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

  This work has been supported by a one-year research residency at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich. The Historisches Kolleg is financed by the Free State of Bavaria. The research stipend was provided by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

  The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International—Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association).

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Translation copyright © Alfred A. Knopf

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in Germany as Die Nonnen von Sant’Ambrogio, 3rd ed. by Hubert Wolf, München, in 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Verlag C. H. Beck oHG.

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  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wolf, Hubert.

  [Nonnen von Sant’Ambrogio. English]

  The nuns of Sant’Ambrogio : the true story of a convent in scandal / Hubert Wolf; translated

  by Ruth Martin.—First United States Edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-385-35190-4 (hardover)

  ISBN 978-0-385-35192-8 (eBook)

  Includes bibliographical references.

  1. Sant’Ambrogio della Massima (Monastery : Rome, Italy). 2. Nuns—Italy—Rome—History. 3. Convents—Italy—

  Rome—History. 4. Scandals—Italy—Rome—History. 5. Catholic Church—Italy—

  Rome—History. 6. Monasteries—Italy—Rome—History. I. Title.

  BX4220.I8W6513 2014

  271′.973045632—dc23 2014001625

  Front-of-jacket photograph: Sad Memories by Amerino Cagnoni, 1984 (detail).

  De Agostini Picture Library/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Jacket design by Kelly Blair

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PROLOGUE

  “Save, Save Me!”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Such Turpitudes”

  Katharina von Hohenzollern Complains to the Inquisition

  Rome as a Heavenly Jerusalem

  A Road-to-Damascus Experience and Its Consequences

  A Roman Cloistered Idyll

  Salvation from a Cloistered Hell

  Denunciation as a Moral Duty

  The Secret of Sant’Ambrogio

  A Possessed Seducer of Nuns

  A False Saint

  Poisoning

  The Savior’s Perspective

  CHAPTER TWO

  “The ‘Delicatezza’ of the Matter as Such”

  Extrajudicial Preliminary Investigations

  Informal Questioning

  The Outcast’s Testimony

  Two Nuns in a Bed

  Unchastity and Sodomy

  A Dominican Wants the Details

  Many Convincing Proofs

  An Inquisition Trial, After All

  The Inquisition Tribunal: Processes and Protagonists

  The Sources from the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I Am the Little Lion of My Reformed Sisters”

  The Informative Process and the Devotees of the Mother Founder

  The Convent of Sant’Ambrogio della Massima

  Franciscans of the Third Order

  Agnese Firrao Is Venerated as a Saint

  Agnese Firrao Is Accused of False Holiness

  The Inquisition’s 1816 Verdict

  The Miraculous Conversion of Leo XII

  True and False Holiness

  Proof of the Continuing Cult of Firrao

  The Secret Abbess

  Relics

  Inspired Texts

  A “Mother Confessor”

  The Confessors Proclaim the False Cult

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Wash Me Well, for the Padre Is Coming”

  The Madre Vicaria’s Pretense of Holiness

  Visions on the Road to Power

  Mysticism

  The Earthly Origins of Heavenly Rings and the Scent of Roses

  Letters from the Mother of God

  The Marian Century

  Forging Letters from the Virgin

  Pastoral Care in Bed

  Lesbian Intimacies in a Convent Cell

  The Sant’Ambrogio System

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “An Act of Divine Splendor”

  Murder on the Orders of the Virgin

  The Americano and His Obscene Letter

  The Cord Around Katharina’s Neck

  Heavenly Letters Foretell Katharina’s Murder

  The Dramaturgy of a Poisoning

  “It Was Most Certainly the Devil”

  More Murders

  Pennies from Heaven

  The Confessors as Confidants and Accomplices

  The Results of the Informative Process

  CHAPTER SIX

  “It Is a Heavenly Liquor”

  The Offensive Process and the Interrogation of the Madre Vicaria

  “I Always Wanted to Become a Nun”

  The Story of an Innocent Lamb

  Evidence and First Confessions

  Maria Luisa and Her Novices

  Sexual Abuse

  Jesuit Confessors and Their Very Special Blessing

  The Confessor’s Affair with Alessandra N.

  Maria Luisa and Padre Peters: Blessing or Bedding?

  “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

  The Apostle of Saint Agnese Firrao

  The Confessor and “Saint” Maria Luisa

  Leziroli and the Poisonings

  Maria Veronica Milza: An Abbess Before the Court

  Confessions

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “During These Acts I Never Ceased My Inner Prayer”

  The Interrogation of Giuseppe Peters

  Padre Peters’s True Identity

  The Defendant’s Spontaneous Admissions

  A Cardinal Breaks the Secret of the Holy Office

  And After All, the Cult of Firrao Was Permitted

  Theology and French Kissing

  New Scholastic Convolutions

  The Court’s Final Proposition

  A Proxy War?

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Sorrowful and Contrite”

  The Verdict and Its Consequences

  Consultors, Cardinals, Pope: The Verdict

  Internal Abjurations and External Secrecy

  A Founder Instead of a Nun

  A Cardinal’s Poison Paranoia

  Friends in High Places

  A Saint in the Madhouse

  A Heretic Writes Dogma

  EPILOGUE

  The Secret of Sant’Ambrogio as Judged by History

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  SOURCES AND LITERATURE

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  A Note About the Author

  A Note About the Translator
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br />   Dramatis Personae

  PRINCESS KATHARINA VON HOHENZOLLERN-SIGMARINGEN

  A German aristocrat. Spends fifteen months as the novice Luisa Maria in the convent of Sant’Ambrogio, where her knowledge of convent secrets puts her life in danger.

  GUSTAV ADOLF ZU HOHENLOHE-SCHILLINGSFÜRST

  The titular archbishop of Edessa and a confidant of Pope Pius IX. Also Katharina’s cousin and her savior.

  MARIA AGNESE FIRRAO

  Founder of the convent, whose inhabitants honor her as a saint. Convicted by the Holy Office of false holiness.

  MARIA LUISA

  The convent’s beautiful young novice mistress and madre vicaria. Has visions and is regarded as a saint.

  MARIA VERONICA

  Abbess of Sant’Ambrogio, thanks to Maria Luisa.

  LUIGI FRANCESCHETTI

  The lawyer responsible for the convent’s legal affairs.

  AGNESE ELETTA

  The niece of Agnese Firrao, a nun who shares Maria Luisa’s bed.

  MARIA GIACINTA

  Franceschetti’s sister, a nun who also shares Maria Luisa’s bed.

  AGNESE CELESTE

  A novice and a doctor’s daughter, who knows about medicines and poisons.

  MARIA FRANCESCA

  A novice with heavenly handwriting.

  MARIA GIUSEPPA

  A nurse with the keys to the convent dispensary.

  MARIA IGNAZIA

  A novice and Maria Luisa’s accomplice.

  MARIA FELICE

  A novice and another of Maria Luisa’s accomplices.

  PETER KREUZBURG

  “The Americano.” Possessed by the devil (and by Maria Luisa).

  GIUSEPPE LEZIROLI

  A Jesuit priest, the spiritual director and principal father confessor of Sant’Ambrogio; believes in both its saints.

  GIUSEPPE PETERS

  A Jesuit priest and the second father confessor of Sant’Ambrogio; admirer of Maria Luisa. Is more than he seems.

  KARL AUGUST, COUNT REISACH

  Cardinal and sometime spiritual guide to Katharina; has a weakness for women with stigmata.

  MAURUS WOLTER

  A Benedictine priest and Katharina’s new spiritual guide; persuades her to submit a complaint to the Inquisition.

  COSTANTINO PATRIZI

  Cardinal protector of the convent; cardinal vicar of the Roman Curia; keeper of secrets.

  VINCENZO LEONE SALLUA

  A Dominican; investigating judge of the Roman Inquisition.

  PIUS IX

  Pope from 1846 to 1878; believes the Virgin Mary does intervene in the world.

  MARY

  The mother of Jesus Christ; supernatural manifestation and correspondent.

  Prologue

  “Save, Save Me!”

  “Shortly after eight o’clock on Monday, July 25, the Archbishop of Edessa—sent by the Lord—finally came to me. There was no time for waiting; this was the one and only time to get saved. To him, I had to reveal everything and had to implore him to help me escape the convent as swiftly as possible. It all went well: my prayers were fulfilled, and I was understood.”1 These dramatic words were set down by Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in a complaint she submitted to the pope in summer 1859. They were written barely five weeks after her escape from the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome—or rather, after her cousin, Archbishop Gustav Adolf zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, managed to secure her release—and they describe the sensational conclusion to her adventure inside the walls of a Roman Catholic convent. It was an adventure for which she had narrowly avoided paying with her life.

  She had been humiliated, isolated from her fellow nuns, cut off from the outside world, and—since she was party to the convent secrets and therefore regarded as a danger—somebody had tried to silence her. They had even made several attempts to poison her. At half past three in the afternoon on July 26, 1859, after almost exactly fifteen months, she finally left Sant’Ambrogio della Massima. Her life as Sister Luisa Maria of Saint Joseph, a nun in the Regulated Third Order of Holy Saint Francis in Rome, had begun so promisingly. And now here she was, being saved in the nick of time, rescued from imminent danger of death.

  In her written complaint, the princess gave her failure as a nun and her thrilling escape from the convent a typically pious interpretation, casting it as salvation by Christ the Lord. This somehow made the experience bearable for her. But the final dramatic episode, and the preceding months she had spent under the constant fear of death, would come to define her whole life. After July 26, 1859, nothing would ever be the same again. Her plight had been genuinely existential: her life really was threatened in Sant’Ambrogio. Even years later, she was still traumatized by the attempts to poison her. This is all brought vividly to life in her Erlebnisse (Experiences), a book written by her close collaborator Christiane Gmeiner in 1870, more than a decade after the terrible events in Rome.2 According to this autobiographical source, Katharina had managed to smuggle a letter out of the convent during the night of July 24, 1859. This was handed to Archbishop Hohenlohe in the Vatican.

  The princess waited in a state of great anxiety until she was called into the parlor at half past seven in the morning. Fearful and almost breathless, the princess hurried downstairs to the archbishop, to whom she called out in great agitation: “save, save me!” At first, he did not understand her, and was almost afraid his cousin had run mad, but by and by she managed to convince him that she was mistress of her senses, and that her fear was not unfounded. Now he understood her pleas to leave the convent, and he promised to do everything in his power to arrange this as soon as possible—though the first appointment he was able to make was not until the following day.

  The words are Christiane Gmeiner’s, recounting in the third person what the princess had told her in her own words.3

  Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen’s account sounds like a story from the depths of the Middle Ages, and confirms many of the common clichés and prejudices about life in Catholic convents and monasteries. But this story takes place in the modern world of the mid-nineteenth century. And the setting isn’t a secluded mountain convent at the world’s edge, but the center of the capital city of Christianity, little more than half a mile from the Vatican—home to the representative of Jesus Christ on earth.

  What really happened in Sant’Ambrogio? Were these poisonings simply the fantasy of a highly strung aristocrat, or were they genuine attempts on Katharina’s life? She was a princess of the house of Hohenzollern and a close relative of Wilhelm I, the man who would later become king of Prussia and the German emperor. So how did Katharina come to take her vows in such a strict religious order in the first place—and why in Rome?

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Such Turpitudes”

  Katharina von Hohenzollern Complains to the Inquisition

  ROME AS A HEAVENLY JERUSALEM

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Joachim Winckelmann both longed for Italy, intoxicated by the idea of Rome, the stronghold of classical antiquity. But it wasn’t this idea that drove Katharina there.1 Nor was she following in the footsteps of the great German royal houses, from the Karolingers to the Staufer Carolingians, who had come to the city on the Tiber to take the emperor’s crown. Katharina’s destination was an order of pious women, so her motivation for coming to the pope’s city must have been largely religious.

  But, starting in the mid-eighteenth century, Rome had undergone a dramatic decline as a religious center.2 Situated in the middle of Italy, the Papal States covered at least a quarter of the Apennine Peninsula, and, as their secular prince, the pope was increasingly drawn into political and military conflicts to protect his rule. This left him less and less able to take care of his duties as spiritual head of the Catholic Church. Toward the end of the century, religious respect for papal authority sank to an all-time low. In 1773, the European powers even managed to force Clement XIV to dissolve the Jesuit order, his most important political supp
orters within the Church. Napoleon Bonaparte annexed the pope’s lands, and forced Pius VII into French exile. Following the pope’s return, the 1815 Congress of Vienna restored the Papal States as an independent entity. But although Cardinal Secretary of State Ercole Consalvi promised the Congress that in return, reforms would be implemented in the areas of governance, legislation, education, and the economy, these never materialized.3 The Papal States remained the most backward political entity in the whole of Europe.

  However, following the Wars of Liberation, the Restoration had become a dominant movement in Europe, and the pope was able to regain the people’s respect for him as a moral and religious authority. He had suddenly become the only monarch in Europe to have defied the beast Napoleon, earning a spell in exile for his convictions. All the other rulers had made deals with the French emperor. To the Romantic mind, papal authority was a guarantee of eternal values, in particular of the divine right of kings. It was a protective force against the chaos and uncertainty of the French Revolution, with its liberal understanding of constitutional law and human rights. Leo XII was particularly adept at utilizing this desire for security. The Eternal City would once again become the most sacred place on earth.

  German Catholics were increasingly turning toward Rome in the wake of secularization and the destruction of the old Imperial Church with its prince-bishoprics. Most had become the subjects of Protestant princes, and were seeking salvation through a closer connection with the pope. After the July Revolution of 1830, there was a phase of growing Ultramontanism within the Catholic Church. Catholics were starting to look ultra montes, beyond the mountains, to Rome. Roman piety, Roman liturgy, and Roman theology were increasingly regarded as the only true realizations of Catholicism, legitimated by the pope in his role as Vicarius Christi.

  With this movement in full swing, the Catholic press began to style Rome as the bride of Christ, the holy city, a heavenly Jerusalem on earth. This religious elevation of the papacy didn’t stem from the popes and the Roman Curia itself: it was brought to the pope from outside. The pontiff became the surface onto which people could project their need for religious security in an age of upheaval, doubt, and revolution. During this period, people began to rediscover the idea of making a pilgrimage to Rome. Having a personal encounter with the pope, praying over the graves of the apostles Peter and Paul—and the religious self-assurance this brought with it—became markers of a genuine Catholic faith.