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 (43 page)
This was probably a reference to an image that was widespread in nineteenth-century Catholicism of the “seven sorrows of Mary.” On devotional cards, these sorrows were symbolized by seven swords in Mary’s breast.
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Maria Luisa’s vision was her attempt to position herself as close as possible to the Virgin Mary by reenacting her suffering. The scene in which Mary stands under her son’s cross with his favorite disciple, and the
Pietà
, where she holds the body of Jesus in her arms, play a central role in the history of piety. The
Mater Dolorosa
became a model for the experience of suffering, particularly the suffering of women.
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Perhaps Maria Luisa was searching for a substitute for the wounds of Christ, the stigmata that she lacked. There were numerous reports that the mother founder had received the stigmata.
On Holy Saturday 1857, Maria Luisa and Peters sent for the abbess and Leziroli, to demonstrate to them the authenticity of her ecstasies, and the purity of Padre Peters’s care. This certainly worked in Leziroli’s case. He recounted his experience of the vision to the Inquisition.
After Maria Luisa had been called, Padre Peters kissed her ring, which at that time was set with a simple cross. At this, she fainted, and the mother abbess supported her and laid her on a chair. In this state, without saying anything, she made movements of her body, and her head most of all, which suggested honor, affection and veneration. She lowered her head, as if some being, invisible to us, was giving her a kiss. Padre Peters gave an explanation of these acts, saying that at that moment, she was transported to God, and was perhaps being embraced. She remained in this condition for around three quarters of an hour, before coming to and telling us she had seen the choir of angels, the apostles, and the risen
Christ.… During the ecstasy, as I recall, Padre Peters told me to go into the adjoining room, because—as he claimed—he had to receive some manner of secret communication from Maria Luisa. I withdrew for a few minutes.
Leziroli could say nothing, however, about Peters’s continual breaking of the
clausura
, the exact quality of the extraordinary blessing, and the possible sexual dimension of Peters’s relationship with Maria Luisa.
In Agnese Eletta’s case, this was rather different. The Jesuit had to confess that she had slept in Maria Luisa’s cell for a year or more with his knowledge and permission—naturally, following a divine instruction.
I ordered the abbess to let the two of them sleep in the same room, because it was a command from God. I also revealed this command to the novice Maria Giacinta, who had to sleep in the mistress’s cell as well, to serve as secretary. She actually slept there for a few months.
With regard to the novices, I only heard that the evening before they received their habits and professed their vows, they spent a few hours in spiritual conversation with the mistress in her room, and then went to bed. I heard nothing else about the intimacies that occurred between the nuns.
This account downplayed his own role in the affair, and didn’t convince the investigating judge. Sallua presented Leziroli with testimonies from several nuns who said they had made more than one complaint about “immoral” and “improper” acts and intimacies between Maria Luisa and the novices. Leziroli replied: “As I believed Maria Luisa to be an innocent soul, who could not commit such acts, I attributed these things to the devil. It is true that I was shocked to be told that Maria Luisa treated a nun
on the sexual organs
. But because I was led to believe that this instantly healed the nun, I was reassured.”
Leziroli stubbornly insisted that he had acted “in good faith throughout this business.” The court, however, rejected this claim, and gave the Jesuit a caution. Even in his concluding statement, he refused to make any confession of guilt. He could only bring himself to state:
“Alas, God gave me this blindness as punishment for my sins.”
LEZIROLI AND THE POISONINGS
The third and final charge concerned the poisoning attempts. The court put it to Leziroli that he hadn’t taken Katharina von Hohenzollern seriously, on the several occasions she had expressed serious doubts about Maria Luisa’s virtue and holiness, and about the devil having assumed her form. He had also dismissed the princess’s “complaints” as ridiculous—particularly those concerning the Americano’s obscene letter. If Leziroli had only believed Katharina, the poisoning attempts would never have occurred. In the court’s view, a substantial portion of the blame for the criminal acts that had been committed in Sant’Ambrogio fell to the convent’s spiritual formation director, and his negligence. In his interrogation on June 14 and 15, 1861, Leziroli answered this charge at some length.
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The story of the letter you are asking about … is true. The princess did not believe it was the devil in the shape of the mistress who had given her the letter, so she came to me on December 3 to speak to me about it. She said she refused to believe it was an illusion created by the devil. But at the time I was convinced of Maria Luisa’s innocence, and did everything I could to convince the princess it was the devil, and not Maria Luisa, who had given her that letter.…
Later, Maria Luisa told me that on the morning of the Immaculate Conception, the princess had thrown herself at her feet after Communion, and begged her to tell the truth. Maria Luisa felt very offended by this, and gave her a curt answer, saying: “You don’t know who I am.”
Maria Luisa then told me the Lord had revealed to her that he would send a terrible illness and death to the princess, as punishment for her pride and her stubbornness, because she opposed Maria Luisa. I was to pray to God that Cardinal Reisach would not visit the princess before the start of her illness. At that time, we were expecting a visit from the cardinal to the princess.
In fact, the princess suffered a stroke a day or two after the Immaculate Conception … and just two or three days later she was on her deathbed. Padre Peters told me there was a suspicion that one of the nuns in the convent had given her something poisonous. The sick woman had handed him a little glass of liquid, which had
been fed to her, and she told him she believed it contained something harmful. The above-named padre had it analyzed, and alum was found in it. Maria Luisa told Padre Peters, and later myself, that the cook had accidentally put alum in the broth instead of salt.
Padre Peters asked me if he should undertake a more thorough investigation, to establish whether the princess really had been poisoned. But I said no, because I was firmly convinced of Maria Luisa’s holiness and innocence.
Leziroli made several attempts to exonerate his fellow Jesuit: “But I must also confess that Padre Peters relied on my authority, so I am guiltier than he.”
The judges refused to accept that Leziroli hadn’t been aware of the details of the poisoning. They confronted him with numerous witness statements that contradicted what he had said. Finally he had to admit that, shortly after the prophecy of Katharina’s death, he learned that the novice mistress had not only asked Agnese Celeste about the effects of various poisons, but had also ordered a series of poisonous substances from various apothecaries in Rome. But once again, he saw the devil at work in Maria Luisa’s shape.
Even the poisoning of Sister Maria Agostina didn’t cause him to doubt the madre vicaria’s integrity during his time in Sant’Ambrogio.
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It was only after the Apostolic Visitation, when he was dismissed from his post as the convent’s confessor, that he began to suspect that both Katharina von Hohenzollern and the late Sister Maria Agostina had been given “something harmful” to cause their illnesses, and Agostina’s death. He didn’t believe it was a case of poisoning. He only started to have his doubts when, following the Visitation, Padre Peters told him Maria Luisa had prevented him from seeing the sick woman, when Maria Agostina had expressly asked Leziroli for him.
Eventually, the regular confessor and spiritual director of Sant’Ambrogio made a detailed admission of guilt.
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First, he confessed that he had endorsed the holiness, the visions, stigmata, and many other supernatural gifts of the condemned Sister Maria Agnese Firrao, both in writing and verbally. He had promoted her cult in various ways, and had invoked her as a saint. “I admit that I did wrong, and ask for forgiveness.”
Second, he confessed to promoting the feigned holiness of Sister Maria Luisa in various ways, through writing, verbal statements, and
reprehensible actions. He had believed the supposedly divine correspondence to be real, even though the subject matter of these divine missives was sometimes unworthy of God and the saints. He had come to the defense of this “saint,” with her visions and her heavenly marriage and divine rings, against the nuns’ doubts and fears, which later proved to be justified. And he had made himself an accomplice to Maria Luisa’s crimes, immoral acts, and other misdemeanors, which he now recognized as such. “I do not know how I can explain my great confusion and blindness at that time. I remain confused, and admit that, unfortunately, I have erred.”
Third, he confessed that he was guilty of knowing about, endorsing, and assisting in the expulsion of Sister Agnese Eletta from the convent. “For this, too, I beg forgiveness.”
Finally, he confessed to promoting precepts and practices that were out of line with healthy theology and morality. Some had been wrong and dangerous, and their use in Sant’Ambrogio had had serious consequences, such as blasphemy and perjury. “For this I also ask God and the Holy Office for forgiveness.”
The tribunal stated that he was guilty on several charges, and in conclusion the Jesuit replied that although he had erred, he had not done so consciously. Leziroli recognized that the Inquisition’s judicial proceedings had been perfectly correct, and the transcript was an accurate record of his interrogation. Like Maria Luisa, he declined a defensive process with a reexamination of the witnesses, as well as any further defense. The answers he had given had been his defense. He was happy just to allow the assigned counsel, Giuseppe Cipriani, to review the files. On September 13 and 17 respectively, the fiscal, Antonio Bambozzi, and then Cipriani, checked the draft
Ristretto
for Leziroli’s interrogation, countersigned it, and released it for printing. In October 1861, copies were made on the Inquisition’s secret internal press, and distributed to its deciding authority: the consultors, the cardinals, and the pope.
MARIA VERONICA MILZA: AN ABBESS BEFORE THE COURT
Sallua began his witness examination of Abbess Maria Veronica in mid-January 1860 as part of the informative process. She pulled the
wool over his eyes several times. It was only when Sallua confronted her with witness statements from her fellow nuns that she admitted to “intentional omissions, lies, and several counts of perjury.” The Dominican therefore called her a “model of wickedness.”
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On March 16, following the preferral of charges, the cardinal vicar had her secretly moved to the conservatory of Santa Maria del Rifugio, near Santa Maria in Trastevere. The pope stipulated that neither she nor the other nuns from Sant’Ambrogio were permitted to wear the habit of the Regulated Third Order. Instead, she was given a simple black tunic.
The abbess’s interrogation as a defendant lasted from March 22 until July 31, 1861.
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Adelaide Milza (her secular name) told the court that she came from Sonnino in the province of Latina.
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She had been born in 1806, and was the daughter of Giuseppe Milza, since deceased. She came to Rome at the age of nineteen, and spent a year in the convent of Santa Pudenziana.
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She wasn’t able to profess her vows there, as she wished, and so in October 1827 she went to the reformed Sisters of the Third Order of Holy Saint Francis in Borgo Sant’Agata. She was clothed in February 1828, and in October of the same year the entire community moved to the convent of Sant’Ambrogio, where she professed her vows. Over the years, she was entrusted with many offices and duties there. She was under-mistress, nurse, novice mistress, and was twice elected vicaress, before taking over the office of abbess at New Year 1854–1855.
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Just after the start of the Apostolic Visitation to Sant’Ambrogio in the fall of 1859, the vicegerent had instructed the convent’s superiors to hand over all documents and objects from the mother founder, Agnese Firrao. The abbess was noticeably reticent, even at this stage. When she was interrogated as a defendant, she was forced to admit she hadn’t obeyed this instruction. In fact, she had ordered her nuns to hide or burn Firrao’s writings to prevent them from falling into the Holy Office’s hands, for fear that this “could be the ruin of herself and the institute.” She had asked Maria Colomba to throw the incriminating files on the fire immediately; Colomba replied, “Stay calm, I will take care of it.” One of Maria Agnese’s letters from 1838 contained an extremely disparaging remark about the family of a servant of the bishop of Gubbio. She said he was neglecting her in such a way “that she will be found dead one of these days.” She called the confessor a false “flunky.” These phrases, in the abbess’s
opinion, were unworthy of a saint, and must not be seen by the Holy Tribunal.
Maria Veronica also said that the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio had systematically bribed the mother founder’s father confessors in Gubbio. They used little favors and larger “gifts” to gain the confessors’ support for their forbidden correspondence with Maria Agnese in exile. The inquisitor emphatically rejected the abbess’s claim that this contact had been allowed, in spite of the 1816 judgment.
The court listed a whole series of documents from the Roman Inquisition’s archive to prove the prohibition had remained in place. More important, these documents were supposed to prove that the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio had always been aware of this fact. And the files all said the same thing: the convent’s superiors repeatedly sought to have the 1816 ban on communication officially lifted, even after 1829. In December 1831, for example, they appealed to Cardinal Giacomo Giustiniani.
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He had been a cardinal member of the Roman Inquisition since February of that year, and was promoted to become prefect of the Congregation of the Index in 1834. They asked whether Firrao might not be permitted “to communicate with the nuns of the convent she founded, by direct or indirect means.” This plea was rejected by the Holy Office, as were others from September 17, 1834, and August 12, 1846.
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