The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal (7 page)
Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
The princess told the inquisitor that her argument with Maria Luisa had badly unsettled her stomach. On December 9, she was therefore grateful when somebody brought her a cup of black tea after lunch, supposedly on the abbess’s instructions. She drank it down and was immediately gripped by severe “stomach pains, dizziness and vomiting.” She was too weak to stand, and had to take to her bed. In the evening, two novices brought her a cup of chamomile tea, which she hoped would alleviate her symptoms. But she was put off by its acrid taste and revolting aroma. She had one of the novices taste it, and she, too, found it entirely unpalatable. Then the madre vicaria suddenly appeared and chastised the novice, saying this sort of behavior wasn’t permissible when caring for the sick. On December 10, Katharina said, she was given castor oil, and she recovered a little.
On the morning of December 11, the madre vicaria herself brought the princess a cup of beef tea, which tasted “
amarissimo e pizzicante
,” extremely bitter and acrid. With a huge effort, she overcame her misgivings and finished the cup “as a test of her obedience.” She immediately suffered severe stomach pains, a headache, and nausea, and felt intoxicated. One of the two convent doctors prescribed almond milk with gum arabic. She was given this emulsion, which she had taken many times before, in the afternoon. Katharina was horrified to discover that this had “the same acrid taste and unpleasant smell” as the beef tea. She drank only a little of it, and at once felt extremely unwell. The pot of almond milk remained in her cell. When the doctor returned, a novice who was devoted to Maria Luisa came and hid the pot. That evening, the novice mistress brought her a plate of rice soup, but this also had “the same bitter taste.” Again, the princess refused to eat, at which the madre vicaria was very indignant.
On December 12, the novices brought her beef tea again. Katharina managed to put some of it into a glass vial without being seen, and asked her confessor, Padre Peters, to have it analyzed. He promised he would. But Peters was unable to share the princess’s suspicion that the madre vicaria was trying to poison her. On the contrary, he
was quite vexed over her accusations, and did his best to reassure her. And initially—as Katharina reported—he was successful in this. But that night she was struck by a sudden recollection: she had once asked the novice mistress for an ammonia solution to treat insect bites, and Maria Luisa had said: “Know that this is a powerful poison: you could kill a lot of people with this little bottle.” The princess had laughed and replied that nobody could bear to swallow the stuff because of its repulsive smell. But now Maria Luisa’s seemingly incidental remark gained a new meaning in Katharina’s mind.
December 13 passed peacefully. The princess ate and drank almost nothing. In the evening, the confessor came and told her that alum had been found in the beef tea. But, he continued, this had clearly been used accidentally by somebody in the convent kitchen who had mistaken it for salt. Alum wasn’t a deadly poison, so she could be reassured. Katharina was unconvinced by his argument: black tea, chamomile tea, beef tea, rice soup—all of them with alum instead of salt? This was too much to be a coincidence or an accident.
The following day, the princess claimed, she was told to take an electuary of cassia and tamarinds. The madre vicaria, and Katharina’s fellow novice Maria Ignazia, had both asked her if she was familiar with the taste.
They warned me that this remedy would taste bad, and so once again I had an awful suspicion. I asked for Holy Communion before this, which I was granted. On that Monday night, my night light went out; when I lit it again, I noticed that the ampule of ammonia solution was not in its place. I searched for it all night, but could not find it in my chamber. My knees trembled, and my heart raced. At four o’clock on Tuesday morning the mother abbess visited me, and I assured her that I was better. She told me I could not take Holy Communion as I was ill in bed; other people who were ill did not have it brought to their beds, either. I tried to stay as calm as I could, and to strengthen my faith in God, when Maria Felice brought me the medicine. I invoked the holiest names as I ate, taking six spoonfuls of it. The taste was revolting, but I could not tell what it was. I cannot say what state I was in afterwards. I suffered very much and, an hour later, the rumor went round the convent that I had had a stroke and was close to death. The effects
of the illness, after I had taken this medicine, were as follows: protracted sickness with nausea, heavy dizziness in the head, a terrible fever, a racing pulse, a severe rumbling in my stomach and heavy, black stools. The two doctors who cared for me were Doctor Riccardi and Doctor Marchi. I cannot describe exactly the course of the illness after this day, as my memory is not entirely clear, and I cannot now tell the days of December 14 and 15 apart.
Katharina received the last rites: absolution, provisions for the journey, and extreme unction. She was also asked if she wanted to profess her vows ahead of time, as she was on her deathbed, which she gratefully did. “I asked for my crucifix, a book and a burning candle. I stayed quiet and composed for some time. But in my soul, there was a growing suspicion and a fear of death. The agonies were getting worse. They let my blood four times; and although I consented willingly, I was devoured by the fear that they were extracting too much of my blood, hastening my end or at least robbing me of my senses.” When Katharina sat up in bed during the night, her veins opened up again, and she was afraid they hadn’t bandaged her properly on purpose, to hasten her death. “Frightened, I called for the father confessor, who was in the adjoining room. He came in and saw to it that my bandages were renewed. When I tried to touch my bandaged arm, the confessor held me back, which offended me more than a little. He seemed to believe that I was intending to open the wound deliberately. I was afraid the poison I had been fed was something I had kept in my room. The thought that after my death, people might say I had killed myself with my own poison weighed heavily on me; this idea almost drove me to insanity. I sought for a way to free myself, but in vain.”
Katharina survived this terrible night, but there was no end to her agony. When Hohenlohe visited her on December 15, she contemplated asking him to take her away from this danger. “But the thought occurred to me that my words could be dismissed as the product of a high fever. If my suspicion came to light, I would be lost. Fear made me remain silent.… I no longer had any faith in myself, and feared sinning before my death.” And so the princess allowed her only opportunity to tell somebody outside the enclosure about the poisoning to pass her by.
During the night of December 15, Katharina was left alone with her fears. Her confessor had been sent home. She interpreted this awful night as an attack on her faith by the devil:
That was the point when the Fiend battled my faith as well. That such things could come to pass in Rome, in one of the best convents, under the eyes of the Church.… The
clausura
only serves to draw a veil over such crimes. Where is God, in whom I have placed all my trust, where is my Savior, whom alone I have longed only to serve? Towards morning, at the height of my misery, I found the rosary that Gustav had sent me, lying on my bed. I put it around my neck, in the hope that the merciful Mother would come to my aid. Even if I could not pray, I at least wanted to touch some rosary bead and say an Ave Maria. I tried it, and was saved. I calmed down a little, sensing hope.
When the madre vicaria entered Katharina’s cell on the morning of December 16, Katharina asked to speak with her privately. The princess grasped Maria Luisa by both hands and revealed what she knew: that for the past five days, her food and drink had been contaminated with various ingredients. She gave the madre vicaria an urgent warning. Poisoning could be detected after death, through an autopsy, and in her case the Holy Father would undoubtedly order such a procedure to be carried out. “What shame it would bring on the convent, particularly for the father confessors and their order!” She had already proved her love for Sant’Ambrogio by staying silent, even though a single word would have been enough to reveal her situation to the doctors or the archbishop. Katharina asked Maria Luisa to allay her concerns. She wanted permission to seek out her cousin and speak openly with him about her suspicions. The novice mistress would be able to take part in this conversation. Katharina also announced that from then on she would eat and drink nothing that seemed suspicious. “The madre vicaria was completely transformed, kneeling before my bed and begging me to calm myself. Everything would be arranged to allow me to regain my strength, the archbishop would visit me, and I would not have to take any more medicine. The result of this explanation filled me with confidence. On this day I began to hope that the wickedness might finally be at an end.”
Katharina placed particular trust in Maria Giuseppa, the sister responsible for the convent dispensary and caring for the sick. When she brought Katharina her medicine, unseen by the others, she gave her a sign that there was nothing mixed into it. “And so I trusted her and drank it. A short while later, Maria Ignazia appeared in a great hurry, completely beside herself. She said I should not take the medicine. I wondered at this.” Over the following days, Katharina made an admirably quick physical recovery. But her mental state remained frail. “I still always felt more or less afraid that I might die. I battled against my inner suspicion, and the memory of the things I had suffered. I had somebody fetch all the medicines I had brought with me into the convent—and there was the little bottle of ammonia.”
By the time Christmas arrived, things had calmed down somewhat. Katharina continued to be very cautious, and made an effort to be particularly humble with her superiors. She had decided not to speak to anyone on the outside about her terrible suspicions. There was, in any case, no way of doing this from within the convent’s strictly enforced enclosure. Until the end of February 1859, neither her cousin Hohenlohe nor her spiritual guide Reisach visited her. But Katharina’s strategy didn’t work. In the convent, she was still regarded with a high degree of skepticism, and the two confessors, in particular, were still concerned that she might give something away.
Spring 1859 brought fresh fears and uncertainties. Padre Peters and the madre vicaria told Katharina terrible things about the skirmishes taking place on Italian soil, most importantly the tensions between France and Austria over Lombardy and Venetia.
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Peters and Maria Luisa both saw the “sect of the Freemasons” at work in the attempt to unify Italy, and predicted that their troops would overthrow Rome. There would be terrible atrocities, and priests and members of holy orders would be persecuted. Katharina was convinced they were trying to persuade her to go back to her homeland, as she wrote in her report to the Inquisition.
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This would have been an elegant way to get rid of somebody who was threatening to reveal the convent’s secrets. In far-off Germany, there would be no chance of the princess talking to people with an influence in Rome about what had taken place in Sant’Ambrogio. It would have been impossible for her to make a direct denunciation to the tribunal in Rome, or for them to question her as a witness. And Katharina didn’t dismiss this solution
out of hand: “I gave thorough consideration to this option, as I hoped I might thereby escape my difficult situation in the convent.”
By early summer 1859, Katharina had become extremely agitated: the political situation in Italy was coming to a head. On July 17, Stephanie von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,
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Katharina’s step-granddaughter and the queen of Portugal, died of diphtheria, and Katharina fell into an indisposition and into depressive states. The madre vicaria now adopted a new strategy, constantly telling the convent’s inhabitants that they had to approach Katharina with great caution and shouldn’t interact normally with her. The princess began to fear that the madre vicaria might “have her declared mad on the basis of such fears and agitations.” Being locked away in a psychiatric institution would certainly have silenced her once and for all.
However, the madre vicaria’s plan didn’t come to fruition, and Katharina “had started to entertain the hope of being released in peace,” when in summer 1859 there was another dramatic change in the novice mistress’s attitude toward the princess. “Her antipathy became apparent again.” Once again, Katharina suspected that somebody was trying to murder her. Once, when she had to wait longer than usual for her breakfast, she went into the anteroom to her cell and found Sister Maria Felice there with a cup of chocolate in her hand. The princess believed she was trying to mix something into the chocolate. Despite this, “I drank the chocolate that was brought to me later without any ill effects.” Still, her fears remained. “My suspicion continued to grow, so that as soon as I was not being observed, I regularly tipped away my breakfast and my evening soup.”
The madre vicaria did her utmost to prevent Katharina making contact with the outside world. In June and July 1859, the princess tried in vain to reach the convent’s cardinal protector, Costantino Patrizi, or her cousin Archbishop Hohenlohe. When they both visited Sant’Ambrogio on July 24, they were told that Katharina was ill in bed and could not receive visitors, as entry into the enclosure was not permitted. The madre vicaria also denied the princess any conversation with her confessor. Nor was she allowed to write to her spiritual guide, Cardinal Reisach. “There was no doubt in my mind that I was being kept apart from everyone. I thus feared another attempt on my life. For two days I had been feeling ill. I had pains in my stomach and lower body, and diarrhea, though this was not as
severe as during my first illness.… The following night was terrible for me. The next morning they wanted to give me cassia; I sent it back and asked for lemonade with cream of tartar.” Several times, she was served soup instead of her usual breakfast, and secretly poured it away. Once, Katharina drank a little of the soup in the presence of the novice mistress. Although she couldn’t taste anything unusual in it, she suffered severe stomach pains afterward.