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

by Hubert Wolf

  Padre Peters’s appointment as second confessor of Sant’Ambrogio had come at the behest of a heavenly letter from the mother founder. Maria Luisa had passed this on to the abbess, who in turn gave it to the Jesuit general, who carried out the heavenly order immediately. The letter had discredited Padre Benedetti, who at that time was the second confessor. It accused him of having conducted an intimate relationship with the late Sister Maria Agostina. The Jesuit general withdrew Nicola Benedetti, and replaced him with Padre Giuseppe Peters. Sallua mentioned remarks by some of the nuns to the effect that Maria Luisa “preferred Padre Peters and had an extraordinary affection for him.” It seems she first met the Jesuit when he came to Sant’Ambrogio as a stand-in to celebrate Mass and take confession.

  The Jesuit general had almost total power within the Society of Jesus.50 The members of the order had to follow his commands with a military obedience. While the classical orders had a lifelong connection to a particular monastery, a uniform habit, and communal Divine Office, Ignatius of Loyola consciously avoided these features of monastic life when he created the original Society of Jesus He wanted to build a new type of order. The Jesuits professed a special fourth vow, which gave them a high degree of flexibility: in addition to poverty, chastity, and obedience, they swore loyalty to the pope. This made them into his mobile response troop, and it was also the reason that a Jesuit could be transferred from one area of responsibility to another at the stroke of a pen. At this point, the general of the Jesuits was Petrus Johann Beckx,51 who was born in Brabant in 1795. He had been ordained as a secular priest in 1819, and in October of the same year he entered the Jesuit novitiate. He became the provincial of the order’s Austrian province in 1852, and was elected general in 1853.

  The pope instructed that, due to Beckx’s high standing, his hearing before the Inquisition in March 1860 should be conducted not by Sallua, but by the assessor, Monaco La Valletta. The Jesuit general conceded that he had relieved Padre Benedetti of his office in Sant’Ambrogio at the “request of the nuns.” He characterized Padre Leziroli as a “simple man,” generally believed to be a “good priest who followed the rules.” Beckx claimed the same “about Padre Peters, although he did not [enjoy] the same reputation for piety as Padre Leziroli.”52

  Naturally, Sallua was interested in exactly how the correspondence between the Mother of God and Padre Peters had taken place. Apparently, apart from Peters and Maria Luisa, this was something only the abbess knew.53 Sallua did everything in his power to get hold of the heavenly missives as evidence, but without success. Maria Luisa and Peters had ensured the letters wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Holy Office by burning them all. The Dominican was therefore forced to reconstruct the content of individual letters—there must have been several dozen of these—from the witness statements.

  The Blessed Virgin Mary’s letter to the Jesuit general Petrus Beckx. (illustration credit 4.1)

  But the inquisitor did have one piece of luck: under questioning from Monaco La Valletta, the Jesuit general revealed that he, too, had received a letter from heaven. At first, of course, he had no clear memory of it. Then he claimed to have burned the letter. When the assessor pressed him further, Beckx promised to have another look for it among his papers. And as luck would have it, after a thorough search the general found the letter and handed it over to the Inquisition.54 It bore no date, and was written in French. In translation, it read:55

  Paternité,

  With all the ardor of my heart I ask you in the name of God not to hesitate for a moment to separate the unfortunate Passaglia from his Companion Schiader. Remember that in your conscience you are responsible for the Society. Woe, woe to you if you do not free the College at once from the unfortunate Passaglia, and from those who do not behave well, and transfer them to other Houses and appoint another person in place of Passaglia, and you will do the same for the others. You must do this, if you do not want to weep for unhappiness. Take care not to let any other reason or any authority prevent you, for the Society is on your conscience, and for this you will have to answer to God. Be mindful of God’s will in this! It is done out of the love I bear for my dear Society, Your Paternité and all your sons. I beseech you once again, send the unfortunate Passaglia and his Companion and all others who have earned such correction away from Rome, or they will bring the wrath of God down upon the Society. So consider that you are the Superior, and God has given you the authority to command at once what I have said. If you want to know who it is that has given you this warning and has written to you, it is

  Marie

  Why “Marie” didn’t choose to write in Latin, the language of the Church, or Aramaic, the dialect of her homeland, is open to debate. French was the diplomatic language of the nineteenth century, and was also used in the Curia,56 which might have been the reasoning behind the choice of “divine” language. Alternatively, the letter may have been modeled on the widely read missive from the “mère de Dieu,” written in French in the eighteenth century. Or the Virgin Mary may have chosen French because it was the mother tongue of Petrus Johann Beckx.

  In any case, the letter contained an extraordinary number of errors, proving that its author had only a limited command of French, and had probably learned it as a spoken rather than a written language. In spite of this, the letter’s commands were in fact carried out in 1857. The “unfortunate” Passaglia was duly separated from his companion, Schiader (actually Schrader). On August 3, 1857, the Jesuit general gave orders for Clemens Schrader to be transferred from the Gregorian University to the Catholic theology faculty of the University of Vienna. Petrus Beckx used his authority to override protests from both Passaglia and Schrader.57 As a result, Passaglia resigned from all his offices in the Jesuit order, and gave up his professorship at the Gregorian University.

  Carlo Passaglia58 was born in 1812, and was one of Rome’s most high-profile Jesuit theologians. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1827 and, once he had been ordained in 1840, served as the prefect of studies at the Collegium Germanicum. In 1844, he was given one of the two chairs for dogmatics at the Gregorian University. There, he became friends with one of his students, Clemens Schrader, who later became his colleague.59 Schrader was born in 1820 in Itzum, near Hildesheim, and studied at the Germanicum from 1840 to 1848, when he entered the Society of Jesus. That same year, the Roman Revolution forced the Jesuits into exile, and the two men went to Ugbrooke in Devon, England, where they carried on teaching. Passaglia stood for a historical form of Thomism, and therefore found himself increasingly opposed to the new scholastics, who were growing ever stronger in the Gregorian University, and who worked less historically. He also attracted a great deal of skepticism from other members of his order for his pragmatic view of the Italian unification movement, and his attempt to build bridges between the papacy and the nascent Italian state. His works on this topic ended up on the Index of Forbidden Books.60 Passaglia was held in the highest regard by Pius IX, as he had been a strong supporter of papal infallibility, and had done sterling work on the 1854 dogma of the Immaculate Conception. But the term “unfortunate” in the Virgin Mary’s letter probably held the unspoken accusation of a homosexual relationship with Clemens Schrader.61

  Did the letter from the Virgin lead to the separation of Passaglia and Schrader, or was it a kind of vaticinium ex eventu, something that claimed to be a prediction of the future, but actually “foretold” an event that had already happened? If it was the latter, it would have to have been written after August 3, 1857, the date that Beckx had Schrader transferred. But if it was written prior to August 3, it might really have influenced the general’s decision.

  This question must have electrified Sallua: if the Jesuit general—the “black pope”—had really transferred Schrader on the letter’s instructions, it would mean he had acknowledged the letter as genuine.

  Word of Beckx’s letter from the Virgin Mary had clearly spread among the Jesuits, and had also unsettled Padre Leziroli. He instructed Maria Luisa
to give him more detailed written information about it. She reluctantly complied, via a letter written on August 5, 1857.62 Writing “purely out of obedience,” she told Leziroli that the Madonna had recently appeared to her in the convent, and told her “the whole story of the Collegio Romano and these two padres.” The Virgin said: “Listen: Oh! My daughter. The authorities are in error … I have already told you once, you should pray for my dearly beloved Society. I also sent the general a letter regarding the matter of the Collegio, as I told you.” The Virgin added that she was sure her “good son Pietro” would make sure “the Collegio was freed from such a monster.” The Blessed Virgin passed a judgment of annihilation on Passaglia, and Maria Luisa couldn’t entreat her to moderate it. The Madonna simply said, “Well well, poor Carlo, poor Carlo: his great pride drove him into the abyss.”

  If Maria Luisa answered Leziroli on August 5, this means Beckx’s letter from the Virgin was written before this date, and could well have played a role in the Jesuit general’s actions against Passaglia. It may seem unlikely today that a heavenly missive could influence the head of an order’s decisions about its members. But were letters from the Virgin Mary such an unusual phenomenon in this period? Or did the Blessed Virgin intervene to alter the course of history on an almost daily basis?

  THE MARIAN CENTURY

  The nineteenth century was the age of the feminization of religion.63 In civil society, men and women inhabited separate spheres: men took care of politics, while women looked after the household and religion; men’s involvement with the Church was via Catholic clubs and movements, while women were frequently overrepresented at Mass and religious festivals. The century’s monastic revival was largely based on the establishment of new women’s congregations. These performed good works, caring for the poor and the sick, or working in schools and on behalf of girls’ education. But it wasn’t just that more women were engaging in devotional practices; the practices themselves became increasingly sentimental and emotional, characterized by devotion and humility, but also by hysteria. These were all seen as feminine qualities. This fact was used as a weapon by the anti-clerical movements—particularly the opponents of the Jesuits. They frequently questioned the masculinity of devout men, calling women the “Jesuitical sex,” while the Jesuits’ male adherents were “weak and womanish.”64

  In this context, the Blessed Virgin Mary gained more and more currency as the addressee of prayers. She was invoked in Rosaries, May devotions, and Marian litanies. It wasn’t just members of the lower classes who became enthusiastic devotees of the Virgin, but people from society’s upper echelons and clerics, all the way up to the pope.

  This devotional practice was related to a particular development in theology. Over the course of Church history, the Catholic image of God had been purged of all the feminine characteristics that had existed in the Holy Scriptures. Now they were making a comeback, in the form of the Mother of God. The period from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s is therefore known as the Marian century, the end point of which is formed by the 1950 dogma of the Assumption of Mary.

  Pius IX’s dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception, meanwhile, stands as a beacon at its start.65 This was the question of whether Mary, due to her special position as mother of the Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ, had been preserved from the stain of original sin, with which every other person is tarnished from the moment of conception.

  For a long time, this issue was the subject of a controversial debate within the Church. In the thirteenth century, the Dominicans spoke out against the Immaculata Conceptio of Mary, as there was neither written evidence for it nor any clear proof to be won from Church tradition. But by the nineteenth century there was really no need for dogmatization: the question was no longer being debated. Most people believed in the Immaculata Conceptio and, until this point, the Church had only resorted to dogmatization in order to defend a fundamental religious truth from attack. This was how the great dogmas had come into being, which formed the core of the Catholic creed. The Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, was something new—a “devotional” dogma.

  Pius IX was adamant about instituting this dogma. It had been sparked by his expulsion from Rome, following the Revolution of 1848–1849. And in exile in Gaeta, the pope set the doctrinal wheels in motion—seemingly in the genuine hope that the Mother of God would intervene in world history and help him win back his Papal States.

  On December 8, 1854, Pius IX dogmatized the Immaculata Conceptio, by the sole power of his authority, and in the presence of numerous bishops. In so doing, he anticipated the infallibility that the pope was only to be accorded by the Vatican Council in 1870. “Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion …‘We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.’ ”66

  A contemporary editorial in the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica viewed the new Marian dogma in political as well as theological terms. Through the dogma, the “principle of authority in society is created anew,” and “the judgment of damnation is spoken against the so-called sovereignty of the people.”67 The Immaculate Virgin was styled as a combatant against modernity. “Just as the Immaculata, free from every stain, archetype and paragon of the Church, is victorious over temptation and Satan, so the Church and Catholics shall repel seductive Reason and tempting Liberation, and be victorious over the Revolution.”68

  The new dogma was announced amid a flurry of apparitions of the Virgin.69 Between 1803 and 1917, there were no fewer than 119 documented sightings. Significantly, 115 took place in Europe. In Italy, apparitions of the Virgin reached an absolute high point in the 1850s. This was seen as a direct consequence of the new dogma, but it also hints at the increasing threat to the Papal States posed by Italian unification. Generally speaking, visions of the Virgin always increase in Catholic countries in times of political or economic crisis. Interestingly, of the 115 European apparitions, only eight were recognized by the Church. Of these, Mary’s appearances at La Salette in 1846 and Lourdes in 1858 achieved worldwide fame.

  A shift in religious expression during the nineteenth century created an atmosphere in which visions of the Virgin seemed more plausible than they had previously been, and were treated more sympathetically by the Church. “Pius IX’s papacy provided evidence that the Church was able to channel powerful outpourings of popular piety effectively; that it could take up and institutionalize the fears and longings released by the apparitions of the Virgin.” The pope expertly co-opted these apparitions into his struggle against the modernizers, developing a “remarkable skill in the use of modern methods of communication to further the Cult of the Virgin.”70 The people to whom the Virgin appeared were for the most part women or children from simple stock, whose visions often led to an improvement in their social standing. The fate of an apparition and the person who had seen it, however, still hung on the Church authorities, and was particularly dependent on how the responsible priest dealt with the phenomenon. Seers were often abruptly removed from the limelight and deposited in a convent, when (as at La Salette) their message from the Mother of God turned out to be highly critical of the Church and the clergy.

  The corporeality of these appearances was the subject of much controversy and discussion in the theology of the time. While theologians with modern leanings assumed that these visions played out in the heads of the visionaries, many new scholastically oriented theologians were convinced the seers really were able to perceive the Mother of God with their sense organs, and that the heavenly Lady sho
wed herself in tangible form. This idea was part of the more general concept of how the natural and supernatural worlds were related that new scholastic theologians developed during the nineteenth century.

  From real corporeal appearances of the Blessed Virgin to the materialization of letters from heaven was—at least in theory—not a huge imaginative leap. And if the supernatural was really manifesting itself in the natural world, then why shouldn’t other heavenly beings besides Mary use the written word to convey instructions from the other side?

  But all this looked rather different in practice. While a host of apparitions of the Virgin were reported in the nineteenth century, letters from the Virgin were relatively rare. Two categories of Marian letters should be distinguished here: the so-called apocryphal writings that Mary was supposed to have set down during her lifetime in Palestine; and the “heavenly letters,” which were apparently written by the Blessed Virgin after her assumption into heaven, and then fell to earth or materialized here. One famous example of the first category is Mary’s letter to the people of Messina. This was written in Greek, dated June 27 of AD 42, and supposedly sent from Jerusalem.71 Its authenticity has been debated by numerous popes.

  Heavenly letters from the Virgin have appeared on a number of occasions since the sixth century, often in the context of mystical experiences.72 These have only ever been a single letter in each case, though this has meant each has attracted a great deal of attention. A letter from Mary written in French was widely circulated in eighteenth-century France. Mary described herself as the “mère de Dieu, dame des Anges, bénigne et pure, espérance et réconfort de toute bonne créature.”73

  Apparitions of the Virgin required a human medium, a visionary—somebody to see Mary and hear her pronounce her heavenly message before conveying it to the world. A letter from heaven, by contrast, was itself the medium in which a message from the other side was conveyed in black and white. Visions and auditions were subjective, momentary experiences, but with a piece of heavenly writing there was tangible, lasting proof of the command “from above.”