this purpose the Lord had filled her with a liquor. He had poured this over her person and left it with her, so that she could use it to purify her daughters and make them holy, particularly those who had entered the convent as adults or had already sinned in their worldly lives.
I read about this matter in various letters; in two of these the mother founder said she had twice seen this liquor flowing from the mouth and from the ribs of the Lord, and had used it to purify Mother Maddalena. Thus the Lord had chosen Mother Maddalena to replace the founder in the institute. I also read letters from the founder to Maria Maddalena, where she urged her to oversee and carry out this command from the Lord. Elijah was mentioned in these letters, as I said before.
In another letter, the mother founder told her father confessor that she lacked feeling, and said that the Lord no longer appeared to her. She also said she had to take in a particular lady from Venice, who was given the name Sister Maria Giuseppa. She must be purified. The Virgin Mary appeared to her five times, and five times she allowed the founder to suck at her breast, to draw out the liquor which the founder must then use to purify Maria Giuseppa. She spoke of five times, because the name Maria has five letters.
I confess that with Maria Giacinta, I performed the same acts the mother founder said she had performed with the Madonna.
Now the purification of the sexual organs of newly veiled nuns had acquired a Mariological dimension. The nuns linked the act of suckling at the breast to
Maria Lactans
, a widespread image from the mysticism and piety of the Middle Ages, showing the Mother of God feeding the faithful with milk from her breasts.
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Maria Luisa was keen to bring the matter to a close with this statement, but the inquisitors now pressed her to testify in full. Only after being severely reprimanded was she finally prepared to do this.
I entered the convent of Sant’Ambrogio at the age of 13 or 14. The abbess at the time was Maria Maddalena; she lived from that April until Christmas, when she died. During those months I was the only postulant in the convent (apart from one who only stayed a very short time), so I had the attention and the affection of the old lady all to myself. The mother abbess gave me special affection and attention; she wanted to have me in the cell next to hers, and kept me in her company almost the whole day. She was constantly instructing me on the virtues and the philosophy of the institute, and speaking of the persecution and the holiness of the mother founder. She called me “her little lamb,” “her treasure”; she kissed and embraced me. She was very strict, when she taught me humility and decorum, saying that one day I should be like her. Her attention and the affection she showed me were so great that some of the nuns grew jealous and told me how lucky I was, for they were hardly permitted to exchange even a few words with the abbess.
A few months later … I was called by the late vicaress, Sister Maria Crocifissa … after lunch. She told me that the mother abbess wanted to give me a gift. She sent me into the abbess’s bedroom; she was lying on the bed in a swoon.
Maria Crocifissa said to me: “See how the mother abbess hides her virtue and her holiness? She lets the nuns believe that she wants to rest, but really she is sunk in prayer. Now she is illuminated by the Lord, who allows her to comprehend all manner of things, and see into people’s hearts; this is why she can speak so well of virtue. Do you see? The way her face is so enflamed is a sign of God’s love.”
She made me go nearer to the bed and kiss her hand. Then she began to undress the abbess completely and to touch her in her private parts with her hands. She showed me a white liquid that appeared as she did so, saying: “This is a heavenly liquor, imparted to her by the Lord.”
She also told me that if I loved the abbess and was her little lamb, I must take heed to steal this liquor from her, so I could become like her. She made me bend my head down to the abbess’s private parts. I was gripped by fear and showed my disgust, saying: “and what if she then throws me out?”
Maria Crocifissa replied: “On the contrary, afterwards you can be sure she will not expel you, because this is a precious gift for you, which the Lord has commanded her to bestow.”
She then bade me lick this liquid with my tongue. She took my hand and made me dip my fingers in this liquid, with which I had to make three signs of the cross on my forehead and lips with my own hand. Then she signed herself in the way I have described, and laid her head on Maria Maddalena’s private parts. Then she covered her up and we walked away slowly, but the abbess, Maria Maddalena, called to me, and I went back to her bed. Maria Crocifissa went away and left me alone with her.
The abbess started saying, very lovingly: “Little thief of my heart, come here, what have you stolen from me? I know everything.”
I trembled, expecting a terrible scolding, but she got up and sat on the bed. She embraced me and said that I should have no fear, because what I had done was the will of God, and the Lord had given me a great gift. But this was only the beginning, and she had received the command to give this gift fully. She held me in her arms and spoke at length to me, with tender words; then she got out of bed and, invoking the obedience due to her, demanded that I lie down. In the meantime, she made signs with her hands and eyes towards heaven, as one might in prayer. Finally she got into bed too, undressed me and laid herself on me, and touched me in a shameful way with her hands. Through vigorous movements of her body on mine, the liquid from her private parts flowed into mine, which afterwards felt quite moist.
She said to me several times: “My daughter, receive … this heavenly liquor.”
After some time she got up. She had performed this act several times and rested a little in between. She asked what I was thinking, and said that I should have no fear: this was not a sin, but a holy thing and a gift from God. She also said that to the world these were wicked acts, but they had been commanded by the Lord as a gift for me.
After the last of these acts she remained in bed; I knelt beside her, and she laid her hands on my head; with the tone of a mother superior she said to me: “Daughter, you have received a great gift; in the name of God I command you to safeguard and to propagate it. Every evening you must put a finger into your private parts and then make the sign of the cross with your damp finger on your forehead and lips. In this way many gifts of God will be imparted to you.”
Then she blew three times into my mouth. Finally, as she continued her affectionate expressions and embraces, she asked me to take her breast in my mouth and suckle on it, which I did. The last thing she did was to lay a veil of secrecy over everything: under no circumstances was I to speak about this to anyone.
Later, she asked me about my prayers, and also whether I was practicing every evening the things she had taught me. She said I should be sure not to speak to the father confessor, Padre Leziroli, about it: one had only to confess sins, and not gifts. These were special gifts that the Lord had bestowed upon me through her, which would benefit the institute, as I would see later.
Sister Maria Crocifissa was the one who had introduced me to these acts with the abbess, and so when I read the letters from the mother founder and her spiritual guides, which I was to keep safe in the convent of Santi Quattro Coronati, it was to her that I turned for explanation, as stated elsewhere.
The above-named abbess wanted to hear about the whole of my previous life and the things that had happened to me. Then she advised me what I should say to the father confessor. When I had been to confession, she demanded an account of what I had said to the father confessor. This is the system that was used in Sant’Ambrogio, and I myself practiced it with the novices.
I do not know whether the abbess did what I have reported above with other nuns; it might have happened with the late Sister Maria Metilde, because I could see that they were very close.
As soon as the abbess died, I made use of what she had taught me and, although I was still a novice, I tried to behave like a mother superior. I invented revelations and commands from the abbess. I made Sister Anna submit to me, and forced her to give me an account of her conscience every evening—then I blessed her with my scapular. Now I remember that, after doing the things I have spoken of, Abbess Maria Maddalena kept me with her on my own and, as well as the usual instructions, took my hand and put it into her private parts seven or eight times. Afterwards she told me to make the sign of the cross, so that I might receive gifts.
Maria Luisa now retracted her earlier accusations against Agnese Eletta. It hadn’t been Agnese Eletta wanting her to touch her private
parts—it was she, Maria Luisa, who had forced Eletta to perform the sexual acts she had described. She confirmed “under sacred oath” that everything she had said about her introduction to the practice of sexual purification at the hands of Mother Maria Maddalena was true. The young novice mistress was therefore clearly to blame for the “moral deviance” and “acts of sodomy” that had taken place later, as the investigating judges recorded in the
Ristretto
.
A young girl was required to perform sexual acts by her superior, the abbess. Later, the former victim, Maria Luisa, became a perpetrator herself. By engaging in the homosexual acts she used to bless, purify, and heal her partners, she was following a “sacred” tradition that had begun with Agnese Firrao, and had been upheld by the subsequent leaders of Sant’Ambrogio’s community, ending with Maria Luisa. This tradition spanned more than six decades and, according to the mother founder’s instructions, must not be interrupted.
In the nineteenth century, sexual relationships among monks and nuns, and between confessors and penitents, were a commonplace in anticlerical literature, which drew a connection between celibate lifestyle, religious mania, and sexual deviance.
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The difficulty of the source material makes it impossible to clarify the extent to which these clichés may have had a basis in reality. But in today’s terminology, what went on in Sant’Ambrogio constituted sexual abuse. The preconditions for this, generally speaking, are an imbalance of power.
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Perpetrators usually use sexual abuse to satisfy both their own sexual needs and their need for power and recognition. In this sense, Maria Luisa seems to have achieved a great deal, playing on her winning personality and her sexual attractiveness. Abuse is often preceded by a special devotion to the abuser.
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But this doesn’t mean her victims consented to sexual acts with “knowledge, willingness and competence.”
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The novices were duty bound to obey the novice mistress and vicaress. For many of them, the madre vicaria was an ersatz mother, and Maria Luisa systematically exploited their emotional dependency. She also used secrets from the confessional to manipulate her opponents, and render her victims submissive. Maria Luisa further increased her power by bringing the confessors under her control: the nuns had to view their instructions as absolutely binding. She also swore those who participated in these acts to absolute secrecy: nobody on the outside must ever learn of them, not even
the confessor—particularly not him!—or the heavenly blessing would lose its unique, holy quality. This way, she succeeded in committing the nuns to keep absolute silence. Swearing victims to secrecy and threatening dire consequences if they tell is another typical marker of sexual abuse.
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The crucial factor, however, was the religious authority that Maria Luisa assumed. She gave her behavior a religious elevation by claiming it was the will of God. Speaking out against Maria Luisa’s revelations wouldn’t just have been a rebellion against the commandment of obedience, but against the heavenly powers, and ultimately against the will of God. The nuns and the confessors would have been risking their immortal souls, the salvation of which was the true goal of their earthly existence. To the people who received letters from the Virgin Mary, the threats these letters contained were real and existential. This fear allowed Maria Luisa to disguise her crimes and moral misdemeanors as spiritual and medical treatment or, just as easily, as the work of the devil. The nuns’ faith in the sacred led them to allow Maria Luisa to abuse them.