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

by Hubert Wolf

  This was a serious omission. The understanding at that time was that the last rites were the only guarantee that a “good” Catholic would have a good death and safe passage to heaven. Until the mid-twentieth century, death notices commonly contained the words: “died fortified with the last sacraments of the Church.”134

  In fact, Firrao’s death frightened her nurses. Filomena Monacelli said that when she died, there was “a great commotion, like the loosening of iron chains.” A report on the death of a devout Catholic—a saint, even—would make very different reading. Rattling chains sounded more like a sign of the devil, who might have been at work in Firrao’s death.135 At least, this was how the nurses in San Marziale interpreted it. In spite of this, the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio petitioned to have Firrao brought back to Rome for reburial. She had been laid to rest by the outer wall of the church in San Marziale, away from the nuns’ graveyard. The nuns of Sant’Ambrogio wanted her body returned to them, so they could create a saint’s tomb as a place of veneration.136 Their abbess, Maria Veronica, had written to the abbess of Gubbio on June 15, 1859: “We still think of our treasure being with you; you will understand that I speak of our dear and much beloved Mother.”

  Sallua scrutinized the interrogation transcripts from Gubbio, and concluded that in spite of the lifelong prohibition, there had been continuous contact between the mother founder and the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio from 1816 until Firrao’s death in 1854. Even after her banishment, Firrao in effect continued to lead the convent. She was its real, secret abbess.

  RELICS

  In Catholicism, haptic objects play a natural part in the cult of a saint. Ideally these include the saint’s grave, or at least his or her bones.137 There may also be images and various objects once owned by the saint, as well as clothing—for nuns, this is usually their habit—and the utensils of day-to-day devotional practice, such as rosaries and prayer books. These are known as contact relics.138 Texts written by the saint are also important relics, in his or her own handwriting where possible. In addition to letters, these may also be prayers, litanies, or instructions for leading a spiritual life. The lives of the saints form their own literary genre, along with other hagiographic texts from the pens of third parties.139

  The Inquisition suspected that these and other cult objects existed in Sant’Ambrogio. In her denunciation, Katharina von Hohenzollern expressly referred to Firrao’s writings and letters, as well as “supposedly miraculous objects” and portraits of the mother founder. When Sallua questioned her about these, she was even able to tell him where writings and objects belonging to the former abbess were hidden: in the archive; in the library whose entrance was behind the organ loft; in a chest in a passageway next to the abbess’s room. Two attic rooms above the workshop and the infirmary also served as secret hiding places. According to Katharina, you had to hoist a plank up to the attic in order to climb in.

  When they were first questioned, the abbess and most of the nuns denied possessing any such objects.140 In her first interrogation on January 13, 1860, Abbess Maria Veronica was very reluctant to admit that somewhere in the convent there was a description of Agnese Firrao’s life, written by Abbot Marconi.141 Then she claimed she had already handed this over to the Holy Office. In reality—as Sallua discovered on closer analysis of her statements—she had burned it, along with other texts, shortly before the Apostolic Visitation. The abbess admitted there were also some letters from the mother founder’s confessors, but she didn’t know where these were currently to be found. The Dominican showed her evidence “that all these papers and the other writings had been retained by her.” Finally, she was forced to admit “that some of the sisters still had writings and letters from the founder, and that these writings were regularly used for spiritual readings and instruction, as refectory readings, prayers, subjects for meditation, novenas and other devotional practices.” Furthermore, the founder’s cilice and scourge, two habits, and various other items of clothing had been preserved, and were said to radiate a “special blessing.” The nuns had also hidden two oil paintings and a picture on paper. Under extreme pressure from the inquisitors, the abbess finally confessed to having burned numerous papers to stop them being seized by the Holy Office. She had destroyed the entire correspondence between the founder in Gubbio and Sant’Ambrogio’s abbesses and nuns, as well as original instructive texts on the leadership of the convent, Firrao’s letters to her confessors—including the Jesuit Pignatelli—and the documents that Leziroli had used to compile his saint’s life of Firrao.

  Further interrogations revealed that the abbess was employing a salami-slicing strategy with the information she gave the Inquisition. Several times, she even told Sallua outright lies. In his summary for the cardinals of the Inquisition, he noted laconically: “With regret, I am forced to declare here that through her behavior the Mother Abbess has consciously perjured herself.”

  The older sisters, in particular Maria Gertrude and Serafina, had a similar attitude. They had hidden various texts and objects to which they accorded the status of contact relics. For them, these were real “objects of veneration” that had belonged to the “Holy Mother.” Under massive pressure from the investigating court, Serafina finally cracked and gave away their hiding places. After this, the Inquisition was at least able to seize the documents that had not yet been burned:142 first the convent’s death book, which started with the mother founder, and celebrated her “heroic virtues, miracles, fame, visions, and above all her saintly death.” This was hidden in the straw sack of a seriously ill nun in the infirmary. Then came the annals of the institute, from its founding to the year 1858. These were tucked behind a tapestry in a sitting room on the ground floor. There was also a little chest full of letters from Firrao and her confessors, a small picture of Padre Pignatelli, numerous “of the Mother Abbess’s little dresses, and a cloth that had been dipped into the wound in her ribs.” Cups, cutlery, glasses, crucifixes, and rosaries had all been kept as contact relics. The abbess had “collected these objects with reverence and in the hope that they might serve as cult objects and relics if the Church one day raised the mother founder to the altars.”

  Many of Sant’Ambrogio’s nuns said the same thing in their Inquisition hearings, right down to their choice of words. The sixty-two-year-old Sister Maria Maddalena was particularly angry, as her confessor had forced her to show the abbess the places where the mother founder’s objects were hidden. She made a bitter accusation against her mother superior: “If she had not talked so much to the investigating fathers, I would not have had to give up so many things.” In other words, Maddalena told the inquisitors to their faces that it would have been better to refuse to speak to them. This shows just how devoted this nun was to the cult of the founder and the holiness of her relics—and how little respect she had for the highest religious tribunal. And what harm could come to her, with a saint to intercede for her in heaven?

  The seventy-year-old Maria Gertrude took the same line. As the inquisitors were searching the convent once more for Firrao’s writings, she said loudly to a fellow nun: “Poor fathers: they really think we’ll tell them where we’ve hidden those things! They’ll never find them!”

  The nuns’ hearings painted a clear picture: a real cult of Saint Agnese Firrao existed in Sant’Ambrogio, involving all kinds of relics, objects of veneration, and things that were said to have miraculous properties. For Sallua, this proved the third Titolo.

  INSPIRED TEXTS

  The fourth Titolo dealt with a very specific category of letters, as Sallua reported to the cardinals.143 “The following facts reveal how great was the nuns’ veneration of the mother founder, and how convinced they and the abbess were of her glorification in heaven. This story arose again and again throughout the interrogations. During one hearing, the mother abbess seemed full of reverence and wonder. Looking very shy and secretive, she showed a few rather elegant little letters, which she had apparently found in mysterious places and under wholly unusual circum
stances. She said: ‘These letters were written by the mother founder in heaven.’ ”

  As proof that these letters were genuine, the abbess said the paper they were written on was not kept in Sant’Ambrogio, and the convent’s strict enclosure meant that they couldn’t have come from outside. The handwriting clearly belonged to the Blessed Mother, and her letters referred to current events that she couldn’t have known about when she was still alive. The abbess was firmly convinced that the mother founder continued to lead the convent from heaven.

  The Inquisition’s evaluators quickly discovered that Agnese Firrao had claimed her texts were inspired, and the nuns had believed her.144 The nuns cited the miraculous power of her letters as proof of their divine quality. Every year on Christmas Eve, a strange ceremony took place: “The ceremonial said that the abbess must give a long speech, in which she would be inspired by the Blessed Mother. On this occasion, the statue of the Christ child would move and come alive.”

  While in common parlance “inspiration” means a creative idea or sudden realization, the theological term comes from the idea that the Holy Scriptures were ultimately written by God.145 However, in theological history the relationship between God as primary author and the human scribe as instrumental author has been interpreted in a variety of ways. This could either be a verbal inspiration, through which the Holy Ghost not only determined the content, but dictated every single word and punctuation mark to the biblical writers. Or it could be a “real” inspiration, in which God guaranteed the infallibility of the content, though without directly inspiring the words.

  In any case, saying that somebody convicted of “false” holiness had written texts inspired by God was quite a claim. This would make these writings sacred texts, and if God was their ultimate author, they should be met with strict obedience and unconditional belief.

  But this wasn’t simply a case of the founder’s daughters believing their mother’s texts were inspired: in her letters, the founder herself claimed that God had guided her pen. Agnese Firrao and her confessor had apparently authored Sant’Ambrogio’s ceremonial themselves, and this, too, claimed that “even the words and turns of phrase” had been “inspired by God.”146 But the Inquisition’s theologians quickly proved that most of the ceremonies and rubrics had simply been copied from the ceremonials of other convents. This was also the case for Maria Agnese’s spiritual guidance, which she had compiled from the works of various ascetic authors. As the Dominican concluded, there was no trace of divine inspiration here; this was simple deception. It was aggravated by the fact that Firrao had threatened “harsh punishments, torments and spiritual pain” if the nuns should fail to follow her instructions to the letter.

  A “MOTHER CONFESSOR”

  Sin and forgiveness play a central role in the Catholic Church in general, and in monastic orders in particular. The sacramental granting of absolution is reserved for priests in the confessional—though this must be differentiated from the “chapter of faults” that takes place in many religious orders.147 This is when the members of the order gather in the chapter house, and tell the community about their transgressions against the convent rules. The most senior person there—as a rule the abbot or abbess—assigns each sinner particular acts of penance to carry out.

  In the Sant’Ambrogio ceremonial, the Inquisitors found a form of confession that took place not in front of the community, but before the abbess alone.148 “The nuns [were] ordered to confess their sins and lack of virtue to the mother superior, as if they had Christ Himself before them.” To the Inquisition, this had all the hallmarks of a “sacramental confession.” And Firrao, acting as the mouthpiece of God, did in fact seem to have arrogated to herself the sacramental power to forgive sins—as individual nuns confirmed during their interrogations.

  This meant that the mother founder was taking on a role that Catholic doctrine said was reserved solely for officers of the Church. Only clerics—priests and bishops—can act in persona Christi. They are the only people to whom a Catholic must accord the obedience due to Christ.149 Feigned holiness thus had consequences that posed an immediate threat to the structure of the Church hierarchy. Where would it be if nonordained people, and in particular women, were able to dispense divine mercy?

  The highest religious tribunal was obliged to intervene here: this was an attack on the Church’s sacramental order. To protect the hierarchy, the Inquisition believed it had to act against this woman, whose sacramental powers of absolution did not and could not stem from ordination.

  In his report to the cardinals, the Dominican also pointed out the pastoral ramifications of this state of affairs. He spoke of the “serious spiritual difficulties” and the “spiritual disadvantage” that the younger nuns, in particular, had experienced as a result of this dangerous confessional practice. There was a crucial difference between the Forum externum (outward discipline), for which the convent leaders were responsible, and the Forum internum (inner faith and spirituality), for which the father confessors had sole responsibility. Canon law stipulated that these two areas had to remain separate, and this hadn’t been the case in Sant’Ambrogio. The sisters found themselves forced to confess their innermost secrets, without being protected by the seal of the confessional.

  “Lay confession” was a part of Catholic history, even if the practice was ever more forcefully suppressed. In the convents of the Middle Ages, it wasn’t uncommon for abbesses to take confession from their fellow nuns. Severe criticism of this practice from popes like Innocent III suggests that abbesses were actually granting absolution. In Sant’Ambrogio, Firrao had probably latched onto this tradition even though it had been suppressed by the Church hierarchy. In any case, the strict division between confession and chapter faults should be seen more as wishful thinking by Church leaders than as a historical reality.150

  THE CONFESSORS PROCLAIM THE FALSE CULT

  The conspicuous failure of confessors in this case weighed particularly heavy for the Inquisition.151 The fact that educated Jesuits were venerating this false saint presented them with a scandal of the first order. How could both confessors have been taken in by such a deception? How could they have failed so badly in their clerical oversight of these devout women?

  In their hearings, the nuns proved to be united on this point: “The confessors Leziroli and Peters claimed that the founder, Sister Agnese Firrao, was a saint. They communicated this to the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio through conversations, insinuations, and in various other ways. Padre Leziroli did this for 30 years, and Padre Peters for ten.” Sallua made the confessors’ responsibility for the continuing cult of Firrao into his fifth Titolo.

  The matter turned out to be even worse than the Dominican had first feared. He quickly concluded that the confessors were the real initiators of the Firrao cult. “Over many repeated hearings, the nuns stated that everything they had learned, said, taught, read and practiced with regard to the life, miracles, extraordinary holiness, veneration, teachings and spirit of the so-called Blessed Mother, had come from the suggestions of the confessors, in particular Padre Leziroli.” And this was in spite of the fact that Leziroli and Peters “knew of Firrao’s conviction and her abjuration,” as well as the fact that she had been banished and prohibited from contacting the nuns. This meant the confessors had knowingly defied a judgment from the highest religious tribunal—a particularly serious offense in the eyes of the Inquisition.

  Under questioning, the abbess emphasized how united she and the confessors had been in their veneration of the mother founder. Padre Leziroli always carried with him a cap that had belonged to Firrao, with which he blessed the sick both inside and outside the convent, healing them via the intercession of “saint” Maria Agnese. Sister Maria Giuseppa spoke of several apparitions of the Beata Madre: “When the nuns were renewing their vows and taking Holy Communion, the mother founder appeared to Padre Leziroli as he was laying his hand on their heads.” Sister Maria Serafina told how Padre Leziroli had healed a man who had been mor
tally ill, but was cured through the intercession of Agnese Firrao. Sister Maria Ignazia said: “Padre Leziroli told us nuns that when a padre of the Society of Jesus had been ill, he had taken a little piece of paper with the mother founder’s signature upon it, and torn it into tiny pieces. He gave it to the padre to drink. Then he said that this man was healed by her signature.” The lawyer Franceschetti confirmed that it was the confessors who were really responsible. He also described Padre Peters’s attempts to keep letters from the founder, and the memoir written by Padre Leziroli, out of the Inquisition’s hands.

  A glance at Leziroli’s work, Sulle memorie della vita di Suor Maria Agnese di Gesù, convinced Sallua of the pivotal role the confessors had played in the Firrao cult. Leziroli wrote repeatedly of the mother founder’s miracles and blessings. “Thus one reads that she flew to heaven, innocent as a newly-baptised child, and later appeared in order to reveal how she had been glorified.”152

  For the Roman Inquisition’s investigating judge, this sealed the question of the confessors’ guilt in the forbidden cult of Firrao. Padre Leziroli seemed to be the main culprit, while, judging by the witness statements, Padre Peters appeared to be more of an accomplice.

  The Inquisition spent more than a year interrogating the nuns, the other witnesses, and the lawyer Franceschetti. By January 1861, Sallua believed the first charge was clearly proven: Maria Agnese Firrao had been venerated as a saint. There were relics; her texts were treated as if they had been inspired by God; she had been the convent’s secret abbess, leading it from exile in Gubbio; she had acted as “mother confessor.” The facts of the matter were clear: this was without doubt the offense of venerating a forbidden saint. Sallua was, of course, assuming that the Inquisition’s judgment of 1816 was still valid. This claim should first have required proof: Leo XII’s brief of 1829, and the chronology of the Regulated Third Order sisters’ reform by Maria Agnese Firrao, cast the story in a rather different light. It could be argued that the cult of Firrao was no longer forbidden. Why did Sallua once again bypass this crucial question? Was it simply to protect the Roman Inquisition from having to admit it had made an error of judgment?