The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal (48 page)

In order to see this agenda through, he needed an alliance of comrades who would provide him with theological arguments. His most important ally, a man who shared all his views and gave him theological advice, was Joseph Kleutgen. They had been close friends since
1856. The Curia cardinal had the necessary contacts and the requisite influence on Church politics—he even had the ear of Pope Pius IX. The Jesuit, meanwhile, contributed the philosophical know-how for the votums, papers, and summaries they had to produce. Reisach wanted a strictly papal Church; Kleutgen provided the spiritual framework for this with his
Theology of Times Past
. It was no coincidence that the cardinal, who was described as a “warm advocate” of the Jesuit, financed the Italian edition of his major work.
³¹

The obvious conclusion is that, when Reisach’s most important intellectual authority found himself in a tight spot, the cardinal wouldn’t leave him there, particularly as the political background of the Sant’Ambrogio case couldn’t have escaped him. The constellation of people involved made this an even more likely scenario: the liberal, pro-Italian Archbishop Hohenlohe and the theologically progressive Benedictine Maurus Wolter on the one side; the papalists Reisach, Cardinal Patrizi, and the Jesuit Kleutgen on the other. The whole thing also had the air of a classic conflict between religious orders. The Benedictines of Saint Paul Outside the Walls were striving for a reconciliation between the Church and the modern world, while the Jesuits, under the influence of new scholasticism, came down ever more firmly on the side of separation. If Reisach viewed Kleutgen not simply as a confessor accused of moral failings—if he saw this as the theological and Church political movement for which they both stood being arraigned before the highest tribunal—then it would be no surprise if he, as a member of the court, was keeping the Jesuit defendant up to date on the internal results of the investigation. Loyalties within his own coterie were more important than the interests of the Church as a whole, the confidence of his own clientele more valuable than the confidentiality of the court files. He must have been well aware that breaking the
secretum Sancti Officii
carried the automatic punishment of excommunication. Reisach apparently accepted this risk in order to give his man the best chance of defending himself.

Even if Kleutgen never told the Inquisition directly about the special quality of his relationship with Reisach, he did make an indirect admission that the cardinal had kept him up to speed on the trial. He explained that he “had heard, from stories told by His Eminence Cardinal Reisach, that the princess had exaggerated somewhat in her statements. Some of her written submissions about the convent had
contained a series of inaccuracies.”
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Kleutgen was letting the court know that he was in the picture on Katharina von Hohenzollern’s denunciation, at least—and that his information came from a cardinal member of the Inquisition, who was also a close friend of his. In his interrogation on March 28, 1861, the Jesuit claimed that Katharina herself had provided him with the text of her denunciation.
³³
But what could possibly have moved the princess, for all her credulity, to take this step? In any case, Kleutgen was also in possession of information that went far beyond the contents of Katharina’s
Denunzia
, as his dossier demonstrated. Kleutgen knew how the informative process had concluded—and this couldn’t have come from Katharina. Only the members of the Inquisition had access to this information.

It could be that Kleutgen let the reference to Reisach slip in an unguarded moment, in his eagerness to defend himself. But a more likely scenario is that the Jesuit revealed this information strategically, in order to send a clear message to the Dominican Sallua and the other investigating judges: watch out, I know exactly what you’ve been doing, and my friend the cardinal will be keeping a close eye on you as well.

Kleutgen stuck to his exceedingly confident standpoint throughout his interrogations. He wanted to be treated as a witness and not a defendant in this trial. But, in spite of his constant repetition of this, and all the protection he received from behind the scenes, he didn’t get his way. The cardinals and the pope had decided he was one of the main suspects—and that was an end to it.

AND AFTER ALL, THE CULT OF FIRRAO WAS PERMITTED

Once Kleutgen had made his submissions, the first part of the offensive process was over. The ball was now in the Inquisition’s court. Would the judges manage to undermine the Jesuit’s position? Would they persuade him to respond to the charges and make a genuine confession, as they had ultimately done with each of the other three defendants?

The judges faced a more difficult task with Kleutgen than they had with the other defendants. For one thing, they were dealing with
an experienced theologian, an absolute master of the art of rhetoric and scholastic distinction. And for another, he also had insider information on the course of the trial. He was able to construct a targeted defense, and adapt it to changing circumstances. This possibility, which is a given in modern legal proceedings, was unusual for the Inquisition—a fact that led people in Rome to accuse it of handing down arbitrary judgments. Third, Kleutgen’s work as an evaluator for the Congregation of the Index meant that he was familiar with the practices and processes of Catholic Congregations, and was acquainted with numerous members of the Congregation of the Index and the Roman Inquisition.

The Jesuit’s interrogations dragged on, and the main line of questioning branched off into numerous individual issues. Kleutgen repeatedly submitted written statements, containing corrections, clarifications, or partial retractions of his verbal evidence from the previous day. Like the other defendants, he was accused of having venerated Maria Agnese Firrao as a saint, and of promoting her cult within the convent of Sant’Ambrogio. At the start of April 1861, he made quite a tortuous verbal argument against this, and in his interrogation on April 16 he produced an elaborate written statement.
³⁴
This text made it clear that there was no way the Jesuit would be forced to go on the defensive. Instead, he was attempting to turn the interrogation into a scholastic debate.

The
Quaestio
was: is the cult of Firrao permitted, or not? The court proposed a thesis, called the
Propositio:
the cult of Firrao is forbidden. Kleutgen took up the role of the opponent, whose job it was to refute this theory. As is usual in scholastic publications, he took on all the conceivable arguments in favor of the court’s thesis and sought to refute them with his
Contradictiones
. He then arrived at a
Solutio
, the answer to the question.
³⁵

Kleutgen presented a lengthy disquisition on why he had believed that it was “no longer forbidden” to venerate Maria Agnese Firrao as a saint. Up to this point, he said, he had avoided a detailed discussion of this before the Holy Tribunal, fearing that “to speak about this at length might have seemed disrespectful to the authority. But now, when I am not only permitted, but commanded to provide such an explanation, I can speak freely.”

Kleutgen’s statement rubbed salt into the Inquisition’s wound,
which had been festering ever since its 1816 judgment against the mother founder had been disregarded. In Sant’Ambrogio, people had behaved as if the
Damnatio
had never existed. And where would the Church be if every nonentity nun and little confessor could simply ignore the judgments of the highest Catholic religious authority, and go unpunished? The second Sant’Ambrogio trial would set this ignominy right, once and for all.

In the first stage of his argument, Kleutgen gave four reasons that, from his point of view, justified the veneration of Maria Agnese as a saint: “1. The Rule of the reformed sisters was reinstated by Leo XII, after the mother founder was convicted. 2. The constitutions were also reinstated by His Eminence the cardinal vicar after the conviction. 3. The Church authority gave its express permission for the nuns to read two volumes written by Maria Agnese, primarily containing instructions for convent life. 4. I believed the correspondence with the founder had been permitted for a long time by a papal act.”

Kleutgen’s second step was to preempt a possible objection from his opponents that the church authority had merely declared Firrao’s texts to be exemplary, while continuing to regard the author herself as a false saint. The Jesuit’s
Contradictio
was:

There was no doubt that the Church had approved three texts: the Rule, the constitution, and two volumes of spiritual exhortations.

Kleutgen then imagined the objection his opponents might raise to the connection he drew in his
Contradictio
between teaching and
life, author and text. This, too, he refuted, by demonstrating that the Church authority would have given the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio a “double obligation” that they could never fulfill. But, he argued, the prudence of this same Church authority made it impossible for it to impose commandments that couldn’t be fulfilled.

Such a “double obligation” would have torn these pious women apart. Ergo, the Church could not have demanded it.

It was only then that Kleutgen presented, with great relish, his most important argument for the veneration of Agnese Firrao having been permitted. “Leo XII accepted the Rule again, and encouraged the reform to flourish once more. This pope permitted the relationship between the nuns and their mother founder.” Leo XII had also given the nuns back their constitution and Maria Agnese’s other writings through the power of
Sanatio
, the retrospective redress of a failure of justice. The Jesuit was unashamedly criticizing the Inquisition’s decision of 1816: “I thought that the superiors, not wishing to see any contradiction in these files, had discerned that in the trial against Maria Agnese, something had happened that can sometimes happen.” In plain terms, this meant that the Holy Office had made an error, and the pope had repaired this failure of justice in 1829. Kleutgen went on: “I did not doubt the Holy Office’s competence in reviewing legal
matters.” He was aware that Maria Agnese had repented, from a letter she had sent to the Holy Office. “But I never heard that this document was formally delivered to the convent by the Church authority.” If this had happened, the nuns wouldn’t have indeed been able to say that they knew nothing.

This was strong stuff. Kleutgen was accusing the Holy Office of dilettantism and incompetence in seeing through the decisions it had reached. He refused to accept the judges’ counterargument, that there had never been any doubt within the convent about the uninterrupted validity of the 1816 decree (even if there was a possibility the official letter wasn’t delivered).

So the highest office of the Catholic hierarchy had approved, or at least tolerated, the cult of Firrao. The obedient nuns had just been implementing these guidelines from above.

Sallua tried to argue against this, saying that the “highest authority”—by which the Holy Office meant itself—had never uttered a single word that could be interpreted as leniency toward Firrao, or any kind of pardon.
³⁶
But Kleutgen steamrollered over his objection. When he talked about the “highest authority,” he didn’t mean the Holy Office: the highest Catholic authority was obviously the pope. And that had been Leo XII, who had delegated responsibility for the convent to the cardinal vicar. According to canon law, he was responsible for Sant’Ambrogio, as its protector. Other high-ranking members of the Curia were also involved here, particularly Cardinal
Gabriele della Genga, the pope’s nephew, and Cardinal Nicola Clarelli Paracciani, another of the convent’s enthusiastic visitors and supporters.