by Hubert Wolf
The consultors couldn’t agree on how long Maria Luisa should remain in prison. Four voted for a sentence of ten years, with strict fasting and other ascetic exercises. She should also be made to wear a cilice. In view of the severity of her crimes—in particular the poisoning attempts, and the “sin of sodomy”—one member was in favor of lifelong imprisonment, and denying her the sacraments. In his opinion, she should only be allowed to receive Holy Communion on the feasts of Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas.
Abbess Maria Veronica Milza should also renounce her errors and misdemeanors in a ceremony before the Inquisition. After this, she should remain in monastic imprisonment and no longer be permitted to wear the black veil of a choir nun. She should be barred forever from making any contact with the former nuns and confessors of Sant’Ambrogio, or any other persons who had been connected to the convent. The length of the abbess’s sentence was the only thing the consultors couldn’t agree on. While ten of them advocated a term of three years, another four wanted to leave the decision entirely up to the cardinals. After serving her sentence, Maria Veronica should be accommodated in a suitable house of pious women, and live there as a simple nun.
The consultors had a lengthy discussion on the fate of Giuseppe Leziroli, the first father confessor and spiritual director of Sant’Ambrogio. All were naturally agreed that he should perform a vigorous ceremonial abjuration, the abjuratio de vehementi.3 But they couldn’t agree on whether he should be banned from acting as a confessor for a limited period only. Two of the consultors wanted to ban him from taking confession from women. Five thought he should still be allowed to take confession from monks. But in all eventualities, he should be prohibited from contacting the nuns, and anyone else connected with Sant’Ambrogio, for the rest of his life.
When it came to sentencing Leziroli, six consultors voted for a term of five years’ imprisonment. Four voted for one year, and one even argued for a single month. One consultor—probably a Jesuit—even tried to exonerate Leziroli entirely, and argued for a lenient punishment on these grounds. Another raised serious accusations against him, and advocated a drastic escalation of his punishment. He saw the Jesuit as the principal perpetrator in this case, since he was the driving force behind the propagation of Agnese Firrao’s false holiness. And this was “a false doctrine, wayward, erroneous and unjust to the Holy See, as well as a suspected heresy.” This consultor suggested ten years’ imprisonment in a house belonging to the Jesuit order, with ten years of silence and ten days of spiritual exercises every year as penance. One consultor abstained from this controversial discussion altogether. As the consultors were divided on Leziroli’s case, the cardinals were asked for their thoughts.
Eleven of the consultors voted that Joseph Kleutgen should perform the abjuration de formali, the most rigorous renunciation the Inquisition could demand—though one argued for the abjuratio de vehementi. This should be followed by ten days of spiritual exercises in a house belonging to the Society of Jesus, to be chosen by the order’s general. He was also to serve his sentence there, rather than in the Inquisition’s cells.4
The length of Kleutgen’s sentence was the subject of some debate. Four consultors wanted to leave the decision up to the cardinals; three argued for five years; two for three years, and another two for ten years. Four consultors viewed his “sexual intercourse with virgins”—which he claimed to have performed with noble, spiritual intentions—as a heresy against the Decalogue’s commandment: “Thou shalt not commit fornication.”5 These four viewed his sexual acts with Maria Luisa, including the French kisses and the special erotic blessing in the context of confession, as the effects of the same “Molinosistic heresy” already condemned elsewhere. They thought that, as a convicted heretic, Kleutgen should serve out his sentence in a correctional facility, the Pia Casa di Penitenza at Corneto,6 rather than in a Jesuit house. Two of these four consultors were in favor of five years in Corneto, one suggested ten years, and the last just a single year.
One consultor (probably one of the two Jesuits) argued that Kleutgen had been deceived, and had corrected himself as soon as he had realized his error. Numerous bishops and cardinals had repeatedly praised Sant’Ambrogio as an exemplary convent. Kleutgen, the consultor said, had merely started following a tradition that had been sanctioned by the Church authorities, without asking too many questions. This consultor also tried to shield Kleutgen from the charge of heresy: “As far as I am aware, no religious verdict has been passed in this case, only a criminal verdict.” This would have made Kleutgen a morally unreliable priest—possibly even one who was involved in criminal actions—but not a heretic. However, the consultor was unable to get this suggestion past his colleagues.
The consultors may not have been able to agree on the length of Kleutgen’s sentence, but they were all certain that he should be banned from taking confession from men or women. He should also be forbidden from contacting any of the nuns from Sant’Ambrogio. Petrus Beckx, the Jesuit general, should appoint a suitable spiritual guide for Kleutgen, who, acting under the secret of the Holy Office, would inform him of the heretical principles that he had been accused of following. He should then renounce them all.
The Inquisition might have been expected to pass a long sentence for the offense of Sollicitatio—particularly as contemporary Catholic writing presented seduction in the confessional as a disgusting crime. An 1853 Catholic encyclopedia stated that monastic priests convicted of this should be punished with “exile, the galleys, life imprisonment, degradation and being delivered up to the secular judges.”7 But in reality the Roman Inquisition treated these priests with extreme leniency: they were usually just assigned a penance, and had to spend a few days saying psalms. Members of their order who also happened to be consultors or cardinals of the Holy Office often made sure that the defendants could lie low in another monastery for a while.8
The cardinals of the Holy Office considered the case of Sant’Ambrogio on February 5, 1862, on the basis of the votum from the consultors’ meeting.9 They passed their advisors’ suggested decision on the first point (inculcating the validity of Firrao’s 1816 conviction) without further discussion. And the cardinals even went one step further than the consultors, who had suggested that all memory of the former convent of Sant’Ambrogio, and its mother founder, Agnese Firrao, should be destroyed. They ruled that her corpse should be exhumed from its grave in San Marziale in Gubbio, and placed in an anonymous, unidentifiable grave in a public graveyard.
The judgment that the sixteen consultors had suggested on Maria Luisa Ridolfi was passed with no alterations, and the sentence was set at twenty years. The cardinals also agreed with the consultors’ proposal for Abbess Maria Veronica Milza. Her sentence was to be one year; after this, she should be allowed to move to another suitable convent, with the permission of the cardinal vicar. Giuseppe Leziroli also received a year’s sentence, and a lifetime ban on taking confession. Joseph Kleutgen was to be given three years. He would also receive a special caution regarding the moral principles against which he had offended. The judgments against the abbess and the novice mistress were to be communicated privately to the nuns and confessors of the former convent.
On the evening of February 5, the Holy Office’s assessor, Raffaele Monaco La Valletta, read out the cardinals’ verdicts in the case of Sant’Ambrogio in a private audience with Pius IX.10 The pope approved the decisions, with a few small changes. He requested that the exhumation and reburial of Firrao’s body be conducted under the supervision of the bishop of Gubbio, and with the greatest secrecy, to avoid any public furor. The pope reduced Maria Luisa’s sentence to eighteen years—a comparatively mild punishment, considering she had confessed to the murder of several nuns. At the time, this would have incurred the death penalty in many countries. Pius IX reduced Kleutgen’s sentence to two years.
Was two years really an appropriate punishment for the serious offenses Kleutgen had committed? It’s clear where the pope’s sympathies lay in this trial. Kleu
tgen was an important theological advisor who, with Reisach acting as mediator, wrote texts and votums that allowed Pius IX to implement his policies and support his claim to universal power in the Church and the Papal States. The padre was part of his Jesuit network. Kleutgen and the Jesuits shored up the pope’s sovereignty—this called for care and leniency.
On February 12, another assembly of the cardinals made an addendum to the judgment.11 Sallua was unclear on whether the “formal and definite abjuration” in Kleutgen’s and Leziroli’s cases also meant they should be suspended from their priestly duties. This wasn’t stipulated in the text of the judgment, so the judges had to fall back on customary law. The Holy Office consistently forbade priests who had to abjure from celebrating Mass for a certain period. In the normal course of things, they were expected to lead Mass on a daily basis. The cardinals erred on the side of caution here and left the decision up to the pope, who banned both Jesuits from celebrating Mass for twenty days. The cardinals also noted that the previous week, they had discussed the destruction of Firrao’s grave in Gubbio, but not the final resting places of the two other abbesses, Maria Maddalena and Agnese Celeste della Croce. These women had also been venerated as living saints in Sant’Ambrogio. Their bodies would now also be exhumed and reburied in an anonymous place, without a headstone or any other marker.
These measures amounted to nothing less than a complete damnatio memoriae: everything that held the slightest memory of Sant’Ambrogio was to be wiped from history. This time, the Holy Office’s tribunal wanted to leave the field of battle as the ultimate victor. All graves that might be regarded as memorials had to be removed. All written records of the convent and, most importantly, its two false saints, had to disappear off the face of the earth—or rather, into the most secret of all church archives, where the public wouldn’t be able to read them.
INTERNAL ABJURATIONS AND EXTERNAL SECRECY
The ceremonial abjuration was the high point of an Inquisition trial. The Spanish Inquisition’s public auto-da-fés, as captured in many famous paintings, shape our idea of these events to this day.12 Galileo Galilei was forced to abjure on June 22, 1633, when the Inquisition made him renounce views based on his scientific observations. The event was made famous by, among other works, Bertolt Brecht’s play Life of Galileo: “I, Galileo Galilei, teacher of mathematics and physics at The University of Florence, renounce what I have taught, that the sun is the centre of the universe and motionless in its place, and that the Earth is not the centre and not motionless.”13 However, there was no such public abjuratio in the case of Sant’Ambrogio. The ceremony was conducted in secret, and the public was not admitted. The convent’s secret was to be kept even (and especially) after the judgment.
Sallua was charged with arranging this. He immediately had to summon the four guilty parties before the Holy Office and announce to them the cardinals’ decision, which had been ratified by the pope. He informed them of their sentences, received their abjurations, heard them renounce the crimes of which they had been convicted, and released them from the punishment of excommunication. He then had to inform the rest of the nuns of the verdict. Each of the individual points to be renounced corresponded to one of the main charges listed in the closing summation of each Ristretto. The abjuratio de formali was an established ritual, and always followed the same pattern.
Joseph Kleutgen’s abjuration took place on February 18, 1862, in the Palace of the Holy Office.14 Present were the two investigating judges, Vincenzo Leone Sallua and Enrico Ferrari, the Holy Office’s scribe, Pacifico Gasparri,15 and Giacomo Vagaggini, acting as notary.16
Kleutgen, whom the court continued to address as Peters, knelt down. A copy of the Gospels lay in front of him. Sallua read out the verdict in a loud, clear voice:
We have resolved to pronounce upon you the final verdict stated below. For this our final verdict we have called upon the holy names of our Lord Jesus Christ and his glorious mother, the Virgin Mary; we who sit in judgment will pronounce from these files of the case and the other cases before us between Monsignore Antonio Bambozzi, as the appointed Fiscal of this Holy Office on the one side, and you, Padre Giuseppe Peters, on the other.
We affirm, render, decide and declare that we condemn you, Padre Giuseppe Peters, for what you have confessed. You have been found guilty by the Holy Office of claiming the false holiness of the late condemned Sister Maria Agnese Firrao in each and every way. You supported and claimed the false holiness of the condemned Sister Maria Luisa Ridolfi in various unlawful and criminal ways, with words, writings and deeds. You are guilty of seduction, through committing acts with her while you were her confessor. You broke the clausura in order to care for her. You claimed, wrote and revealed views and principles that were unhealthy and do not correspond to healthy theology. You believed in a supposedly heavenly correspondence and encouraged it, to further the above-mentioned aims. Finally, you are guilty of further offences that fall within the traditional jurisdiction of this highest religious tribunal, and of offences that have been assigned to our jurisdiction. You have therefore brought upon yourself all the censures and punishments that are imposed and decreed for such offences by the Sacred Canons and other special or universal decrees.
But as you have admitted the above-mentioned errors of your own volition, and have asked for forgiveness, we are pleased to release you from excommunication, to which you are subject for these offences, provided that you first abjure, detest and condemn the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and that you abjure any further errors, heresies and sects opposed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, as we command in this our final verdict, and as you must perform in the manner that we will convey to you.
And so that these offences do not go unpunished—so that you will be more cautious in future and serve as an example to others, following your formal abjuration, we sentence you to: eternal disqualification from hearing Holy Confession, and eternal disqualification from any kind of spiritual guidance; a 20-day suspension from reading Holy Mass; ten days of spiritual exercises. We sentence you to remain two years in a house of your order, to be determined by your order’s General. You are prohibited from entering into any form of communication with the nuns or any persons who visited the former convent of Sant’Ambrogio. The General will provide you with a suitable pastoral guide, to set you right on the honest principles of morality. We also assign the salutary penance that, during the two years of your imprisonment, you will say a Requiescat three times a month, and the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary once a week.
We affirm, render, decide, declare and punish in this way, and in every other better way that the law allows and compels.
The transcriber noted that Padre Kleutgen heard and understood the verdict, and spoke no word against it. Kleutgen, still kneeling, then laid his hand on the Gospels and spoke the usual words of abjuration:
“I know that nobody who is not of this Faith will be saved, which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church observes, believes, preaches, confesses and teaches. I recognize that I have committed grave errors against the Church. I greatly regret this.”
Next, the Jesuit had to renounce individually all the offences the investigating court had listed in its closing statement. He had to state that he detested them, and acknowledge that they were condemned by the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Still kneeling, he then read out the abjuration proper:17
Now that, sorrowful and contrite, I am certain of the falsity of the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and of the truth of the Holy Catholic Faith, I abjure them with sincere heart and unfeigned faith. I detest and condemn the above-mentioned errors and heresies and in general all further errors, all further heresies and sects opposed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church. I accept and promise to serve all punishments that have been or will be imposed upon me by the Holy Office. If I should break any of my promises or oaths (God forbid!), I will submit to all punishments imposed and enacted upon me
by the Sacred Canons and other universal and specific constitutions against such offences. May God and His Holy Gospels, upon which I lay my hand, help me. I, Padre Giuseppe Peters, have abjured, sworn, promised and pledged as above. I have signed with my own hand the record of the abjuration, which I have spoken word for word, here in the knowledge of the truth and with a clear conscience, in Rome, on this day, February 18, 1862. Padre Giuseppe Peters.
Giuseppe Leziroli had made his “sorrowful and contrite” abjuration the previous day, February 17, 1862. He, too, had come to the tribunal’s palace, knelt, and placed his hand on the Gospels as instructed.18 Maria Luisa and the abbess abjured on February 14—the latter in the “House of Women,” Santa Maria del Rifugio, and the former in the Buon Pastore jail.19
After just over two and a half years, the Inquisition trial in the case of Sant’Ambrogio was formally at an end. The tribunal could assume that the defendants had realized their crimes, abjured the errors of faith and morality associated with them, and accepted their just punishments. But there was an exceptional feature to this trial that went beyond the Inquisitors’ everyday experience. In the Sant’Ambrogio case, the pope had made the religious authority of the Holy Office into a criminal court for capital crimes, although they didn’t fall within its jurisdiction. The indissoluble connection between the heresy and the murder charges had made this seem imperative. But, unlike heretical views, crimes could not be corrected through abjuration. This balancing act was palpable, at least indirectly, throughout the whole trial. Following its tradition as a religious tribunal, the court intended to guide the perpetrators both to a verbal renunciation and a practical acceptance of the judgment. This would reconcile them with themselves and, more importantly, with the Church.