The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal (4 page)

Following Reisach’s advice, Katharina left the Sacred Heart convent in November 1855, and spent the winter in Kupferzell and Baden-Baden. She then returned to Bistritz, her widow’s seat. In summer, her disease led her to seek out the convent of Lichtenthal, near Baden-Baden. Her health stabilized somewhat over the following year, and she recalled Reisach’s words to her, written from Rome following her departure from Kintzheim. Pius IX had made him a cardinal of the Roman Curia on December 17, 1855. “In a few years, come to Rome, when your health has improved.”
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In summer 1857, the princess moved to the Eternal City. She took up residence in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane, right next to the Quirinal Palace, the pope’s city residence outside the Vatican.
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In contrast to her first visit to Rome in 1834, there were now plenty of German speakers in the Curia for Katharina to approach. Many candidates for the priesthood left Germany for Rome’s Collegium Germanicum to study theology, and the Vatican offices employed an
increasing number of Germans. Most important, a close relative of Katharina’s, Gustav Adolf zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, had been a member of Pius IX’s entourage since 1846.
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Born on February 26, 1823, he was the product of an interdenominational marriage. His father, Prince Franz Joseph, was a Catholic, while his mother, Constanze, Princess zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, was Protestant. According to the Prussian Civil Code of 1794, the daughters inherited their mother’s faith, while the four sons—among them the future imperial chancellor Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst
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—followed their father’s religion. In spite of his liberal upbringing, Gustav Adolf fell under the influence of the Breslau Prince-Bishop Melchior von Diepenbrock
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and chose to enter the priesthood. He first studied Catholic theology in Breslau and Munich, and was possibly influenced by an encounter with the Munich church historian Ignaz von Döllinger.
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Gustav then decided to begin his ecclesiastical career in the Roman Curia, as befitted his status—a choice that met with vehement resistance from his Protestant mother. She was afraid her son would be spoiled by the Jesuits who dominated the Curia. But Gustav’s brother Chlodwig was able to reassure their mother: a spell in Rome wouldn’t automatically make him a Jesuit. And in fact, Gustav managed to resist the charms of the Society of Jesus. The open-minded, irenic education he had received in Breslau and Munich won through.

Hohenlohe quickly ascended through the Roman Curia. In 1847, he entered the Accademia dei Nobili, the training institute for the Curia’s leaders and prospective papal diplomats. In 1848, he accompanied Pius IX as he fled to Gaeta. There, he was ordained as a priest and succeeded in building a friendship with Pius IX. The pope, who “loved him personally and had him as his favorite companion” set great store by Hohenlohe’s opinion.
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He took on the function of a Secret Chamberlain participating, and being a member of the pope’s household gave him direct access to Pius IX. When Katharina came to Rome in 1857, she was able to witness her cousin being consecrated as a bishop in the Sistine Chapel. Hohenlohe rose to become the titular archbishop of Edessa. As the pope’s almoner, he administered the pontiff’s alms fund, and coordinated his charitable work.

Even so, Katharina remained true to her long-standing spiritual guide and confessor, Cardinal Reisach, and didn’t consider Hohenlohe
for this role. By staying with Reisach, she was allying herself to a particular theological and political orientation—though without really being aware of the nuances of the different philosophies for which Reisach and Hohenlohe stood.

We can’t be certain which of the two arranged Katharina’s first meeting with the pope. In any case, Katharina was intrigued to find him charming and likable. He invited Katharina to see him on numerous occasions, and granted her several private audiences. Pius IX was clearly gratified even by the fact that she was closely related to the Protestant king of Prussia, and he hoped to influence Berlin’s religious policy through her.

In one private audience, the pope is said to have made a joke about her extremely stately appearance, which was due to her tremendous girth.
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The Italians referred to her in mocking tones as a
matrone
. Her niece, Marie von Thurn und Taxis, also spoke of her aunt’s “shocking corpulence.” She described Katharina as a “peculiar, engaging and awe-inspiring character,” who was “tall and very fat.” Her rosy face was “broad and bloated,” though it retained “traces of great beauty” and lent her a “serene and regal” air. “Her wide light blue eyes looked directly at you; they spoke of a quick, lively mind, absolute correctness, and a masterful, passionate will. [She had] thick, blond eyebrows, a straight, pretty nose, a small mouth which could smile so gently, showing small, white, regular teeth, and dimples in her cheeks.… She had a strong Swabian accent, with a quaint, sing-song tone. Out of this imposing body came a very high, soft, almost childlike voice.” To Marie, her aunt seemed a “confident woman with a burning faith, never afraid to draw her sword to defend her rights.”
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A ROMAN CLOISTERED IDYLL

Katharina and her spiritual guide, Cardinal Reisach, began the search for a suitable convent as soon as she arrived in Rome. The pope himself seems to have made the first suggestion, directing Katharina toward the Visitandines.
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Central to their devotional practice was the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—a cult that had declined during the Enlightenment, but underwent a revival in the nineteenth
century. Pius IX encouraged the worship of the Sacred Heart, turning it into a beacon of his crusade against modernity. The Sacred Heart cult became a symbol of Catholics’ retreat inward, toward a self-ghettoization into the countersociety of the Catholic milieu. It became a “symbol of identification for Catholics’ contemporary sufferings.” The Catholics had lost the battle against the modernization processes of the modern era.
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While modern science declared the brain to be the most important organ in the human body, Catholics clung to the idea of the heart “as the central organ of physical life, and the bearer of moral life.”
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But urgent repairs to the Visitandines’ recently purchased convent buildings made it impossible for the princess to join their order. This meant that Reisach was able to redirect Katharina’s interest to a convent that he may well have had in mind for her from the beginning: Sant’Ambrogio della Massima. This was an enclosed convent of the “strictest order,” which led Marie von Thurn und Taxis to describe its inhabitants as
sepolte vive
—buried alive.
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Reisach’s suggestion is surprising, given that he had considered the much less strict setup of the convent in Alsace too taxing for the sickly, unhappy princess. One would rather have expected he would suggest that Katharina seek spiritual refuge in an independent religious community for noblewomen.

But the cardinal gave Katharina the impression that he believed the piety and strict discipline that ruled Sant’Ambrogio would suit her very well. And Katharina duly undertook a
retraite
at the Franciscan convent over Easter 1858. Her first impression was overwhelmingly positive. It was “a place of cloistered peace and holy order,” and she was convinced she had reached “the goal of her fierce longing for convent life.” To make absolutely sure that this was somewhere she could achieve the long-sought-after “undisturbed union with her soul’s bridegroom,” Jesus Christ, the princess asked permission to extend her stay in Sant’Ambrogio by becoming a postulant. This meant she wouldn’t yet formally enter the convent, or have to wear the convent habit.
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A number of people warned her against this, particularly those allied to her cousin, Archbishop Hohenlohe, who doubted that the sickly princess would “survive in a strict convent.” But Katharina remained there, wearing her own clothes, for several more months.
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During this time, Reisach also introduced her to a new confessor, as his many duties left him with no time to continue looking after Katharina. He remained her spiritual guide, but handed over day-to-day matters and regular confession to a close Jesuit acquaintance of his: the forty-seven-year-old Padre Giuseppe Peters. Peters had, in any case, some years ago begun taking confession from other nuns in Sant’Ambrogio to relieve the pressure on the convent’s spiritual director his fellow Jesuit Giuseppe Leziroli, who was sixty-three and in poor health. This way, the princess could continue to receive spiritual guidance from the Jesuit order.

Later, Katharina had the highest praise for her trial period in Sant’Ambrogio. According to her
Erlebnisse
, “Life in the convent … left nothing to be desired, and seemed exemplary.” Rules were followed to the letter; there was a good balance between work and prayer, with prayers starting at four o’clock in the morning; the
clausura
was strictly maintained. The princess was also pleased with Sant’Ambrogio’s architectonics: “Hardly a sound from the city at whose center it lay penetrated this quiet, private world.” She was particularly taken with the Franciscans’ poverty and simplicity. The majority of their income came from gardening and “artistic embroidery for church decoration.” The nuns were completely sealed off from the world; even the priests who came to give Communion or take confession were not permitted to enter the enclosure. As is usual in a strictly enclosed order, they remained separated from the nuns by iron bars.
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The princess was also more than satisfied with “the people who managed and led this quiet, well-ordered, unworldly community.” In particular, she thought the abbess, Sister Maria Veronica, was “a fine example of obedience to the sacred rules, and a woman of gentle, quiet character,” who inspired in her a sense of great trust from the very beginning. It was easy “to obey her like a child,” and Katharina felt “very drawn to her.” But she was still more fascinated by the novice mistress, who was also the abbess’s deputy: Madre Vicaria Maria Luisa of Saint Francis Xavier. “This young nun (she was still only twenty-seven years old) possessed a striking physical beauty and grace, and such a lovely, winning nature that all hearts soon felt drawn to her.” The princess, too, willingly gave in to the “magic of her loveliness”; she was truly “enchanted by [this] likable nun.”
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As a member of the German aristocracy, however, Katharina felt a
clear division between her own mentality and education, and those of the Italian nuns, who mostly came from simpler stock than herself.
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To her mind, they were women “without knowledge of the world or its people,” with no “refined education, or even some knowledge that would have been imparted by the most rudimentary schooling.” As the princess recalled, they had never even seen a toothbrush before.
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At the time, there was a widespread belief that the devil and evil spirits tried to force their way in through a person’s orifices, in order to take possession of him. The nuns were baffled by Katharina’s toothbrush. They worried that it might be the work of the devil, and debated whether Katharina should be allowed to carry on using it. After consulting the abbess and the father confessors, the princess was permitted to keep the toothbrush, which was deemed spiritually harmless. The cotton that Katharina used for her needlecraft was also completely unknown to her Roman sisters.
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They earnestly believed, as they told Katharina on several occasions, that “such stuff grew on the heads of Germans.”
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But the princess interpreted this cultural ignorance as
sancta simplicitas
. And holy innocence was a very becoming trait in humble nuns, particularly the daughters of the
Poverello
, Saint Francis of Assisi.

After a trial period of just over six months, Katharina came to a firm decision. She believed she had found the end point of “her fierce longing for convent life.”
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On September 29, 1858, having contributed a dowry to the convent, she was officially clothed as a novice.
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Cardinal Costantino Patrizi performed the liturgical ceremony, and Cardinal Reisach “gave an address on withdrawing from the world.”
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This marked the princess’s admission to the convent of Regulated Franciscans of the Third Order.
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Katharina was now ruled by the abbess and the novice mistress, who was her immediate superior, and had to follow their instructions with absolute obedience.

When the princess entered the convent, it was home to around three dozen nuns.
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Most of them came from Rome itself, or the surrounding area of Latium. A few were from other parts of the Papal States. Katharina was the only foreigner in Sant’Ambrogio. The princess was also an exception in terms of her social background. The German noblewoman was now living with women who came mostly from the middle classes, and whose families were able to raise the substantial dowry necessary for their daughters’ admission. All the sisters could read and write; one was a lawyer’s sister, another the daughter
of a surgeon; at least one of them could speak French. The forty-one-year-old Katharina found that they were divided into three age groups. A handful were in their early sixties, having lived in the convent since it was founded. Then there were a dozen or so sisters of around forty years old. But life in Sant’Ambrogio was shaped by its numerous younger sisters. About twenty of them were aged just twenty, or even younger; their presence was mostly down to a successful recruitment drive by the novice mistress, Maria Luisa.

SALVATION FROM A CLOISTERED HELL

But the idyll of Sant’Ambrogio proved deceptive. The little piece of paradise inside the convent walls must quickly have become hell on earth for Katharina. There is no other explanation for her desperate call for help, her cry of “save, save me!” to her cousin, Archbishop Hohenlohe, on July 25, 1859. Even getting him to Sant’Ambrogio had involved taking a huge risk: she had smuggled a letter to the Vatican out of the enclosure without the knowledge of the convent’s superiors, which was against the rules. Less than a year after entering the convent, there seemed to be nothing left of her “childlike obedience” to the abbess.