utter defiance all physical science, and which seems to me a direct
exertion of Almighty power, and of that alone. "Medical men," said
Signor Yoris, "have been in abundance to see her, and have studied her
case; but no one has furnished the least solution of it." He assured
me he had seen the wounds on her feet a hundred times, and that the
blood flowed upwards towards the toes, as we saw it did on the nose.
Since for the last two years she has been contracted and drawn up by
her disease the feet cannot be seen. She has refused to allow any man
to see the wound on the side, as it did not require to be medically
treated; but offered that any number of women, of her own village, or
the wives of medical men, might see it. She is a good deal
emaciated, but not so much as I have seen in other cases. Nothing can
be more simple and natural than her manner and that of her sister.
Their cottage is open at all times. Domenica may be closely seen, all
but touched and handled. Indeed around that couch one treads
instinctively with reverence; the image of the Woe surpassing all woes
is too plainly marked, for the truth of what one sees not to sink
indelibly on the mind. No eye witness, I will venture to say, will
ever receive the notion of anything like deceit.
We returned to Neumarkt on Friday, and on Saturday morning, July 31st,
walked nine miles to Caldaro, to see the other great wonder of the
Tyrol, Maria Mörl, called the Estatica. On arriving, we presented the
Bishop of Trent's letter to the dean, and in about an hour, were
conducted to the Franciscan convent; from this one of the friars
conducted us to the monastery, within the enclosure of which, but only
as a lodger, Maria Mörl has withdrawn. The main points in her history
are these. She was born in October, 1812; she lived from her earliest
years a life of great piety; about the age of eighteen, in the year
1830, she suffered violent attacks of sickness, in which medical aid
seemed to be of no service. At this time she began, after receiving
the Holy Communion, to fall into trances, which were at first of
short duration, and scarcely remarked by her family. On the Feast of
the Purification, 1832, however, she fell after communicating into an
ecstacy lasting twenty-six hours, and was only recalled by the order
of her confessor. In June, 1832, the state of ecstacy returned every
day: in August of the year 1833 it became habitual. Her ordinary and
habitual position is kneeling on her bed, with her hands joined under
the chin, her eyes wide open, and intently fixed on some object; in
which state she takes no notice of any one present, and can only be
recalled by her confessor charging her on her vow of obedience.
But I may now as well describe what we saw. In a few minutes the friar
had taken us to the garden door of the monastery; we entered a passage
where he left us for a short time, and returning, told us to open a
door which led into a bedroom; I opened another door, and found
myself, before I expected, in the presence of the most unearthly
vision I ever beheld. In a corner of a sufficiently large room, in
which the full light of day was tempered down by the blinds being
closed, Maria Mörl was on her knees on her bed. Dressed entirely in
white, her dark hair came down on both sides to her waist; her eyes
were fixed intently upwards, her hands joined in adoration and
pressing her chin. She took not the slightest notice of our entrance,
nor seemed to be aware of our presence at all; her position was
considerably thrown forward, and leaning on one side; one in which, on
a soft bed especially, it must have been very difficult, if possible,
to remain a minute. We gazed at her intently the whole time we were
allowed to remain,--about six minutes. I could see a slight trembling
of the eye, and heaving of the frame, and heard one or two throbs, but
otherwise it would have seemed a statue, rather than anything living.
Her expression was extremely beautiful and full of devotion. Long
before we were content to go, the friar intimated his impatience. I
asked him to cause her to pass out of her ecstacy, and recline on the
bed. He went near to her and spoke a few words in a very low tone;
upon which after a slight pause, she slid, in an indescribable manner,
down from her kneeling position, her hands remaining closed together,
and her eyes wide open, and her knees bent under her, how I cannot
imagine.
She is said to spring up again into her former position, as often as
her state of ecstacy comes upon her, without disjoining her hands; and
this we should have liked to see, but the friar was urgent that we
should leave, and we accordingly obeyed. The sleeves she wore round
her wrists prevented our being able to see whether the stigmata were
visible, which she bears on her hands and on her feet. The Bishop of
Trent afterwards told me we should have asked the confessor to
order her to show us the former. These were first observed in 1834.
Now, though what we saw bears out the accounts given of the Estatica
so far as it went, yet I must admit that we did not leave her with
that full satisfaction we had felt in the case of the Addolorata.
Maria Mörl's state in its very nature does not admit the bystander to
such perfect proof as that of Domenica Lazzari. Had we remained half
an hour or an hour instead of six minutes, it must still have been a
matter of faith to us how long these ecstacies continue, and how often
they recur. None but those who live daily with her can be aware of all
her case. I can only say that what we saw was very strange and very
striking, and when the Bishop of Trent informs us, as he did, a few
hours ago, that these trances continue four or five hours together, I
must entirely believe it. _He_ had seen the stigmata on her hands,
and she had rendered him, as her superior, the same obedience which
she gives to her confessor. If I may venture to draw any conclusion
from what I have seen, it is, that it appears to be a design of God,
by means of these two young persons, to impress on an age of especial
scepticism and unbelief in spiritual agency such tokens of our Lord's
Passion, as no candid observer can fail to recognise. Neither of these
cases can be brought under the ordinary laws of nature; both seem to
bear witness in a different, but perhaps equally wonderful
manner, to the glory of God as reflected from the Passion of His Son
on the members of His Body.
Ever yours,
T. W. ALLIES.
P.S. Maria Domenica Lazzari died about Easter, 1848, aged thirty-three
years.
Albergo dell' Europa, Trent,
Aug. 1. 1847.
MY DEAR ----.
I do not know whether I said anything about writing to you before I
left England, but I feel persuaded that you must be sufficiently
interested in our peregrinations to justify me in inflicting a letter
upon you. P. tells me he wrote from Paris, up to which time he has
doubtless given you full particulars, and from which point I shall
take up the chronicle of our movements. We left Paris on the 9th of
July, after having been much pleased and interested by what we had
seen there, and came by a forced march (and in hot weather a severe
one) in the malle poste to Lyons on S. Irenæus' Day, but, by an
unfortunate delay, too late to see the archbishop officiate in the
church, and according to the rite of his patron and predecessor. At
Lyons we took the Rhone, and steamed to Avignon (the scenery quite
equal in my opinion to that of the Rhine), where we stayed for
four hours, endeavouring, in spite of heat and some fatigue, to call
up visions of French popes, disconsolate Petrarch, or the devout Laura
with her green gown and well bound missal gliding towards the church
of St. Clair. At last we were hurried off to Aix, and finally to
Marseilles, where we just hit upon the moment of departure of the
Neapolitan packet, which after coasting along the beauties of the
Cornice road landed us at Genoa, where we pitched our tent to rest for
a few days. We had a letter to Padre Giordano at the Jesuits' College.
He began by a most polemical conversation with Allies on the "Tu es
Petrus," &c., but afterwards dropped the subject altogether; he was
exceedingly civil, offered us every information we needed, and gave us
access to every thing we wanted to see. In this manner I found Genoa
far more interesting than I had expected. It is a most beautiful and
most Italian city, and has, as to outward appearance, lost nothing of
its character in the days of the republic; and its institutions for
the support and relief of the poor, the sick, and the religious, gave
an additional source of interest beyond that for which I was prepared.
From Genoa we came by Pavia to Milan, where we staid five days: for a
city so celebrated and so important in ancient times it is remarkable
and much to be regretted that its ancient character is so completely
lost. Milan is now quite a modern city, with the exception of a
very few solitary buildings; the cathedral itself, wonderful as a
structure, and beautiful to the end of the chapter, is quite
indefensible in the eyes of a thorough-going Goth, and is after all
only a very successful vagary of a bastard style. The beauty of the
material, the exquisite finish of the sculpture, and fine proportions
of individual parts, with the costly and vast effect of the whole, do
however quite disarm one's critical inclinations, and the interior is
(as we saw it on Sunday last with the choir filled by the scarlet
robes of the chapter of the cardinal see, and the nave almost filled
by people of every sex and station,) one of the grandest I know, and
loses nothing by its intimate connection with S. Charles Borromeo,
who, by the way, appears to me to have been among the best of the
_reformers of the 16th century_. St. Ambrose's Church still remains,
though I should think little, with the exception of a few minor
ornaments, belonged to his time, beyond the atrium, the pulpit, and
bishop's chair. The valves of the door from which he repelled the
emperor are also here, though at the time they belonged to another
church. They show a spring in which S. Augustine's baptism is said to
have been performed, and also the garden mentioned in the
"Confessions" as having been the scene of his conversion; but for
these two I do not think they claim more than a great probability,
and entire accordance with all that is known on the subject, the
tradition of the actual spots having been lost, and only recovered two
or three centuries ago. From Milan we made an expedition to this place
in order to see the two wonderful phenomena of which Lord Shrewsbury
wrote an account some years ago,--the Estatica and Addolorata. We left
Milan on Monday, and had a fine sub-alpine drive to Desenzano on the
Lake Garda, with which we were very much pleased, and up which we
steamed to Riva; from thence to Trent, where we introduced ourselves
to the bishop as three Oxonian priests and professors, begging his
highness (he is prince-bishop) to give us letters to Caldaro, as the
Estatica is only visible on this being granted. He received us with
all possible courtesy, and instantly gave us the necessary
introduction, begging us to lay before him our impressions of the
matter on our return here: he talked much of Wiseman, Newman, and
Pusey, making the admission with regard to the latter that "scrive
come Cattolico." He told us he was himself by birth a German, and that
Englishmen were especially welcome to him as countrymen of St.
Boniface, the apostle of his native country. We left Trent for
Neumarkt, twenty miles distant, on Wednesday, and on Thursday passed
over some very fine Tyrolese mountain scenery to Cavalese, where we
had an introduction to the physician of the place, who has
always attended the Addolorata since the commencement of her malady,
(and this we had through the kindness of Manzoni's step-son, whom we
had met at his house in Milan,--it was no small satisfaction to me to
meet the author of "Promessi Sposi," &c.) and with whom we walked over
to Capriana, about twelve miles distant, where Domenica Lazzari
abides. I think her case such a supernatural portent, and, it may be,
one of such deep interest to members of the Church, that I shall fill
the other side of the sheet with such an account of her as I have room
for. Maria Domenica Lazzari is thirty-two years of age, the daughter
of a poor miller in Capriana, one of five children, a sister unmarried
with whom she lives, both parents being dead, a sister married in the
village, and two brothers, who do not bear a very high character. She
herself from childhood was very virtuous and pious, extremely
attentive to all active duties, and worked like other girls, though
always remarkable both for natural cleverness and her attention to
religion. In 1833 she was attacked by an intermittent fever, which
left her extremely weak, and after which pains were felt by her in her
hands, feet, and head; in April, 1834, she for the last time drank
some water and ate a piece of bread, since which time she has never
eaten nor drunk except in partaking of the Blessed Sacrament. In the
same year she received the stigmata, which are most evident and
apparent, and from which a large quantity of blood flows _every_
Friday without exception, and on no other day. It was in order to test
this that we contrived that our arrival should take place on a
Thursday, repeating our visit on the following day. We arrived at
Capriana about five in the evening, and went at once to her house,
which is a little peasant's cabin chiefly built of wood, in the
outskirts of the village, her only attendant being her elder sister, a
simple unsophisticated peasant girl. We found her lying in great
suffering in a bed about the length of a child's crib, a contraction
of the muscles having followed upon her illness, and reduced a
formerly tall person to the length of about three feet. At first she
was unable to speak to us, but our companion (her physician) fanned
her for some time with a large fan, which seemed to relieve her, and
in a little time she revived. While she lay in this state I examined
her very closely. The stigmata are _most_ evident on both sides of
the hands, and in a very regular circle round the forehead; these were
perfectly dry, the hands being white and clean with the exception of
the actual punctures of the stigmata, which are about the size of a
silver fourpence, the wounds of the forehead being such as a penknife
might have made; and the blood which had flowed on the previous Friday
was dry, and covered her face as low as the upper part of the nostril,
giving all the appearance of a blood-stained mask, the blood in
this case not following the inclination of her present recumbent
position, but, (as is the case also in the wounds on the feet,)
following the lines it _would take_ in a _pendent_ posture. The
costal wound is on her _left_ side. We staid in the room about
three-quarters of an hour, and then retired; we returned at five
o'clock the next morning, and found her much better, the wounds on the
forehead and hands were _all_ open, and blood exuding from all: she
talked with greater ease than she had done before. She begged us to
take her salutations to the Bishop of Trent, to beg for his blessing
upon her, and his intercession for her with the "Bishop of all;" "and
I," she said, "in my turn will pray for his highness as much as I am
able." We commended ourselves and all England to her prayers, telling
her that now there were many religions in England, but that we should
pray that all might be one: her answer was, "E una religione sola,
Cattolica, Romana, fuori di questa non si deve aver speranza" (this I
should think came from her catechism). She said all the English she
had seen had given her the same account of their country, and promised
to pray both for us and for England "quanto io posso." We saw her
confessor for a few minutes, and I wish we could have had some
conversation with him, but he was just starting to pay his brother a
visit at the bottom of the valley, and we would not detain him.
In the course of conversation with Mr. Yoris, and the natives of
Capriana and the neighbourhood, we gained many other facts connected
with her which I have not room for here; this will convey to you some
notion of this most extraordinary portent, of the supernatural
character of which any eye witness would, I am sure, do violence to
his reason and judgment by doubting, and which physicians,
philosophers and bishops have all agreed in asserting as being without
explanation according to physical laws, and which I can look at in no
other light than as a representation, vouchsafed for the edification
of the Church and warning of sinners, of the Passion of the Son of
God. The supernatural points in her case I take to be: 1. her existing
for more than thirteen years without food, during which time the
nails, hair, &c., have continued to grow; 2. the reception of the five
wounds; 3. the periodical effusion of a quantity of blood on every
return of the day of our Lord's Passion: 4. the course taken by the
blood flowing from the wounds, quite at variance with the natural law
of fluids. We have, I assure you, been very much impressed by this
case, and what to me makes it the more peculiar is, that, in former
cases in which the stigmata have been granted, they have appeared (as
in the cases of S. Francis of Assisi, S. Theresa, or S. Catherine) as
the seal of consummate sanctity, or the reward of intense
meditation on the subject of the Passion, whereas in the present
instance there is nothing to lead one to suppose either one or the
other, in any extraordinary degree. The impression conveyed to me by
my visit was, I confess, very considerable, though it was more one of
great suffering and resignation, than of any extraordinary tokens of
grace, in the object of our visit. There is, I take it, no
_necessary_ connection between the extraordinary phenomena which her
body bears and extreme sanctity, though one might expect it. Her life
has always been extremely virtuous and pious, (the country people
spoke of her as "bonissima ragazza"), and her long and intense
suffering appears to have chastened and subdued her spirit to a state
one would consider well disciplined to meet death, but nothing that I
saw led me to suppose the lofty religious abstraction, the spiritual
fervour, or super-human yearning of the soul for God, which one looks
for in the female saint. Far be it from me to pry into the Divine
intentions in this extraordinary appearance which we have witnessed,
but if He who does all things to bring back our erring race to Himself
destines her merely to be a living representation of the sufferings of
the Son of God (and to serve no higher purpose than that for which we
should erect a crucifix), men of faith will not fail to derive benefit
to their souls, amidst their thanks for a token of the divine
goodness, in contemplating this memento of our Lord's Passion, while
it may serve in some cases, we may hope, to warn the scornful that a
day will come when they will in like manner have to "look on Him whom
they pierced."
I have not yet spoken to you of the Estatica, whom we saw yesterday;
and though I cannot say that her case may not be equally interesting,
yet as its details are taken more from credit, I have the less to say
from personal investigation.
Maria Mörl is the daughter of a nobleman of Caldaro, whose fervour in
devotion has gradually grown to ecstasis, and an entire abstraction
from the world, and constant continuance in what the spiritual writers
call the "unitive" life: the ecstasis continues from four to five
hours at a time, and only ceases from bodily weakness, or at the
command of her confessor. She converses with her spiritual directors
and superiors alone, rarely eats, her only sustenance being
occasionally a morsel of bread and a few grapes. She has been in this
state for years, and lives in and upon incessant acts of devotion. She
is kept very close and retired in a Franciscan convent, and none are
allowed to see her without a letter from the bishop. We found her as
she had been described to us, wrapt in the most complete ecstasis, and
certainly, as a representation of a devotional figure, nothing could
be more striking or more beautiful; but as, from the very nature
of the case, her ecstasis must cease by communication with the visible
world, it was to us nothing more than a spectacle. I have room,
however, for no more, and must have already wearied you with this
epistola Tridentina, at the length of which I am ashamed. We have just
been to the bishop, who has been most courteous and obliging, and
given us several facts connected with the above mentioned. This place
is a most comely city; the hills of Tyrol stand about it, ὥσει
θέατρον, with snowy peaks beyond them, and the Adige comes rolling
from the mountains an "exulting and abounding river." I cannot help
thinking what delightful "constitutionals" the dons of 1545 must have
had after their hot work in the council. Excuse prolixity, and
Believe me ever yours,
JOHN H. WYNNE.
Hotel Europa, Trent, August 1. 1847.
MY DEAR ----.