by Hubert Wolf
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.35 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.”36
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.37 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.38 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.”39
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.40 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.41 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.42
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.43
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.”44
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.45 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.46 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.47 They earnestly believed, as they told Katharina on several occasions, that “such stuff grew on the heads of Germans.”48 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.”49 On September 29, 1858, having contributed a dowry to the convent, she was officially clothed as a novice.50 Cardinal Costantino Patrizi performed the liturgical ceremony, and Cardinal Reisach “gave an address on withdrawing from
the world.”51 This marked the princess’s admission to the convent of Regulated Franciscans of the Third Order.52 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.53 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.
What happened inside the walls of Sant’Ambrogio, in the ten months from September 1858 to July 1859? The archbishop couldn’t make head nor tail of what his cousin said when he met her in the convent on July 25. He thought she had become confused and was talking nonsense—at least, Katharina’s Erlebnisse describes his reaction in these terms.54 At first, he could see no danger to the princess’s life. Hohenlohe seemed convinced that Katharina had overtaxed herself again, just as she had at the convent in Kintzheim, and was seeking some way of extricating herself from the situation. It was no coincidence that he had written to her at the start of July 1859, urging her “to show perseverance in her chosen profession.”55 To his mind, it was simply out of the question for her to leave another convent. He had, of course, been against her entering Sant’Ambrogio in the first place. He knew what a delicate state her health was in, but she had listened to her spiritual guide, Reisach, instead of him.
In spite of all his persuasion, Hohenlohe was unable to reassure his cousin, and when she carried on talking about poisoning and how she feared for her life, he reluctantly decided to help her. He went to the pope and begged permission for the princess to leave the convent the following day, on grounds of ill health. Pius IX granted his wish immediately.56 This speedy solution was only made possible by the direct access to Pius IX that Hohenlohe was granted as a Secret Chamberlain. Anyone else would have had to set in motion a lengthy process in order to fulfill the requirements of canon law for being released from a convent.57
On July 26, 1859, Archbishop Hohenlohe collected Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen from the convent and had her taken to his estate at Tivoli. In these rural surroundings, she would be at peace, and then they could see what was to be done. Katharina believed she had managed to convince her cousin “that her fears were not unfounded,” and that there had been real attempts on her life.58 However, it isn’t certain whether Hohenlohe grasped the true extent of the scandal that had played out in Sant’Ambrogio. It may merely have been pity that prompted him to let Katharina draw a line under her second attempt at convent life.
The Villa d’Este, Hohenlohe’s summer residence in Tivoli, lay some eighteen miles northeast of Rome. Its gardens, with their fountains and sprawling parklands, were an ideal place for Katharina to recover from the tribulations of her life in the convent. Here, she could finally bring the Sant’Ambrogio chapter of her life to a close. But she needed to get back on her feet in more than the physical sense. She also had to work through what had happened to her inside the walls of the Roman convent from a spiritual point of view. Although Cardinal Reisach visited Hohenlohe in Tivoli at the end of July, Katharina didn’t open up to her long-term spiritual guide.59 Instead, she started talking to a Benedictine padre from Saint Paul Outside the Walls, a Catholic abbey in Rome. He was taking a rest cure in Tivoli, to escape the heat of the Roman summer. Rudolf Wolter had been born in Bonn in 1825, obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the university there in 1849, and was ordained in 1850.60 In 1856, he followed his brother Ernst61 into the abbey of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, taking the religious name Maurus. The abbot at the time, Simplicio Pappalettere, was very receptive to modern ideas.62 His aim was to create a synthesis of Benedictine spirituality and contemporary philosophy within Saint Paul Outside the Walls, a counterbalance to the Jesuit-dominated Gregorian University. He was guided in this by the thought of the Viennese priest and philosopher Anton Günther.63
Maurus Wolter clearly made a big impression on the princess. His spirituality, and his exuberant enthusiasm for the cause of Saint Benedict, the “flame that consumed him,” was as great a source of fascination for Katharina as the young Reisach had been in 1834.64 Wolter became her new spiritual guide and confessor almost overnight. When his rest cure in Tivoli came to an end, the princess wrote to his superiors “with the urgent plea to grant an extension to Don Mauro Wolter’s holiday with us.” It had been a great comfort to her to have found a countryman, whom providence had “delivered for my spiritual guidance.” She implored them “not to rob me of such a father confessor.”65 And a month later, she thanked the “sons of Saint Benedict” for “graciously listening to the humble pleas of a poor Franciscan child.” They had, she said, “shown a deep understanding of her painful orphaned state, kindly [allowing her] to find her homeland in the hearts of German priests.”66
During these pastoral conversations, which sometimes took place in the sacramental context of confession, the idea took shape in Katharina’s mind that—as she reported in her Erlebnisse—she “should not be content with her own rescue from Sant’Ambrogio.” It was her duty to bring “the abuses there to the attention of the Holy See.”67 A few weeks after Archbishop Hohenlohe had rescued her, Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen contacted the Holy Tribunal of the Sanctum Officium, and made serious allegations against the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio.
DENUNCIATION AS A MORAL DUTY
The first files in the case of Sant’Ambrogio date from August 23, 1859.68 On this day, Katharina von Hohenzollern appeared in person before the investigating judge of the Roman Inquisition (known as the Sanctum Officium, or Holy Office), First Socius Vincenzo Leone Sallua. Sallua, a highly experienced inquisitor, accepted the denunciation and questioned the “denunciator” about her allegations.69 The interview took place in Archbishop Hohenlohe’s apartment in Rome.
The princess first placed her hand on the Gospels, and swore to tell the truth. Then she said: “It is out of a moral duty, imposed by my current father confessor, that I turn to this holy tribunal.” She explained that the German mother tongue she shared with her new spiritual guide, Padre Wolter, had allowed them to discuss at length all the “doubts and anguishes” that had plagued her during her stay in Sant’Ambrogio. With his help, she had finally managed to impose a degree of order on the confusing events of that period. As Katharina told the inquisitor, four issues had taken shape in her mind during these discussions, and she wanted to bring them to the attention of the highest tribunal. First, there was the forbidden cult of the nun who had founded the Franciscan community of Sant’Ambr
ogio, Maria Agnese Firrao. She had been found guilty of “false holiness” by the Holy Office at the start of the nineteenth century. Despite this, the nuns doggedly persisted in venerating her as a saint, both while Firrao was still alive, and to an even greater extent after her death. The second issue was the highly suspect relationship that the young novice mistress and madre vicaria, Maria Luisa of Saint Francis Xavier, had conducted with “Pietro N., called the Americano,” under the pretext of attempting to free him from demonic possession. The third was this same Maria Luisa’s claim to sainthood. She gave the appearance of having an “extraordinary soul.” She was said to be capable of “supernatural things,” and to possess “heavenly gifts.” Katharina’s fourth point encompassed all the things that had “befallen” her in the convent, up to and including the attempts on her life.
Following “careful consideration” and “thorough reflection,” her confessor had declared it her absolute moral duty “to denounce everything to this Supremo Tribunale.” She therefore sat down and wrote about her experiences in German, “in modo narrativo,” before translating this into Italian. The princess added that she wanted to submit her denunciation in written form, since she would find it “far too oppressive and complex to do this verbally.”
The incendiary power of this Denunzia was not fully revealed in Katharina’s verbal complaint. Clandestine relationships between attractive men and beautiful young nuns—women whose parents or guardians had often forced them to enter a convent against their will—were, after all, a classic and frequently aired rumor. The Nun of Monza from Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, and Denis Diderot’s novel The Nun are probably the best known literary examples of these stories.70 And Katharina was a “stately” matron, making allegations against an attractive young novice mistress with “angelic looks”: Sallua couldn’t entirely rule out envy as a possible motive.