The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal

by Hubert Wolf

  THE OUTCAST’S TESTIMONY

  The nun who had been expelled from Sant’Ambrogio, and whom Sallua was to interrogate, was Sister Agnese Eletta of the Holy Family. The cardinal vicar, acting in his role as cardinal protector of Sant’Ambrogio, had sent her to San Pasquale in August 1857 for disobedience. Here she was to become more spiritual, and practice the virtue of humility. But there had never been a proper investigation of the “difficulties” she had caused in the Franciscan convent; if there had, Patrizi could simply have dug out the old files.20 This in itself casts the cardinal vicar of Rome in a less than favorable light. Had he neglected his duties as the most senior supervisor of religious life in Sant’Ambrogio? Had he blindly trusted the superiors there, in particular the Jesuit confessors?

  In order to gain an initial impression of Agnese Eletta, Sallua first questioned the prioress of the Augustine Sisters of San Pasquale, Sister Maria Luisa of Jesus.21 They had had a difficult time with Agnese Eletta since she arrived in San Pasquale, the prioress told him. The nuns had required a great deal of patience to deal with her constant “insubordination” and her egotism. She wasn’t accustomed to convent practices. Days of abstinence and fasting were clearly unknown to her; in Sant’Ambrogio, as Agnese Eletta said herself, she had often enjoyed fancy foods, “always with butter.” She had also dressed a little like a woman of the world. Agnese Eletta’s superior—or rather, her convent jailer—painted a picture of a nun who had failed at cloistered life. So how had Agnese Eletta survived for so many years in a strictly enclosed convent?

  The following day—October 18, 1859—the Dominican was able to question Agnese Eletta herself.22 She was forty years old, and her given name was Agnese Corradini. Once Sallua had made her take the oath, the first question he put to her was the usual one: did she know why she had been summoned to this hearing? She answered, “no, sir.” He then asked her about the important facts of her life to date, and took down her personal details. She said she was the niece of the founder, Agnese Firrao, and had lived in a convent since she was four, when she had moved into the house in Borgo Sant’Agata run by the reformed nuns of the Third Order of Holy Saint Francis. This was in 1823, and she had moved with them to Sant’Ambrogio in 1828, professing her vows there at the age of twenty.

  First and foremost, Sallua was interested in the reasons for her expulsion from Sant’Ambrogio. Agnese Eletta gave an extremely evasive answer, saying she had actually always felt very at home in Sant’Ambrogio. It was only just before she went away that her relationship with the abbess had cooled. The abbess had said to her: “You went into my room, picked up several letters from our mother founder Sister Maria Agnese that were on my desk, took them to your room and tore them up. That is the reason I am angry with you.” Agnese Eletta’s assurances that she had done nothing of the sort were met with disbelief. She told the inquisitor that she suspected these letters had been placed in her drawer by another nun, the young novice mistress Maria Luisa.

  However, this didn’t stop Agnese Eletta finishing her hearing by singing the praises of the young madre vicaria. “She has the look of a soul privileged by the Lord.” God “gave her the gift of sometimes being able to speak with Him.” After they had prayed together on the night before Maundy Thursday, “she started to talk as though the Lord wanted to speak to me and give me a warning.” Visions and visitations from heavenly beings had been a daily occurrence for her. According to Agnese Eletta, Maria Luisa was “lovable, warm-hearted and graceful,” and showed the novices “great affection and attention.” “Night-time was when she was most often blessed by God; I say this because I slept in her cell for a while, and heard her … speaking to the Lord.” But Agnese Eletta also stated that she had never truly believed in these supernatural phenomena. It “may have been [Maria Luisa’s] imagination” at work here. Eventually, Maria Luisa had become inexplicably cold toward her, and Eletta didn’t really know why she had been forced to leave.

  Sallua was dissatisfied with the result of this hearing. His principal aim had been to extract information about the cult of Firrao. But Agnese Eletta, the mother founder’s niece, had said almost nothing about this. And what she had told him about Maria Luisa remained strangely inconclusive. Agnese Eletta’s statement seems to have given her a sleepless night as well: the next day, she went to her prioress and requested another interview with the Dominican.23

  This took place on October 21.24 Agnese Eletta admitted that “due to my confusion during the first hearing” there were some things she had forgotten or omitted to say. But her confessor had appealed to her conscience, and convinced her to speak the whole truth.

  First I must say that, when Maria Luisa let me sleep in her cell, she did this behind the abbess’s back and without her permission. When the abbess realized, she scolded Maria Luisa and tried to stop me sleeping in her room. Maria Luisa called me to her and said that, before I started to sleep there, for three nights she had heard a great commotion of demons in my room. She had risen and gone into my cell to release me. The demon had been furious, telling her that the moment I began to sleep alone in the cell again, he would strangle me. Then she said that I should tell our father confessor and the mother abbess what she had told me. She wanted me to say that I myself had heard the commotion during those nights. I replied that I had heard no such commotion and so could tell neither the father confessor nor the abbess about it. But she insisted: “On the contrary, you can and must tell them you heard it, because I heard it.” And so I was duty-bound to assure the confessor and the abbess that I really had heard it. As a result, Padre Leziroli ordered the abbess to let me sleep in Maria Luisa’s room. I was so afraid of the demons that I sometimes shared her bed. From July to December 1854, and from December to June 1855, I always slept in her cell.

  Two young nuns sharing a bed: this fact must have caught Sallua’s attention. The sisters always had to address each other by the formal Italian Lei; they weren’t permitted the familiar tu. Personal friendships were forbidden. Two nuns should never have been allowed to share a cell without supervision by an older sister—to say nothing of a bed.25

  In the course of the interview, the witness kept drawing the inquisitor’s attention to the beautiful young novice mistress and her numerous “ecstasies and visions.” From the start, her aunt Maria Agnese Firrao, the “mother founder,” had been skeptical about Maria Luisa and her affected behavior. While confined in Gubbio, she had warned the abbess and Padre Leziroli several times “that they should watch out, because Maria Luisa’s ecstasies and visions were imaginative games, and they should not give into her because she was deluded.” And this advice came from a woman who had spent her whole life claiming to have conducted almost daily conversations with heavenly beings, and who assumed that everyone recognized her own visions as the real thing.

  Agnese Eletta said that this meant Maria Luisa had to wait until Firrao’s death to finally prove the authenticity of her heavenly gift. “After the death of the mother founder in Gubbio, on October 4, 1854, Maria Luisa told me openly that the founder had appeared to her in a vision and begged for her forgiveness. She was sorry for what she had written about her, which was that she believed Maria Luisa’s visions and ecstasies were illusions and deceptions. During the time I slept in Sister Maria Luisa’s cell, she had … visions almost every night, and spoke with the Lord or with the founder.”

  A vision of the convent’s founder, Agnese Firrao, seen only by the visionary herself, was supposed to prove that this vision, and the visionary, were both genuine. This kind of circular argumentation should have elicited a skeptical reaction from any theologian who was halfway educated in philosophical logic—as Padre Leziroli would have been after studying with the Jesuits. But Maria Luisa’s strategy was unexpectedly successful.

  Padre Leziroli believed “in something supernatural and in a vision,” as Agnese Eletta reported. She herself, on the other hand, was convinced that Maria Luisa had consciously invoked these heavenly powers in order to get her own wa
y. Whenever an important convent office became available, the beautiful young nun would have a vision proclaiming her God’s appointed candidate. This was how she became gatekeeper, novice mistress, and even vicaress.

  Padre Leziroli used his priestly authority to see that the heavenly instructions were carried out in each case. Only he could absolve somebody of their sins in the confessional, or deny absolution. This gave him a powerful instrument of control, which he used deliberately: Katharina reported as much in her denunciation. On this point, her testimony tallies with that of the first witness.

  Agnese Eletta, at least, saw through Maria Luisa’s strategy. And when the latter tried to force her—Agnese Eletta, the niece of the visionary Agnese Firrao, whom people probably assumed to be particularly receptive to supernatural phenomena—to back her by saying she had shared one of her visions, Agnese Eletta refused to play along.

  Other nuns also remained skeptical, doubting that Maria Luisa’s visitations were genuine. Unsurprisingly, she was greatly angered by their doubt. She challenged these recalcitrant sisters again and again, doing everything she could to convince them she had been blessed by heaven. But as soon as she sensed she had gone too far, she claimed that the devil had “taken her shape” and appeared to the nuns. She herself had done nothing.

  To illustrate this, Agnese Eletta recounted something that had happened to two of the older sisters, Maria Caterina and Maria Francesca.

  It occurred in the following way: Maria Luisa told me she wanted to speak with the above-mentioned sisters regarding the rearrangement of the choir for Christmas. I advised her against it, because it was not right for her, as a young nun, to do this. But she tried to speak to them anyway, and the nuns complained to the abbess. As soon as I heard this, I informed her; she was surprised, and said it could be made right. A short while later, she told me it had been the devil, and not her, who had spoken to the two nuns. I told her that was impossible, as she had told me of her intentions shortly beforehand, and in any case I had proof, because I had passed by and heard her talking to them. She replied that the voice both I and the other nuns had heard was not her own, but that of the devil, imitating her.

  Agnese Eletta was convinced that Maria Luisa had gotten her expelled from the convent “through one of her revelations or something else.” Was Maria Luisa trying to get rid of an unbeliever, who wasn’t convinced of her supernatural gifts? Or was the mother founder’s niece ejected because Maria Luisa saw her as competition for power and influence? Both of these were probably the case.

  At the very end of the interview, Agnese Eletta suddenly returned to the delicate topic that had caught Sallua’s attention earlier on. She told him that after she left Sant’Ambrogio, Maria Luisa chose the young novice Maria Giacinta to sleep in her cell. She then brought her testimony to an abrupt end: “It seems to me that I have nothing further to say.”

  TWO NUNS IN A BED

  This final statement was nothing less than a blatant lie under oath, and a week and a half later, Agnese Eletta’s superior in San Pasquale had to request another interview with Sallua on her behalf. Spiritual exercises and long conversations with her confessor, Padre Andrea Scalzo, had finally convinced her to tell the whole truth.26

  The third hearing of the outcast from Sant’Ambrogio took place on November 3, 1859. Agnese Eletta submitted a paper written in her own hand. She said that even in the confessional, she had blushed deeply as she told her confessor about the awful things she now wanted to reveal to the Inquisition. She had been terribly ashamed, and “filled with extreme disgust.” Padre Scalzo had therefore suggested that “I set down in writing the things that made my cheeks red with shame when I spoke them aloud.”27 The sister read out this text, which Sallua entered into the files. She then had to sign for it.28

  In August of the year 1854, Maria Luisa said to me one day: “You must know that you will have a sickness showing itself in your private parts, for which you will have to visit the professors and let them treat you.” When I heard this I was horrified, and asked her to pray for me so that I would not fall victim to this shame. She answered that the Lord had told her she should treat me herself, so that I would be released from this punishment. She had to examine and treat me four times. I said that I currently had no complaint, so at the present time no treatment was necessary, but she added that the malady had already begun, although I myself had noticed nothing yet. I believed this, and with the utmost revulsion and reluctance I allowed her to look at and touch me, thinking that if it was such a trial to show myself to a woman, it would be worse still to show myself to a man. If not for this consideration, I would never have allowed her to do it. Maria Luisa warned me not to speak of this to Padre Leziroli.

  A few days later she had one of her usual ecstasies, and I realized she was speaking to the late abbess, Maria Maddalena. At the same moment, she handed me a letter from Maria Maddalena, which she said I was to read at once. I then had to do what the letter told me. But the handwriting was Maria Luisa’s. The letter was addressed to me, and was full of praise for her, presenting her as a saint and a favored soul. In order to recognize the great purity of this her daughter (to use the words of the letter), I was to look closely at certain parts of her body.

  When I read this, I was horrified, and doubted the letter, thinking it a diabolical deceit. As Christian religious virtue tells us, I was disgusted by the thought of looking at such things. But because of the great respect I had for Maria Luisa, and because it seemed impossible to me for her to want to do me harm, I overcame this thought. I believed that although the deed itself was sinful and I should not commit it, I must follow the order that had been given to me by a heavenly apparition. Eventually I did it—she appeared to be asleep all the while. Afterwards, Maria Luisa told me I should burn the letter and say nothing to Padre Leziroli.

  A few weeks later, Maria Luisa told me that Maria Maddalena would come to visit her that night. So I remained very watchful, and I heard her speaking with this dead nun and telling her about the following vision: “This person appeared to me (without saying so, she made it clear that this was the Lord), and out of His side He gave me a liquid that dripped onto my face, then flowed over my whole body, collecting in the lower part of my body, as in a little hollow, where it then remained. Agnese Eletta shall share in this liquid, by joining with me and touching me, so she may be purified and share in this same blessing.” And she went on, saying other things like this.

  Another night, after one of her ecstasies, she told me that the Lord had appeared to her and had given her a special blessing, so that when she touched me, that part of my body would be healed. And so she wanted me to sleep in the same bed as her, although that repulsed me. And she wanted me to join myself to her person in a very corrupt way (the rest I do not have to explain), saying that the Lord willed it, and that, since it was His will, I was not committing any sin by this act, and that it was necessary so that I might enjoy all the above-mentioned advantages.

  But I was not to speak a word of this to Padre Leziroli, or to anyone else. I reluctantly agreed and, believing it really was a heavenly command, I tried to convince myself that although these were forbidden things, the Lord might have commanded them for reasons I did not know. This happened again in different ways, towards the end of September of the same year.

  A few months later I discovered I had been deceived, in the following way: the same extraordinary father confessor came who visited every year, and Maria Luisa went into confession before me. As she left the confessional, she said to me: “Confess that you have been in my bed at night, because the father confessor has said that it is a sin.” After she said this, I was taken aback, realizing she had deceived me, and realizing the evil she had allowed me to commit for so long. Still, out of false consideration for her honor, I did not tell the confessor in what way she had deceived me, instead letting him believe I was the guiltier one.

  Afterwards I asked Maria Luisa how this change of heart had come about, and she told
me, in a web of lies, she had not said a word about it to the confessor; it was he who had told her everything.

  I then said, greatly surprised: “So you were deceiving me when you allowed me to believe that the Lord commanded you to do this, and had worked a miracle in order to reveal it.”

  Maria Luisa answered me: “No, it must have been the devil, working to dishonor me. The padre must have taken confession from somebody he believed to be a saint, and this person, having been told about it by a devilish apparition, must then have told the father confessor.”

  And she reassured me that there was not the least evil in these things, and warned me again not to say anything to Padre Leziroli, and she went on talking until I believed her, although I had many a suspicion regarding this and the other apparitions. As my doubts continued to grow, she became aware of them, and probably feared that I might talk to Padre Leziroli about it after all. Finally she said to me one day that what she had told me about the extraordinary father confessor had been a lie, and that in truth she had been worried, and so had confessed. But she did not have to say anything about me, as I had already confessed.

  And so I remained convinced that she had acted purely out of a devilish madness. And I still nursed the suspicion that it was not a desire to repent that had made her confess, but the fear that the regular confessor might hear of it, and that he would then cease to hold her in such high regard. She may have feared that over time, I might start to worry, and so she pretended she was allaying my conscience, thinking that once I had said it, I would never say it again. Perhaps she wanted to reassure herself as well, although I do not know how much use this confession was to her.

  So the close friendship that had bound us for more than a year came to an end. It had begun in January 1854, with an aim that seemed holy. Maria Luisa made out that she was there to lift me out of the numbness of my life and set me on the path to perfection, and for my part I took her for a saint, as was the general opinion. I believed that her guidance could help me improve myself. And in the beginning, this really seemed to be the case. But later she proved to be very harmful, because of the temptations and pangs of conscience to which I fell prey. Finally I was hounded out of the convent.