The Eagle and the Dove
Page 22
Amongst his other peculiarities, he had the habit of uttering a shrill cry, like a bird, on taking flight.
St. Agnes of Montepulciano (1268–1317), not content with leaving the ground when she went into ecstasy, was frequently seen with her cloak covered with manna, “looking as if she had been out of doors in a heavy snowstorm.”
The Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J., most cautious and sceptical of investigators, personally described to the present writer the case of a priest of his acquaintance, who was obliged to weight the soles of his boots with lead in order to keep himself down while saying Mass. But, as Father Thurston remarked, it did seem puzzling that a little extra weight should make all that difference to a supernatural power capable of lifting a man’s body without any difficulty.
THE BURNT AND WOUNDED HEART
(See here)
A SOMEWHAT SIMILAR case is recorded of Maria Villani (died in 1670), but with the surprising factor that this nun had herself drawn a diagram to illustrate the wound made in her heart by a fiery spear. The external wound was visible during her lifetime, and was several times examined and probed by three different Dominican fathers who signed formal depositions describing their findings. Nine hours after death had taken place, the body was opened, when bright blood gushed forth, and so much heat proceeded from the heart that the surgeon was obliged to withdraw his hand several times before he could finally grasp the heart and extract it. It was then seen to exhibit a wound exactly in accordance with the drawing made by the dead woman, and moreover “the lips of the wound are hard and seared, just as happens when the cautery is used.”
THERESA NEUMANN
(See here)
THUS FAR THE interventions of Thérèse, which were accompanied by many appearances and locutions, but this brief account of Theresa Neumann would not be complete without the rounding-off of her subsequent history. Restored more or less to health,—that is to say, she could now walk and see,—she began to have intense visions of Christ’s Passion. These visions before long were accompanied by physical signs on her own body: blood streamed from her side and from her eyes; marks corresponding to a crown of thorns appeared upon her head; a red bruise, not actually bleeding, but oozing blood, appeared upon her right shoulder as though from the angular weight of a heavy burden; weals, as though from scourging, covered her body; and the stigmata appeared in her hands and feet. Here, in the place of the nails, pieces of hard flesh, like plugs, filled the holes. When photographed, the wounds in the hands revealed a bright surrounding light. These manifestations, whatever their cause, are associated with a physical anguish that innumerable eyewitnesses and medical men declare could not possibly be so terribly and convincingly feigned. It is also claimed that after the climax of the Good Friday’s vision, when she has watched Christ’s body droop upon the Cross, and her own body has drooped with it, her mouth falling half open, her limbs relaxed and motionless, her heart for five minutes actually ceases to beat.
This is not the end of the perplexing tale of Theresa Neumann. It is, apparently, a fact, checked by the most careful supervision, that for many years she neither ate nor drank, much as she would have liked to do so. In spite of this total abstinence, and an almost equivalent lack of sleep, she loses no weight except on Fridays when her visions regularly occur (with special agony and intensity on Good Friday) when she loses from five to eight pounds, regained the following day. The sceptical may be tempted to dismiss her case as one of extreme auto-suggestion. But apart from the theological and scientific care taken in examining the evidence, a few curious facts appear to weaken this theory. Thus, in a case of auto-suggestion working on a very simple and unimaginative mind, one might expect the visions to run exactly on lines originating in something already known, already taught. On the contrary, Theresa Neumann insists in differing on many points from the orthodox version. For example she declares that the Cross, as carried by our Lord, was not in the usual shape, but consisted of four separate pieces of wood tied together, and that on arrival at Calvary the two longer pieces were joined end to end, and the two shorter pieces joined at acute angles, forming the letter Y. She insists also our Lord’s feet were at only about a yard from the ground. Again, her idea of the Magi does not correspond to any picture or story she might have seen or heard, for according to her account the Christ-child was no swaddled baby but was already eighteen months old when the Kings arrived in Bethlehem, and, just learning to walk, was able politely to escort them to the door at the end of their visit.
It should be related also that she recognised Aramaic as the language of the shepherds; differentiated between the Aramaic spoken by an educated man like Pilate and the popular speech of the Apostles; used the Pyrenean dialect in describing the apparition of our Lady at Lourdes; and recognised Portuguese as the language she had heard spoken by St. Anthony who, although called of Padua, happened to be a native of Lisbon.
One last fact in connexion with Theresa Neumann may be noted: her birthplace was not far from that of Adolf Hitler, who, brooking no rival in the intuitive regions, suppressed her and her thousands of pilgrims and her prophecies in 1934. In support of this action on the part of the Führer, it is said that some of her prophecies were of a most discouraging character concerning himself and his own career.
It is necessary to add that the Church has by no means accepted her experiences and revelations as being of divine origin.
While on the subject of Theresa Neumann, it is not irrelevant ‘to mention the cases of the Florentine St. Catherine dei Ricci (1522–1590) and of Blessed Stefana Quinzani (1457–1530). St. Catherine, a nun in the Dominican convent of San Vincenzio at Prato, occasioned much inconvenience to her fellow-inmates by the ecstasies into which she entered weekly for twelve years, and which attracted crowds of importunate visitors to the convent. These ecstasies had the peculiarity that besides mentally contemplating the scenes of our Lord’s Passion she also enacted them in her own person. Losing consciousness with the greatest regularity at midday on Thursday, and regaining it at four o’clock on Friday afternoon, she followed in gesture, scene by scene, the visions which were taking place in “the eyes of the soul.” Thus, at the moment of the arrest in Gethsemane, she would stretch out her arms as though offering her hands to be bound; when the moment came for our Lord to be roped to the pillar for the scourging she would stand stiffly upright; later, she would bow her head to accept the crown of thorns. Although deprived of her senses during these performances, she would nevertheless address the sisters of the community with exhortations displaying “a knowledge and loftiness of thought and eloquence not to be expected from a woman.”
Like Theresa Neumann, she received the stigmata.
Blessed Stefana Quinzani, who came from Brescia, likewise enacted the scenes of the Passion every Friday. Twenty-one eyewitnesses signed a document describing the occurrence. Like St. Catherine, she would reproduce the actions of our Lord during the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and the nailing to the Cross. The stigmata would appear on her hands and feet; she would become completely rigid, and although the onlookers exerted all their strength they were unable to alter the position she had adopted or to bend a single joint of her limbs. On extending her arms during the scene of the Crucifixion, her left arm was observed to be stretched considerably beyond its natural length, resembling in this the arm of St. Catherine of Genoa which was said to gain five inches in similar circumstances.
It may be left to the reader to make what he can of these and similar manifestations.
CE QUE J’AIMI …
A literal translation
(see here)
Oh, how I love the memory
Of the blessed days of my childhood!
To preserve the flower of my innocence
Our Lord surrounded me always With love.
I loved the barley-fields, the plain;
I loved the distant hill;
In my happiness, I scarcely breathed
As I harvested with my sisters The flowers.
I loved the white daisy,
The walks on Sundays,
The light bird warbling on the branch,
And the lovely radiant blue Of the heavens.
O Memory, you give me repose …
You recall many things to me …
The evening meal,the scent of roses,
Les Buissonnets full of gaiety In summer.
These are only a few stanzas from the poem which contains fifty-two stanzas.
THE PRAYER OF FRANCE TO JEANNE D’ARC
A literal translation
(See here)
Oh Jeanne, remember your country,
Your valleys enamelled with flowers.
Remember the laughing meadow
That you left in order to dry my tears.
Oh Jeanne, remember that you saved France.
Like an angel from Heaven you cured my sufferings.
Listen in the night,
To France lamenting.
Remember!
Remember your brilliant victories,
The blessed days of Reims and Orleans;
Remember that you covered with glory
In God’s name the kingdom of the Franks.
Now, far from you, I suffer and sigh.
Come to save me once more, Jeanne, gentle martyr!
Condescend to strike off my iron bonds …
Remember the ills I have suffered.
I come to you, my arms loaded with chains,
My brow veiled, my eyes bathed in tears;
I am no longer great among the queens,
And my children water me with grief.
God is nothing to them now! They desert their mother!
Oh Jeanne, take pity on my bitter sorrow.
Return, great-hearted daughter,
Liberating angel,
I trust in you.
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Copyright © Nigel Nicolson 1943
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This edition reissued by Vintage Classics in 2018
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1943
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Saint Teresa of Avila
1515–1582
fn1 See infra, here.
fn2 The Spanish use of surnames is apt to cause some confusion. A woman keeps her own surname, adding it on to that of her husband, thus Teresa’s mother, Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, on marrying Alonso de Cepeda, Teresa’s father, becomes Beatriz de Cepeda Davila y Ahumada. In present days it is customary for the children to take the surnames of both parents, but in Teresa’s day they could adopt the surname of either their father or their mother, irrespective of their own sex. Thus Teresa called herself Ahumada after her mother, though her sister Maria called herself Cepeda after their father.
fn3 The word she uses is algaravia, meaning literally the Arabic tongue; but popularly gabble or jargon to the Spaniards who had heard so much Arabic from the Moors.
fn4 A detailed study could be made of the various forms which diabolical apparitions have taken to holy persons. From such a study would emerge the fact that Satan, whatever his other demerits, was at least a spirit of considerable ingenuity. He could be alarming, as when he appeared to St. Elizabeth of Schonau in the shape of a great black bull; ferocious, as when he bit pieces out of the flesh of Blessed Christina of Strommeln, an unfortunate virgin whom he singled out for his attentions, fastening hot stones on to her body, committing unprintable nuisances against her, and sending his demons to attack her in numbers varying between 91 and 40,050; mischievous,as when in the form of a mouse he gnawed the thread on the distaff of St. Gertrude of Nivelles to make her lose her temper, or repeatedly blew out the candle of St. Genevieve.
fn5 St. Bernadette Soubirous maintained that our Lady said to her, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” and that she had never heard the expression and did not know what it meant. This would appear to be a close approach to our hypothetical case, but, without casting any doubt on St. Bernadette’s integrity, it is impossible to be certain that she had not heard or read the words somewhere, although she may not consciously have registered them in her mind.
fn6 She makes a curious statement, to the effect that, when in the prayer of quiet, she “who scarcely understand a word of what I read in Latin, understand the Latin as if it were Spanish.”
fn7 See, for instance, Ezekiel, chap 8, verse 3. Among “popular” saints, the example of St. Catherine of Siena is well known, but for something a little more out of the way, see Appendix 1, here, for an account of the truly extraordinary case of St. Joseph of Cupertino.
fn8 St. Teresa actually wrote “She is like a person,” etc., for it was often her habit when making these intimate revelations to refer to herself in the third person.
fn9 A miraculous and indescribable light is, of course, a very usual accompaniment of sacred revelations. The instances are too numerous to recount here. The image of the mirror is also not uncommon, e.g. St. Joseph of Cupertino who, when asked what souls in ecstasy saw during their raptures, replied, “They feel as though they were taken into a wonderful gallery, shining with never-ending beauty, where in a glass, with a single look, they apprehend the marvellous vision which God is pleased to show them.”
Mention must be made of that most remarkable woman, the twelfth-century “Sibyl of the Rhine,” St. Hildegarde, whose Blake-like visions and drawings, connected with falling angels and splendid stars, are often of great beauty. Mystic, poet, artist, physician, naturalist, psychologist, hers is a biography which should be written.
fn10 The exact places where the monks found refuge after their first migration in 1238 were Fortani in Cyprus, Messina in Sicily, Valenciennes and Aygalades near Marseilles in France. A second migration took place three years later, bound for England. They settled at Bradmer, in Norfolk, in the forest of Hulme, in Northumberland, and at Newenden and Aylesford, in Kent. Within a very few years (1249-1256) foundations were also established at Cambridge, Oxford, Paris, Bologna, York and Cologne.
fn11 Two other convents were founded in her absence, but under her guidance: that of Caravaca and that of Granada.
fn12 It is amusing to note, considering the difference in their positions as the most dreaded monarch of Christendom and the plain nun, that Philip rather than Teresa had in the first instance been the suppliant for a meeting. On her way through Madrid she had given his sister a letter for him, relating some advice received by her from God in connexion with his most secret thoughts. So struck by this letter was Philip, that he exclaimed, “Why can I not see this woman? where is she?” But Teresa had already left for Toledo, and he had to wait eight years before she came. Then it was only because she wanted to ask a favour, which he immediately granted, after inquiring whether that was all she desired. Characteristically, she then dictated the terms of her petition in her own words to the Duke of Alba’s secretary.