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

by Hubert Wolf

  The investigating judges remained skeptical about the truth of this statement. Maria Luisa had lied to the court too often already, or told them only half-truths. And her claim that the Jesuit confessor was the sole instigator, and would have been the one to profit most from Katharina’s death, was a very serious allegation. When they interrogated Padre Peters about this, the tribunal wanted to be as certain of the facts as possible. But as they started to press Maria Luisa on this point, she stood her ground, saying: “I confirm everything that I said in the previous hearing.”

  On July 6, the defendant finally cracked and gave a full confession. For the inquisitors, this was definitive proof that she had made several attempts to murder Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern, using various poisons: tartar emetic; ground glass, with and without spongia; alum; opium; quicklime; and oil varnish. She had also obtained turpentine and belladonna (deadly nightshade), but had not used them. The only reason she stopped giving the princess the brown opium powder was because the doctors stopped prescribing cassia, into which the drug could easily be mixed. And when she came under suspicion as a murderess, Maria Luisa shifted the blame onto the devil, who she said had assumed her form.

  She also described how her accomplice Maria Ignazia had gradually distanced herself from her. “Maria Ignazia was distraught by the whole affair, and told me I should be careful, as I was in danger of ending up before the Holy Office. Anyone who killed other people would be punished by death.” Finally, this was the proof Sallua needed that Maria Luisa had forced one of her charges into becoming her accomplice by invoking the religious duty of obedience.

  Maria Luisa also confessed to the renewed attempts on Katharina’s life in the summer of 1859. She had “administered further poisons to the princess during her final days in the convent, putting them in her chocolate and other things. However, this was not done with the intention of killing her. The aim was to make her so ill that she was forced to remain in her cell, and was thus unable to leave the convent.” Maria Luisa had been terribly afraid of Katharina going. Padre Peters had said to her several times: “If she leaves, and talks about our affairs—the extraordinary blessing, the mother founder, and so on—it will spell the end for us both, and for the whole community.”

  She then returned a third time to her confessor’s involvement in the poisoning attempts. “I alone am guilty of carrying out the poisoning—but the reason for it and the decision to do it came from the great fears that Padre Peters expressed to me. As a result of what I said to him in general, and what he learned from other nuns, a few facts about the poisoning of the princess were certainly known to him.” This statement seriously incriminated Padre Peters. He had the most to fear if Katharina should leave Sant’Ambrogio and talk. He had been the real spiritus rector of the whole poisoning campaign.

  Maria Luisa finally reinforced her point a fourth time:

  What you have read out about Padre Peters is also true. Since I have sworn to tell the truth, you should know that in his replies to my letters, he said I must pray to the Lord and ask Him to do away with the princess at once (he really wrote this), to save us all from the ruin that was to come.

  As I wept to see the princess dying, he saw me and said: “You are mad! There have been so many prayers for her to die; it is a mercy.”

  It is the truth and nothing but the truth that, having uttered these words, he expressed his regret that she was not yet dead.

  After the princess had left, he said he always trod warily when he entered the convent. If the princess had gone straight to Austria, we would have had nothing to fear, but the fact that she had gone to Tivoli and then to Rome made him suspicious that something might happen to the convent.

  It was only at the very end of her interrogation that Maria Luisa was finally prepared to admit what the real catalyst of the whole affair had been.

  It is true that I received the letter in German from the above-named Pietro Americano. I took it to the princess, so she could read it to me. The princess was troubled by the letter and told me that bad things were written in it and I should throw it away. I took the letter and sealed it and gave it to the padre, so he would not suspect I had shown it to the princess. When the princess told Padre Peters about it, I claimed it had been the devil in my form. Padre Peters had sworn me to the strictest silence on the subject of this Pietro. I invented this story about the devil so that nobody would find out I had spoken to the princess about it—which I had in fact done.

  In conclusion, Maria Luisa asked the court to inform Katharina von Hohenzollern and her cousin, Archbishop Hohenlohe, of her confession and her regret. “I would like to beg both of them for forgiveness.” Here the notary added, by way of commentary: “She wept as she said this.” She also begged forgiveness for making the novice Maria Ignazia into her accomplice. The notary commented: “Here, she wept and sobbed even harder.”

  At the end of this interrogation, the defendant was subjected to intense questioning about the attempts on other nuns’ lives. “I am guilty of many murders, I committed such crimes many times.” She admitted she had been afraid Maria Giacinta might tell the princess about the poisons she had given her, and the shameful acts she had committed with Giacinta. She had therefore tried to induce her death, using a drastically increased dose of a strong medicine. Maria Luisa also confessed that she had prevented anyone calling a doctor for the sick Maria Costanza in time to save her. And she admitted to murdering Sister Maria Agostina, because she was envious of her visions and ecstasies. Having heard everything the judges had read out to her from the files, she confirmed that she had developed an intense dislike of Maria Agostina. She had systematically humiliated and bullied the young nun, eventually destroying her both psychologically and physically.

  In Maria Agostina’s case, the poison had been the “Elixier Le Roi.” Exactly what this was is no longer clear. Suggestions range from a highly alcoholic monastic liqueur, made in Chartreuse and called “Elixier,” to a secret potion made from all kinds of unknown ingredients. The sick woman had told Maria Luisa it was “like a bolt of lightning that set her on fire from head to toe.” This reaction could well have been the effect of high-percentage alcohol, and the essential oils contained in the Elixier Le Roi, on a person who was already in a weakened state.

  The Inquisition had now obtained a confession from Maria Luisa on all the charges. She didn’t demand to have the witnesses reexamined in her presence—which meant that she also didn’t make use of the grace period to which she was legally entitled, to prepare a written counterstatement. She turned down the offer of a defense counsel, despite the prospect of draconian punishments. Her defense was handed over to the court-appointed lawyer for those who had been accused by the Holy Office, Giuseppe Cipriani.57 He reviewed the Ristretto and signed it off.

  Maria Luisa’s concluding statement read: “Filled with disgust at my offences, I acknowledge that I deserve all punishments that will be visited upon me by the popes. I therefore request that they may be exercised without delay, for I seek only forgiveness and salvation.… My only defense is Jesus Christ.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “That Good Padre Has Spoiled the Work of God”

  The Interrogations of the Father Confessor and the Abbess

  GIUSEPPE LEZIROLI: A CONFESSOR BEFORE THE COURT

  According to canon law, there were two people responsible for everything that had happened in Sant’Ambrogio: the abbess, and the convent’s spiritual director. The nuns were duty-bound to obey them in all things, and had to follow their instructions as if they came from Jesus Christ Himself. This was particularly the case for the spiritual director, who, as an ordained priest, acted in persona Christi. While the mother superior was responsible for maintaining discipline and ensuring strict adherence to the Rule, the confessor’s area of responsibility was faith and pastoral care. There had to be a clear division between these two spheres. In particular, the nuns had to be sure that what they said in confession would be kept secret, and not p
assed on to the abbess or her vicaress. There had already been a serious violation of this basic Church norm. And in the course of the informative process, further serious allegations had been made—both against Abbess Maria Veronica, and the principal confessor and spiritual director, Giuseppe Leziroli. Therefore, the Inquisition brought charges against them both on February 27, 1861.1

  Leziroli had been born on March 19, 1795, in Rimini. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Reggio Emilia in 1817.2 Having been ordained as priest in February 1822, he spent two years working in Terni, three in Fano, and a further year in Tivoli. In 1831, his superiors sent him to Rome. He was first employed as a spiritual director in the Collegio Romano, and its seminary. In 1839, he was installed in Sant’Ambrogio as the principal confessor and spiritual director. He was always assisted in this task by a second Jesuit padre. From 1856 to November 1859, this was Padre Giuseppe Peters.

  Leziroli’s interrogations extended over roughly four months, from March 16 to July 19, 1861.3 Like all defendants who appeared before the Holy Tribunal, he was first given the opportunity to speak spontaneously. His defense strategy was very simple: “What I can say about myself is that I started well, but was deceived in the end.” This deceit was connected with a nun to whom he had been a “spiritual companion,” and who, he soon saw, “possessed gifts and was capable of extraordinary things.” He promptly informed Cardinal Patrizi of this, and Patrizi advised him to be cautious. But the cardinal vicar apparently left it at that. At least, Leziroli didn’t mention any other interventions by Patrizi.

  As Sallua noted in his report, Leziroli claimed to have instructed this nun that, were she to be visited by an apparition, she should defend herself by speaking the following words: “Our Father, may the sign of the cross release us from our enemies.” Five months later, Saint Stanislaus appeared to this sister.4 He led her to the place where the late abbess, Maria Maddalena, subsequently started appearing to her on a regular basis. “When she came to this place with Saint Stanislaus, Maria Maddalena appeared to her with a cross in her hand, and commanded her to venerate it with the words Adoramus te Christi.” As they venerated the cross together, she spoke the words Leziroli had given her. This convinced him that “it could not be the work of the devil, but must be the work of God.” He therefore “always believed what she told him” about all her subsequent visions, and “never doubted her honesty.”

  This nun was none other than Maria Luisa. Leziroli had heard from two or three other sisters that they had seen Maria Luisa “with a sullen face” in a particular place, although she was actually elsewhere and “in a good mood.” This led him to believe that the devil had assumed her form. “The sum of all these facts meant that I allowed myself to be deceived. Nothing more.”

  This made the father confessor look very gullible, for an educated Jesuit—his attitude was almost naive. When he was questioned further about when and how he realized he had been deceived, the padre stated that it had only happened two or three weeks after he had been released from his duties in Sant’Ambrogio, in December 1860. This was when his fellow Jesuit, Peters, told him that Maria Luisa had commissioned “certain rings” through the lawyer Franceschetti, “which she caused to appear on her finger as if they were gifts received in heaven.” The rings from the heavenly marriage were thus revealed as being of earthly manufacture. “From this I concluded that everything else must have been a deception, too.” He immediately burned all the papers to do with Maria Luisa’s holiness. He did, however, keep his manuscript on the life of the mother founder, as he remained absolutely convinced of her holiness.

  THE APOSTLE OF SAINT AGNESE FIRRAO

  Now the interrogation turned to the most important charge against Leziroli: the promotion of the cult of Agnese Firrao, who had been convicted of feigned holiness.5 The judges were particularly keen to know about Leziroli’s work, Sulle memorie della vita di Suor Maria Agnese di Gesù, which he had composed over the course of many years. This manuscript, the draft for a saint’s life of Firrao, had been handed over to the Inquisition by the Jesuit general, Petrus Beckx, along with the letter he had received from the Virgin Mary.6

  To prepare for Leziroli’s interrogation, the judges tasked the Carmelite monk Girolamo Priori with an evaluation of this manuscript, on April 24, 1861.7 Priori had worked as a consultor for the Holy Office since 1852, and he had also been prior general of his order in Rome since 1856.8 Priori’s judgment was damning: he said this “mendacious biography” of the false saint Maria Agnese Firrao should by all means be burned. In addition to numerous “mercies, privileges and ecstasies,” the Jesuit had presented Firrao’s heroic virtue in a manner that was normally reserved for a propositio by the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Either Leziroli was angling for a papal beatification of Maria Agnese (whom he already venerated as blessed), or he was hoping to get her beatified through his Memorie alone, without the Church’s blessing, which was a staggering presumption.

  In his false saint’s life, Leziroli gave a very detailed description of Agnese Firrao’s mystical wedding to Christ in heaven. This was an attempt to legitimate a new nineteenth-century mystic using a strategy that had worked for the great mystics of the Middle Ages. A mystical union with Christ was supposed to serve as unequivocal proof of sainthood, although this had been hotly debated within the Church even in relation to the “classical” female mystics. The Carmelite’s evaluation of Leziroli’s text pointed out that it “compromised” Giuseppe Pignatelli, Agnese Firrao’s sometime confessor, “many times over.” Leziroli depicted Pignatelli as a committed believer in the true holiness of Agnese Firrao. Priori saw the serious threat that this presented to the process for Pignatelli’s own beatification, which had just been opened in Rome. If the Jesuit Pignatelli had really supported a false saint, then he himself could not be a saint. (In fact, Pignatelli was eventually beatified in 1933, and canonized in 1954.) In Priori’s view, Leziroli’s terrible manuscript had to be taken out of circulation immediately. Of course—as was customary for a Holy Office evaluator—he left the decision on the final Damnatio up to the congregation of cardinals.

  With this unequivocal votum up his sleeve, Sallua asked Leziroli exactly what his purpose had been in writing his life of Firrao. The padre answered that the mother founder had been a “nun filled with virtue,” possessed of “extraordinary gifts,” and people must not be allowed to forget this. But in the first instance, he said, his work had only been meant for use within the convent. He had wanted to present Maria Agnese to the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio as a shining example. Of course, he and the nuns all knew that Pius VII had condemned her as a false saint—but they thought he had only arrived at this verdict because Firrao’s enemies had slandered her reform of the Third Order of Holy Saint Francis. Even the pope himself, as Sister Maria Caterina had explained to him, had believed the slander. Leziroli also claimed that, as he was basing his text on Firrao’s memoirs and the stories told by her first companions, he was only setting down in writing things that were already familiar to the nuns from oral sources.

  Then there was the matter of the mother founder’s continued contact with her daughters in Rome, from exile in Gubbio. The Jesuit justified this by claiming it had been permitted by Leo XII—something that Cardinal Giuseppe Pecci,9 the bishop of Gubbio from 1841 to 1855, had certainly known. Leziroli was probably drawing on the papal brief of 1829, in which the pope released the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio from all censures and canonical judgments. Even if the brief contained no specific mention of the mother founder, this was obviously how the nuns had interpreted Pope Leo XII’s words. But for contact to have been permitted, Agnese Firrao’s exile would have to have been revoked—which clearly wasn’t the case.

  Leziroli was honoring Sant’Ambrogio’s long tradition of defying the 1816 Inquisition decree, without fundamentally questioning its validity. The cantus firmus of his testimony was that Agnese Firrao was a true saint. The investigating judges also recorded that Leziroli claimed he himself had been m
iraculously healed. Maria Luisa had written to tell him that this healing was the result of Saint Maria Agnese’s intercession.

  Leziroli stubbornly defended his “saint’s life” before the tribunal. Its real purpose, he said, had been to preserve the most important information on Maria Agnese’s life and work for posterity, “in case the Lord should decide her innocence must be revealed.” He still had faith in all the old sources: Firrao’s personal testimonial, and the statements from her companions. However, he did admit “that everything pertaining to visitations and mercies after her death must be removed from the life of Sister Maria Agnese di Gesù, for this is an illusion.” “All of this” came from what Maria Luisa, the false saint, had told him while he was in his “blinded” state.

  In fact, these pages were already missing from the Memorie the court showed him, and which he identified as his work. Leziroli said that Padre Peters had cut out the incriminating pages after they learned of Maria Luisa’s deception.

  Sallua then turned his attention to the practical ways in which Firrao was venerated in Sant’Ambrogio. The confessor conceded the nuns had called her Beata, Santa Madre (Blessed, Holy Mother), especially after her death. He himself had only referred to her as Beata in private. In public, and particularly in the liturgy, he merely called her “most pious, virtuous and favored mother,” taking care never to say “blessed, holy or venerable.” But in subsequent interrogations, Leziroli was forced to admit that, after her death, he also called the mother founder Beata in public. He explained to the court that when he said this, he meant that Maria Agnese had already achieved heavenly glory. During the benediction for the sick, he therefore incorporated the phrase “at the intercession of Your servant Agnes” into the liturgical wording for the intercession of the saints. He also advised the nuns: “Trust in your holy mother!”