The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio_The True Story of a Convent in Scandal by Hubert Wolf

Author:Hubert Wolf [Wolf, Hubert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385351928
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-12T23:00:00+00:00

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.

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