by Hubert Wolf
Like Veronica Giuliani’s fellow nuns, Maria Ignazia had also been taken in by the devil, and on his orders had tried several times to kill Katharina. She was now left alone with her questions and her guilt: the madre vicaria knew no pity, and had condemned her to absolute silence. But there came a point where it was no longer possible to avoid a conversation between Maria Ignazia and Padre Peters, who had become unsettled by the poisonings. The novice mistress gave her precise instructions for this:
When the princess was returning to health, the mistress called me to her and said to me: “you will be called by Padre Peters. Think about the promise you made me not to say a word about the medicine and the poison for the princess. Say only that I came into her cell now and then to give her courage, and that you and Maria Felice saw me one night at the princess’s bed, but you felt a certain dread. Say that the princess behaved strangely, and I reassured her that I had been in bed that night and had not been to her room, and that Maria Giacinta threw me out of the cell in contempt.”
I went to Padre Peters and he questioned me about the medicine and the poisoned remedies that were given to the princess. I answered that there was no truth in this and, just as I had promised the mistress, disagreed with everything he said. I denied every point, though he asked me the most detailed questions.
Peters told me he was questioning me in order to find out what lay behind this business. He did not think the mistress capable of such a thing, and he mentioned that she had foreseen it all a long time ago. Furthermore, the princess was supposed to die as a punishment from God, but the devil had interfered to make it look like murder.
He told me about the alum they had found in the bottle of soup. When I asked him how the devil had brought this about, he replied that the devil was truly able do such things, and had mixed it into the soup so that something would be found in it.
Before I went to Peters, the mistress gave me the same explanation, word for word: she said the Lord wanted to punish Luisa Maria and that the devil had interfered to place the blame on the mistress’s shoulders.
I spoke to Padre Leziroli about these matters, and he said: “In truth everything that has happened to the princess was the work of the devil; we have carried out the necessary tests and we are sure that it was the devil’s art, and that the mistress Maria Luisa neither thought nor said such things, and did not carry out these deeds.”
I replied: “So was I speaking to the devil?”
And he: “Certainly. It was most certainly the devil who caused you these troubles.”
During spiritual exercises, this same Padre Leziroli preached in front of the entire community that the worries that some—in fact almost all—the nuns had experienced with regard to the princess, whom all the sisters knew, had been a deception by the devil. He could assume the shape of other people, and had poisoned the soup and the medicine. He did all this to disrupt the peace of the community. But we should remain calm, as none of us had done any of the things we saw. The princess was present at this sermon.
I know that in the end Leziroli also tried to convince the princess of this deception by the devil. He said she should not judge the mistress so harshly and should not hate her—for if she did, she could not remain in the house of God. Leziroli concluded the above sermon by saying he had firm evidence of the mistress’s innocence.
Maria Ignazia’s testimony was corroborated by several other nuns and the abbess.49 Even after Katharina had left, the nuns were repeatedly told that all the poisoning attempts had been the work of the devil. Maria Francesca had to write another letter for Maria Luisa, this time using the name and handwriting of Maria Felice, who had just died. This letter said that the princess had been a “strange woman” who “carried on with the devil” and falsely believed somebody was trying to poison her. The dead nun complained about having to nurse this peculiar woman during her illness. Maria Stanislaa confirmed that the novice mistress had tasked Maria Francesca with writing out this letter.
In the fall of 1859, when the Apostolic Visitation that the pope had requested was already under way, the confessors instructed the nuns to treat the statement “The devil assumed the shape of Maria Luisa to poison Katharina” like an article of the creed. Any dissenting nuns were pressured and persecuted. Maria Giuseppa was treated particularly harshly for her stubborn refusal to comply with this. When she insisted in the confessional that Maria Luisa was responsible for the poison attacks against Katharina, Leziroli forced her to make a formal retraction. She had to swear to Maria Luisa’s “holiness and extraordinary gifts” before Leziroli, with her hand on the gospels, and reject her suspicions as a “great sin.” “He said I had to speak his phrase about Maria Luisa’s holiness, if I wanted to save my soul,” Maria Giuseppa recalled.
Maria Luisa also followed this pastoral strategy, in her own way. Notes suddenly started appearing and being passed around the convent, supposedly originating from the Americano. According to Maria Ignazia, these explained “how the demons took on the shape of the mistress and other sisters, to poison the princess.”50 The Americano addressed the notes defending “the mistress’s innocence” to Padre Peters. “She read one out to me, to convince me of her innocence in the poisoning affair. Before the mistress was taken away, she told me I should defend her innocence, just as she would defend mine when I was taken away. Now I know why she said this. She was afraid because of what she had done.”
MORE MURDERS
By “what Maria Luisa had done,” Maria Ignazia didn’t just mean her attempted murder of Katharina von Hohenzollern. The madre vicaria had also made several attempts to kill other nuns.51
First, there was the case of Maria Giacinta, which must have played out in the first half of 1859. Luigi Franceschetti’s sister had observed Maria Luisa grinding glass and mixing it into the princess’s food. She was also well informed about other “deceits” involved in Katharine’s poisoning. She spoke to the abbess, Padre Peters, and other nuns about these, and finally confronted Maria Luisa herself with her knowledge: “Yes, I saw it, I saw it.”
Maria Luisa started to feel threatened by what Maria Giacinta knew, and decided she had to get rid of her. At once, she gave Maria Francesca instructions to write several letters to Padre Peters in the name of her guardian angel and the Virgin. The Virgin spoke about her former “favorite little daughter” Maria Giacinta, who had been “destined for something great, alongside her mistress.” But now she was just another “haughty” and “proud” nun, whom the confessor and abbess had to “humble.” Finally, the Virgin announced, “Maria Giacinta will die of her illness; her life will be shortened by many years because she has fallen from the elevated step of glory beside her mistress.”
As a result, the confessor placed Maria Giacinta under pressure. She was utterly bewildered and feared for her life, thinking she was about to be poisoned. Giuseppe Maria confirmed this suspicion. Maria Giacinta was then struck down by a severe inflammation of the intestines and ulceration of the throat, from an overdose of opium or something similar. The illness exhausted her, and she was on her deathbed. Franceschetti corroborated the testimonies of Maria Francesca and Giuseppa Maria: two pills of opium, given to his sister by Maria Luisa, had brought her close to death. She would have died, had the convent doctor not given her an antidote at the last minute. The medical man had said this quantity of opium was enough to kill a horse.
This, along with other evidence and witness interviews, gave the Inquisition enough information to prove that in the days after Maria Giacinta was poisoned with opium, the madre vicaria tried to give her an even larger dose of another poison to finish her off. This was probably vinum colchici seminis, made from the flowers of the autumn crocus. It was usually used in small doses to treat gout, but in larger quantities it was a deadly poison. Maria Luisa had also announced this murder in a letter from the Madonna to Padre Peters, which foretold the death of a nun as a punishment from God. It even pinpointed the exact timing and the circumstances of the death. However, Mar
ia Giacinta realized what was afoot and stubbornly refused to take the liquid.
When nothing came of this divine prophecy, Maria Luisa put aside the first letter from the Virgin and wrote another, in which Mary now proclaimed that her firstborn daughter Maria Luisa’s prayers, penance, and services had worked, and Maria Giacinta didn’t have to die after all.
The same good fortune was not granted to the novice Maria Agostina, whose tragic story played out in October 1858. The young nun was starting to get a reputation for having visions and ecstasies. The mother founder, in particular, had appeared to her several times. A number of the other nuns had started to follow the new visionary and believe her prophecies. Maria Luisa was consumed with envy, and devoted all her efforts to unmasking Maria Agostina’s ecstasies as “duplicitous pretenses.” First, in her capacity as novice mistress, she made Maria Agostina “unburden her conscience to her as to a father confessor,” giving her a biographical confession. The novice mistress then told the other sisters about all the weaknesses and miseries in this young woman’s life. She spoke widely and at length about the “shameless relationship” Maria Agostina had conducted in Ferrara with her confessor, the Jesuit Vincenzo Stocchi.52 Maria Luisa forced the young novice to retract her visions in public—not just in the novitiate, but also in the choir, in front of the whole community of Sant’Ambrogio. But this ritual humiliation still wasn’t enough for her. Claiming she was making a zealous attempt to set this lost soul back on the right path, she placed Agostina under massive psychological pressure. She was evidently trying to drive her to madness, and ultimately to death.
In her hearing, Maria Giuseppa recalled that “last summer, the late Sister Maria Agostina … fell ill. She was young, robust and in good health. But it seemed that her illness had an unnatural cause, and I later began to suspect that something had been mixed into her food. This sister had a constant fever, and she pined away.… The sick are usually given Holy Communion every eight days, but I remember that she was not given it for quite some time. Around last October, she was taken ill with a severe fever, and they said it brought on a stroke. She was 21 or 22 years old. The stroke left her dazed, and she stuttered. Ulcers built up in her mouth and throat. She wasted away to a skeleton in just a few days, and finally died.”53
Several witnesses confirmed in their statements that the novice mistress had a crazed notion that Maria Agostina was out to get her. They expressed their unanimous conviction that Maria Luisa had poisoned her. The vicaress hated Agostina so much that she had forbidden Maria Ignazia, the mortally ill woman’s biological sister, from visiting her in the infirmary. Maria Ignazia’s testimony shows how obedient she was to Maria Luisa: this was the reason the latter had recruited her as an accomplice.54
I never visited my sister, as I knew this would not have pleased the mistress. But in the end, the father confessor and the mistress went to my sister. She made her confession and took Holy Communion. Then I visited her too, but she was close to death, and I do not think that she recognized me.
The reason the mistress brought Padre Peters in to take my sister’s confession, was to free her from the demons. The mistress told me that Peters laid a stole on her head and she resisted strongly. Padre Peters drove out her seven demons, and the mistress told me she saw them. After this, my sister lived another eight days, but she was no longer sensible.
Giuseppa Maria was convinced that Maria Luisa had made the sick woman “take a powder orally. This led to inflammation of the chest, made everything appear yellow, caused ulcers in her throat and left her completely dazed.”55 The second nurse was absolutely certain of her facts: she had taken the same powder as a medicine, and had observed the exact same symptoms in herself as in Maria Agostina, with whom she had spoken several times as she was nursing her. In her hearing, she stated:56
So I harbored the suspicion that the mistress had poisoned her food: a few days previously, something similar had happened to me. The doctor prescribed an infusion for my stomachache, of corallium and wormseed. This was prepared in the sick room, where the mistress was always around. The first time I took it, I felt nauseous, got a headache, and my vision misted over in a yellow color. But I said nothing.”
The symptoms Giuseppa Maria describes here, in particular the colored vision, confusion, and affected speech, suggest she was poisoned by the santonin contained in the wormseed. Giuseppa Maria went on:
The following day, I took another dose of the medicine. I felt exactly as I had done the day before; everything looked yellow. I was supposed to take the medicine eight times, but decided not to take it any more.
A day later, I was still feeling bad, and when the doctor came, the mistress was occupied with something else. So I was able to describe my condition to him in person, and Doctor Marchi was astonished. He said this medicine was very mild, and could even be given to animals. It should not have any of these side-effects, and I should stop taking it. It also made me vomit, and I spewed up stuff that burned and caused ulcers in my mouth and throat.
But it didn’t end with the murder of Maria Agostina. Maria Felice’s death in the fall of 1859 can also be chalked up to Maria Luisa’s account. She had been one of the vicaress’s two main accomplices in the poisoning of the princess.57 Once again, Maria Luisa prophesied the death through the usual letters from the Virgin to Padre Peters. She was clearly frightened the young nun would crack under pressure from the Inquisition, and reveal the whole poisoning plot. Once Maria Felice had been laid low by a mysterious illness, the novice mistress even forced her to pray for her own death. She was ordered to simulate pains she didn’t have, so the doctors would keep letting her blood and gradually making her weaker. Maria Felice died from the results of this treatment, at barely twenty-two years old.
Maria Felice went far beyond the obedience that canon law dictates a novice must show to her mistress. Hers was a case of religiously motivated dependency, bordering on enslavement. She prayed for her own death and simulated symptoms she didn’t have, in order to receive a treatment that would fatally weaken her. These are clear indications of a pathological religious mania. The basic tenet of the Roman Inquisition, as voiced by Sallua several times in the Sant’Ambrogio case files, obviously applied to the facts of Maria Felice’s death: false religiousness leads to false morality. And in the worst-case scenario, feigned holiness leads to murder or manslaughter.
According to the testimonies of various nuns, Maria Luisa was also to blame for the death of Sister Maria Costanza in January 1858. Costanza had opposed the election of the young nun as novice mistress in 1854, and had also spoken out against Agnese Eletta’s expulsion from Sant’Ambrogio. Maria Costanza suffered from a severe inflammation of the lungs. As her condition deteriorated, the nurse asked Maria Luisa to call a doctor immediately. But Maria Luisa refused several times. When Doctor Marchi finally arrived, the following day, it was too late. The doctor said: “If we had been called in time, we could have saved her. Now there is nothing more we can do.” Maria Costanza died of pneumonia on January 23, 1858.
Maria Luisa was now responsible for the deaths of at least three nuns.
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN
Murder and manslaughter weren’t the novice mistress’s only crimes. There were also counts of embezzlement and other financial misdemeanors to add to the charges—and here, too, divine forces were supposedly at work. Sums of money were always turning up in Sant’Ambrogio in a miraculous manner.58 In her hearing, Sister Maria Colomba reported Maria Luisa giving her money to take to Padre Peters, who was waiting in the parlor. It was for the payment of doctors’ fees for Maria Giacinta. When Colomba went back to say she had completed her task, the novice mistress claimed she knew nothing about the money or the errand. Eventually Maria Luisa said it had probably been the mother founder herself, who had assumed Maria Luisa’s form and given Maria Colomba the money. The abbess added that this had been a freshly minted gold coin worth 12 scudi. She preserved this coin as a gift from heaven, and settled the doctors’ bi
ll with used, earthly currency.
The mother founder took care of the convent’s finances from heaven on several occasions. Once, the abbess received a letter from Maria Agnese Firrao sent “from paradise,” the wax seal of which carried the “fingerprint of the Immaculate Virgin.” The founder announced that Padre Peters would find money in the little casket that usually contained letters from heaven. The money had been sent from heaven by the late Maria Felice, to repay Sant’Ambrogio for the cost of her illness. And, in the presence of the novice mistress, the Jesuit did indeed open the box to find a roll of coins totalling 100 gold scudi, 50 scudini,59 and 25 25-paoli pieces. There was also a note, on which was written: “Alms sent by Maria Felice, in fulfillment of her promise to the Holy Daughter Maria Luisa.”
Twice during the renovation of the convent church, envelopes containing 50 scudi were discovered in the rota (the rotating hatch between the enclosure and the outer area). Following a long investigation by Sallua, the lawyer Franceschetti finally admitted obtaining rolls of 100 new gold scudi in exchange for used money, at Maria Luisa’s behest.
Maria Luisa was fairly generous with the convent’s money elsewhere, too—money for which she was responsible as the abbess’s vicaress. The “heavenly rings,” the rose oil, the handmade paper for the heavenly letters, and the valuable casket all had to be paid for. Padre Peters also received large sums on several occasions for penitents of his who found themselves in financial difficulties. Heavenly powers sent the Jesuit 570 scudi for one Vittoria Marchesi; another time it was as much as 700 gold scudi.