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

by Hubert Wolf

  The appearance of written sources as proof of the authenticity of an event has something historicist about it: Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo. If something isn’t there in black and white in the source material, it doesn’t exist. And while the authenticity of apparitions was difficult to prove, with a letter from heaven you had a tangible Corpus Delicti in front of you, whose origins could be investigated.

  FORGING LETTERS FROM THE VIRGIN

  Sallua had come into possession of just one letter. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that Beckx really had followed its “divine” instructions, so he had to focus all his efforts on learning more about the letters from the Virgin. Having spent two months denying she knew anything about them, the abbess finally gave him a clue as to how the letters had been produced.74 Sister Maria Francesca had told her that “she had written these letters on the instructions of Sister Maria Luisa. She received the drafts from her, and the order never to speak of the matter to anybody.” When the inquisitor rebuked the abbess for her long silence on this central point, she replied: “I believed I would be committing an error if I were to speak of it, since I had written to ask Padre Peters about this at the start of the hearing. He answered in writing that I should reveal everything. But then he sent Franceschetti to tell me in person that I was under no obligation to say everything I knew, be it as abbess, or through the seal of the confessional, or anything that might cause harm to another person.”

  Now that the abbess had implicated Sister Maria Francesca, Sallua finally had the leverage he needed to unravel the mystery of the letters. Maria Francesca was “subjected to numerous interrogations over four months,” as the Dominican reported to the cardinals. She always “answered with unusual candor” and was able to remember the content of the various heavenly missives very precisely, “down to individual phrases.”

  This nun was interrogated in February 1860.75 Maria Francesca a Passione stated that she was twenty-three years old, had been in the convent for three years, and had taken her vows the previous year. The first question she was asked was “whether she knew the reason she had been summoned and why she was being examined, or if she could guess the reason.” She answered: “I believe I have been called here to tell you things about the madre vicaria and novice mistress, Maria Luisa.” At this, the investigating judge asked her to tell him what she knew, one thing at a time. And Maria Francesca testified:

  I had been a postulant in the convent for about a month when Mistress Maria Luisa asked me to write a letter in French to the padre general of the Jesuits, saying bad things about Padre Passaglia, that he was a bad monk who had tainted the Society of Jesus. The general was advised to keep a close watch on this padre, and received the order to excommunicate him from the Compagnia. I ended the letter with the following words: “if you want to know who has written to you thus, it is”—then she asked me, without having me write anything else, how you write “Mary” in French. And I told her. Then Maria Luisa took the letter and told me that I should sign it, “Marie.” Finally, Maria Luisa forbade me from speaking about this matter to anybody, or saying I knew anything about the origins of this letter.

  This cleared up the origin of the Virgin Mary’s letter to the Jesuit general, and Sallua was finally able to narrow down the time period in which it had been written. Maria Francesca composed the letter to Beckx in spring 1857—considerably before August 3, the day that Passaglia and Schrader were separated.

  But this wasn’t the only letter that Maria Francesca had written at the novice mistress’s behest in the name of the Virgin and other heavenly powers, so Sallua continued his investigations. First of all, the late mother founder had been made to serve as the author of heavenly letters. Maria Francesca continued.

  “A few months later, Maria Luisa told me to copy out many things written by the Mother. But as I was writing out fair copies from these drafts, I soon realized that the Mother was really Maria Luisa.” Eventually, the beautiful novice mistress became dissatisfied with the mother founder and the Virgin Mary as correspondents. She decided to go even further up the divine hierarchy:

  Over several months, Maria Luisa would shut me in my cell and order me to write out papers that she had written in her own hand, in which Jesus spoke to her and called her his beloved bride. Then Jesus Christ started addressing her confessor, Padre Peters, and spoke in the third person about a soul whose services, virtues and gifts he described from the day of her birth to the present day. I gave the drafts back to her. I wrote out the letters in this manner on hand-made paper that Maria Luisa bound with a little leather band, on which the name of Jesus was embossed.

  Now it wasn’t just the Virgin, but Jesus himself who was writing letters. Letters from Jesus do crop up in religious history, but are far rarer than those from the Virgin Mary. There are really only two known cases where He was supposed to have sent a letter from heaven. One was addressed to Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the second half of the second century AD. The other appeared in the sixth century, and spoke in favor of the Sunday observance. There is some debate about whether this text was originally written in Latin or Greek. Later it was even divided into two or three letters.76

  The young nun also described the way in which these divine letters materialized on earth. There was a little casket “into which Maria Luisa laid the letters I had written”; these were then discovered there and taken to be letters from the Virgin, fallen from heaven. They were addressed to the abbess, Padre Leziroli, and, more frequently, Padre Peters.

  One letter that Maria Francesca wrote to Padre Peters “in the role of the Mother of God,” said: “Poor son! Do you not smell the scent of my first-born daughter? It does one good to smell it.” Maria Francesca added, by way of explanation: “This was at the time when Maria Luisa smelled very strongly of roses.” And the Virgin went on: “I am the rosa mystica,77 and my daughter is also a rose, giving off this fragrance that comes from her heart.” In the guise of the Virgin Mary, Maria Luisa was giving Peters a Marian interpretation of the rose scent, and drawing a parallel between herself and Christ. Christ is the firstborn son of God; Maria Luisa is the firstborn daughter of the Mother of God. It was a monstrous claim.78

  In her second hearing, Maria Francesca carried on talking about her work forging heavenly letters.79 Her testimony was clearly so fascinating and illuminating that the inquisitor didn’t want to interrupt her by asking any additional questions. When uprisings began in Bologna and other parts of the Papal States, panic had broken out in Rome,80 and the Mother of God wrote to Pope Pius IX. “In two letters to the pope, she recommended that he flee to Austria.” From the style of the drafts Maria Luisa had given her, Maria Francesca believed they had been prepared by Padre Peters. At the very least, Maria Luisa had used information the Jesuit had given her to write them. The letters to the pope addressed an issue that was widely discussed in Rome at that time: the question of how Pius IX should behave in this delicate political situation.

  The witness went on: “At Maria Luisa’s request, I wrote Padre Peters a kind of reprimand, in the name of Jesus Christ.” Jesus told Peters he should have more faith in the contents of the heavenly letters, especially what they said about the “extraordinary soul”—meaning Maria Luisa. The letters claimed

  that on the occasion of her baptism she was taken up to heaven, where God the Father pressed her to his bosom and gave her the name Maria; God the Son called her glorious Agatha,81 the Holy Ghost called her holy Gertrude;82 Father, Son and Holy Ghost gave her over to the Blessed Madonna as her first-born daughter; the Virgin pressed her to her bosom and quieted her 33 times. They said Jesus would often appear to wake her from her sleep, and would fix her hair and eat with her.… When she professed her vows, Jesus Christ appeared to her with the Blessed Virgin, and he married her as the daughter of Saint Catherine of Siena. The strength of the love was so great that it broke three of her ribs.

  In another letter from the Madonna, Francesca had to say “that the Lord placed Mari
a Luisa’s soul in the hands of Father Confessor Peters; indeed, as he slept, his soul would be transported to paradise and united with the soul of Maria Luisa.” Other letters from the Virgin were written in response to the Jesuit padre’s replies. From these, Maria Francesca gleaned “that Padre Peters was asking the Virgin to tell him why he had thus far been unable to feel any good effects from such a union. On the contrary, he had felt his emotions become rebellious, and other evil effects. Maria Luisa answered in the name of the Madonna, demanding that he submit to her. This was simply the way it was, and nothing bad was in it. Then I illustrated this union with the symbol of an eagle carrying a dove, and with two lit candles, the better one lending the weaker one its warmth.”

  Further letters revealed exactly what was meant by this union of the confessor and the novice mistress.

  These letters said that Padre Peters was an extraordinary servant of this soul (this was the Madonna speaking). He kissed her in the mouth, and through this act God disclosed himself to her in extraordinary ways. They said Padre Peters, or the Lord, kissed her on the heart, and that there was a special connection between hand and heart. The Madonna also ordered him to give Maria Luisa the extraordinary blessing, which I did not understand—but I learned that this meant the permission or the command that the Madonna gave to Peters, as eternal father and protector of this soul, so that she might visit her accompanied by Jesus Christ.

  This bacio in bocca, the kiss in the mouth, was nothing less than a divine injunction to perform a French kiss. Catholic moral doctrine strictly forbade this kind of kissing, viewing it as the expression of unbounded lust and animal instincts. Not even a husband and wife were permitted such an intimacy. And here the Mother of God was inviting Peters, an educated theologian, to dispense special heavenly gifts and blessings via a French kiss. This was completely unheard of, and must have aroused his suspicion.

  And other letters contained similar commands—as always, written in the name of a guardian angel, Jesus Christ, or the Madonna. “The love of Padre Peters for God has grown so great that, if he presses this soul (Maria Luisa) to his heart, he will receive an extraordinary communion.” And Francesca went on: “I wrote this several times. Nothing was explained in more detail in the letters; they just said ‘you understand,’ and other such things.”

  Maria Luisa was clearly inviting Padre Peters to initiate sexual contact with her. But the Jesuit apparently didn’t understand—or perhaps refused to understand—these ambiguous invitations. The heavenly letters expressed Maria Luisa’s disappointment over this in no uncertain terms, as Maria Francesca related.

  “A few months previously, Peters had spent the night in the convent, to care for Maria Agostina, who then died. At that time I wrote Peters a letter in the name of the guardian angel, which said: ‘You have not become acquainted with your first-born daughter: the Lord did not arrange your stay in the convent so that you might care for Maria Agostina, but so that He might disclose Himself to you in an extraordinary way through his first-born daughter.’ ” In plain English: this death gave you the unique chance to spend the night in the convent, but instead of coming to my cell, you wasted your time on the Office for the Dead. Over the period that followed, Maria Luisa staged several illnesses, which were announced to the confessor in letters from the Virgin. This finally put him where Maria Luisa wanted him: alone with her in her cell, over the course of many nights, where he could provide her with (spiritual) succor. The abbess and the first confessor, Leziroli, gave their express permission for this.

  Maria Francesca continued to pour out the contents of these letters in her third hearing. She had written them using the Virgin’s handwriting and signature, and they were addressed to Peters.83 Physical intimacy, and the blessings to be gained through this erotic experience, was a running theme. Again and again, the letters pressured the confessor into performing this “extraordinary communion.” But there was also another development: the Virgin now announced that the devil would take Maria Luisa’s shape and do bad things to damage her favorite daughter. At the same time, she presented this as a divinely willed test of Maria Luisa’s “pure soul.” Was this a reference to the poisoning of Katharina von Hohenzollern?

  Finally, the letters from the Virgin didn’t just legitimate the intimacies between Maria Luisa and her confessor; they also attempted to justify the nuns’ lesbian practices. Maria Francesca stated:

  During the time when the princess was ill, Maria Giacinta was also lying ill in the novitiate. And, as mentioned above, I wrote a letter to Padre Peters in the name of the most holy Virgin Mary, saying that the devil had taken on the shape of my best-beloved daughter Maria Luisa, and had been to Maria Giacinta’s bed to commit immodest acts. In order to discredit my best-beloved daughter, he had led Maria Giacinta into temptation, and made her say that she had fallen and given in to these immodest acts. I wrote that the Lord permitted Maria Giacinta to do these things, to quash her pride.

  The witness continued:

  Now I will tell of what I saw with my own eyes. As I stood in Maria Giacinta’s cell, when she was lying ill in bed, I saw Maria Luisa come in. Based on what I saw, I took her to be the devil. She leaned over Maria Giacinta’s bed and stroked her face and breast, and they embraced and kissed each other. Maria Giacinta meanwhile raised her waist a little, and I realized that she was exposing herself—then I went out and prayed, and banished the temptation. Sometimes I would see the above-mentioned person come into Maria Giacinta’s cell and throw herself at once onto the bed, in a very licentious manner. Then things would proceed as described above, and I would go away. It seemed to me that this went on for the whole of advent, when Maria Giacinta was ill. Sometimes another novice was also present, but I don’t remember it all that well now. Since I thought the mistress so reticent and delicate in these matters, I was convinced that the devil was committing these obscenities in her form. The novice Agnese Celeste also said to me: “Remember those things that Maria Luisa did in bed with Maria Giacinta? Padre Peters told me it was the devil, who took on her shape.”

  But Maria Giacinta very soon began to feel pangs of conscience, and increasingly doubted the truth of the Virgin Mary’s commands, as Maria Francesca stated during her final hearing.84 Initially, Giacinta had been thoroughly jealous of Katharina von Hohenzollern. When Katharina first entered the convent, the novice mistress had paid a great deal of attention to her—apparently neglecting Giacinta, who had previously been her favorite. In an attempt to soothe her, Maria Luisa told Maria Francesca to write a letter from the Virgin to Peters, saying: “This little daughter of mine was chosen as the companion of my first-born daughter, after Sister Agnese Eletta went away. But reveal nothing of the great things of the mistress to this little daughter.” When this piece of flattery didn’t do the trick, the Virgin Mary sent a letter to Peters during Advent 1858, instructing him to: “remove the proud Maria Giacinta from her Mother.” This was done straightaway, as Maria Francesca recalled.

  Sallua managed to coax a statement on the whereabouts of the letters out of Franceschetti: Maria Luisa had handed them over to him when the Apostolic Visitation arrived. He was unsure what to do with them. The abbess and Leziroli declared themselves in favor of burning the letters (a task that Padre Peters would perform), and the lawyer finally left the packet of letters with him.85

  Sallua was very satisfied with this result. He had not only exposed Maria Luisa as a false mystic, but unmasked her as a forger of “heavenly” letters from the Virgin. But the extremely problematic contents of these letters also suggested that this case of feigned holiness wasn’t confined to the areas of faith and religious experience. It also seemed to have affected the realm of practical and sexual behavior.

  PASTORAL CARE IN BED

  The Madonna’s letters ordered Padre Peters to take special care of the beautiful young novice mistress, Mary’s “first-born daughter.” He was to inhale the scent of the Virgin’s favorite daughter, press her heart to his, and receive further divine
blessings through union with her. Following Maria Francesca’s interrogation, it was clear to Sallua that the heavenly letters reflected Maria Luisa’s erotic fantasies and sexual desires. But did this heavenly temptation really succeed?

  Sallua was able to drum up several nuns who had observed a close relationship between the confessor and the young novice mistress.86 Agnese Celeste, Giuseppa Maria, Maria Gesualda, Maria Fortunata, and the abbess all provided juicy details. Sister Agnese Celeste said:87

  When Maria Luisa had a headache, Padre Peters would care for her for most of the day, until late at night. Once he spent the whole night in her cell. I recall that on this night somebody closed the door curtain several times, which I kept opening again during the night. I heard noises in the mistress’s cell.… I was able to see Padre Peters going into the clausura and shutting himself in a room near the parlatory with the mistress. In the door to this room there is a glass window to let in light. This happened almost every day; it was very rare that it did not happen.… I noticed that they stayed in there a long time, sometimes for half a day.… I remember that Maria Ignazia told me that once, when Peters went to the mistress for her headache, she was restless, tossing about in bed, and she was uncovered. When Maria Ignazia tried to cover her up, the padre said to her: “Leave her, she is still covered by her bodice.”