Saint Walpurga, Writer and Missionary

Saint Walpurga of Heidenheim (died 25 February 777/9)

Born in Devon, England, probably about the year 710, Walpurga was the daughter of Richard of Wessex, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain under King Ine, and a noblewoman named Wuna, who seems to have died about the time of Walpurga's birth. (At some point, both of Walpurga's parents are recognized as saints--Saint Wuna's feast day is 7 February.)

A sixteenth-century portrait
of St. Walpurga
by the Master of Messkirch

In 720, Richard wasconvinced by his two sons--Walpurga's brothers (both of whom also become saints)--to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While preparing for this journey, Richard of Wessex decided to leave his daughter, then about eleven years old, in the care of the abbess of Wimbourne Abbey. According to some traditions, however, it is the girl herself who asks to be left in the abbey rather than with relatives.

Wimbourne was a double monastery, housing both monks and nuns who followed the Rule of St. Benedict under the direction of an abbess.* Walpurga spent twenty-six years at Wimbourne, where she received an excellent education. The nuns of Wimbourne were trained in Latin and at least some Greek, and they put their language study to use with both sacred texts and the work of the early Church Fathers. The abbey also specialized in producing manuscripts and fine needlework.

Walpurga's father never got to the Holy Land. He reached Rome, then traveled with his sons to Lucca, where he died. (Willibald, the older of Walpurga's brothers, completed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then went on to Byzantium, eventually returning to Italy to live as a monk in Monte Cassino. Winebald, the younger of the two brothers, stayed in Rome and entered a monastery).

In 737, Wuna's brother Winfrid (later St. Boniface) recruited both of his nephews to accompany him on a mission to Germany. His call for evangelizing eventually included women--evidently Boniface was the first to include women as missionaries. In 748, a group of nuns from Wimbourne, Walpurga among them, traveled to the Franks to undertake their missionary work.

As part of their successful mission, Willibald and Winebald founded the double monastery of Heidenheim in 752, with Winebald serving as abbot. Walpurga was established as the abbess, governing the nuns. After Winebald's death in 761, Abbess Walpurga became the head of the double monastery.

On 25 February 777 or 779 (accounts vary), Walpurga died and was buried at the monastery founded by her brothers, where she had lived for some twenty-five years. About a hundred years after her death, her remains were translated--that is, they were removed to the cathedral of Eichstatt (Bavaria), with the aim of interring her remains with those of her brother, Wllibald, who had been consecrated as bishop there. According to tradition, the beasts pulling the cart with Walpurga's body stopped at a small church used by the canonesses at Eichstatt and refused to move further--so her relics were interred there. Later, a church was built in her honor.

Walpurgis Night (30 April) celebrates her feast day, 1 May, which commemorates the arrival of her relics in Eichstatt and Walpurga's canonization.

An extended account of St. Walburga's life is Emmanuel Luckman's "St. Walburga: Medieval Nun, Free Woman," in Miriam Schmitt and Linda Kulzer's Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings.

*In this, Wimbourne Abbey might be compared to Hilda's Whitby.

Blessed Osanna of Mantua

Osanna d'Andreasi, Mystic and Spiritual Adviser

(born 17 January 1449)

Born in Carbonara di Po, near Mantua, on 17 January 1449, Osanna d'Andreasi was the daughter of Niccolò Andreasi and his wife, Agnese Gonzaga. Her family belonged to the nobility, but whether Agnese Gonzaga was related to the Gonzaga family, rulers of Mantua from the mid-fourteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, is not clear.

Francesco Bonsignore,
Veneration of the Beata Osanna Andreasi,
1519 

In writing about the Blessed Osanna of Mantua, Benedict Ashley, O.P. notes the influence of Catherine of Siena upon the fifteenth-century mystic: 

St. Catherine of Siena provided Dominicans, especially Italians, with a new model of spirituality which was not only mystical but political, directly concerned with the reform of Church and State. A century after her death this model was strikingly exemplified by Dominican men . . . but comparatively little attention has been given to Dominican women . . . who just as faithfully followed in Catherine’s footsteps. One of these on whom we are best informed is Osanna D’Andreasi.

Osanna's life and faith are documented by two contemporaries who knew her and who wrote about her shortly after her death: the first of these biographies, Beatae Osannae Mantuanae de tertio habitu ord. Fratrum praedicatorum vita, was written in 1505 by the Dominican scholar Sylvester of Ferrara.

Two years later, another life, Libretto de la vita et transit de la b . Or . from Mantua, was completed by her confidante, Father Girolamo (Jerome) de Monte Oliveto, a Benedictine monk whom Osanna would come to consider her "spiritual son." His biography is comprised of extended accounts of Osanna's spiritual experiences, relayed to him through conversation. He also appended twenty-four letters by Osanna to his account of her life. 

According to Jerome, Osanna's mystical experiences began when she was quite young, although she kept them to herself. At the age of five or six, while walking along the Po River, she had her first vision, of an angel who raised her to heaven, telling her, “To enter Heaven it is necessary to love God very much: See how all created things sing His glory and proclaim it to men.” 

In the same spot, she later experienced a vision of Jesus as a child wearing a crown of thorns, and later still met him again, this time in the family garden. Called to the religious life, the girl was said to have begged her father to let her study theology--when denied, she received instruction from the Virgin Mary herself. And since her father didn't think that, as a girl, she needed to learn to read and write, another legend says that--like Catherine of Siena--she miraculously recognized the words "Jesus" and "Mary" one day, and from that point on, she could read.

Osanna d'Andeasi's desire for a religious life did not conform to her family's plans for her. When she was fourteen years old, she discovered that her father was arranging a marriage for her; although she did not defy him by joining the Dominicans, she did assume the the habit of a Dominican tertiary and told her father that she had vowed to wear it until she was allowed to enter the religious life.*

When she was eighteen, she experienced yet another vision in which she experienced a mystical marriage to Jesus. For the following twelve years, while the Italian city-states suffered invasion and war, she prayed to be able to share in the sufferings of Jesus. At the same time, she assumed the burden of caring for her many brothers and sisters after her parents' deaths. 

In addition to experiencing visions, Osanna Andreasi received the stigmata, first on her head, then her side, then her feet. As Ashley describes the particular of these manifestations in Osanna's case, "the stigmata do not seem to have bled, but simply to have appeared as red, intensely painful swellings. She kept them hidden from everyone except her servants, but at times the pain in her feet was so great that she was unable to walk."

Ippolito Andreasi,
The Assumption with the Blessed Osanna Andreasi,
c. 1575

Her piety, her acts of charity, and her spiritual experiences brought her to the attention not only of the people, who began to look to her as a spiritual adviser, but also to the ruling Gonzaga family, in particular to Isabella d'Este, marchesa of Mantua, for whom Osanna Andreasi became a spiritual adviser.

In 1501, after waiting thirty-seven years, Osanna  was finally able to take her vows as a Dominican tertiary. She died four years later, on 18 June 1505. In 1515, at the request of Isabella d'Este, Pope Leo X established a feast day for Osanna in Mantua. She was beatified by Innocent XII in 1694. 

Today Blessed Osanna of Mantua's remains are enshrined in Mantua, in the Cattedrale di San Pietro apostolo. There is also a museum dedicated to her in Mantua--you can see a gallery of images of the House of the Blessed Osanna by clicking here.

In addition to Ashley's "Blessed Osanna d’Andreasi and Other Renaissance Italian Dominican Women Mystics," cited above, there is an account of Blessed Osanna of Mantua in Short Lives of the Dominican Saints" (the author of which is, no kidding, given as "A Sister of the Congregation of St. Catharine of Siena). 

You may also enjoy Sally Anne Hickson's essay, "Popular Devotion: Isabella d'Este, Blessed Osanna and Depictions of Female Sanctity in Mantua," in her Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua: Matrons, Mystics and Monasteries 

*Like the Franciscans, the Dominicans also had a "third order": those who, for a variety of reasons, could not take formal vows to join a religious order, could live as a lay person, outside the community according to the ways of life of those who live inside. 

Benedetta Carlini and Same-Sex Desire in an Italian Convent

Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God (first investigation begins, 27 May 1619)

Benedetta Carlini was born in 1590 on the night of St. Sebastian (20 January) in Vellano, a small Appenine village not far from Pescia--her father was a prosperous farmer who grew mulberries and harvested silkworm cocoons. 

At the time of her birth, it seems, her father pledged her to a life in a convent--as Carlini was later to tell the story, her mother, Midea, had a difficult labor, and the midwife told her father, Giuliano, that both mother and child would die.

Detail of two nuns embracing,
Paradise, by Giovanni di Paolo,
1445

Falling on his knees--at least as Carlini recounts the event of her birth--Giuliani prayed to God, asking him to spare the lives of his wife and unborn child. Shortly after he offered this prayer, the midwife returned, announcing the child's safe delivery.

Giuliano seems to have regarded this outcome as God's answer to his prayers. In return, he named the baby Benedetta--"blessed"--and promised that he would dedicate her to a life of God. In other words, he promised that his newborn daughter would become a nun.

Such a decision--dedicating a child to a religious life--was not uncommon for a devout family. Nor was it uncommon for such a decision to be made for financial reasons. The dowry, required for entrance into a convent, was much less than a dowry required for marriage--sometimes only a quarter, in fact. For many families, placing a daughter in a convent was as much a financial as a religious decision. (I've written about another such young woman, Arcangela Tarabotti, who was committed to a life in a convent without her assent.)

It seems that Benedetta Carlini's childhood was a happy one--and she remembers Giuliano and Midea Carlini as good parents, her home a comfortable one, with Giuliano himself educating his daughter. According to Benedetta, she knew her prayers and the litany of the saints by the time she was five, and by age six she learned to read and could begin to study the basics of Christian doctrine.  

In 1600, when she was nine, Benedetta Carlini was placed in a newly established Theatine convent in Pescia, il convento della Madre di Dio, the Convent of the Mother of God. The order of Theatines nuns, or the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, had been founded in 1583 by the Venerable Ursula Benincasa, a nun of the Order of St. Claire who had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary and of Saint Catherine of Sienna. 

(The Theatine order, the Congregation of Clerics Regular of the Divine Providence, had been founded in the early sixteenth century, specifically with the goal of combating the "errors" of Martin Luther but also to encourage the practice of virtue.)   

Although the convent in Pescia was not as prestigious (or expensive) as other convents near by, the Theatines were an order devoted to the the reforming of lax morals. It was also, at the time of Carlini's entry in 1599, not yet fully established—this effort, underway at the time of Carlini's entrance, might also have made her admission possible. 

Benedetta Carlini began her religious life in the convent-in-the-making quietly enough, though not entirely without incident. She claims that, on the night of her arrival, she prayed to the convent's statue of the Madonna--and that the Madonna nodded to her. 

Then, not long after, Carlini says that when she was at prayer, the Madonna "leaned over the small altar." The girl thought that the statue of the Madonna was intending to kiss her--but she was so frightened that she knocked over the statue and screamed. This resulted in nothing further--except that the "Mother Superior . . . ran over and set her straight"--that is, she returned the statue to its original place.

But, in 1613, when Carlini was twenty-three, she began to experience religious visions that she reported to the Mother Superior and to her confessor. She saw gardens, then she saw herself surrounded by animals, then she was given a vision of the "Mount of Perfection." 

In raising the topic of her experiences with the abbess of her convent, Carlini did not at first assume they were divine--both women also considered diabolical sources. Advised to fight against her visions, Carlini resisted them for two years.

In 1615, she began to suffer terrible illnesses, in particular at night, including paralysis. Physicians were unable to diagnose the source of her maladies. She continued to suffer--quietly--for another two years.  

In 1617 her visions, which she had tried so hard to suppress, returned--now, rather than visions of Jesus and the Madonna, she experienced visions of young men who pursued her, beating her with all sorts of weapons--chains, swords, and sticks. The beautiful leader of these young men also tried to seduce her, offering her a ring to seal their bond. 

So great was her torment that the convent's superiors assigned another young nun, Bartolomea Crivelli, as a companion--she was to share Carlini's cell, keep watch over her, and assist her. During her visions, Carlini spoke in the voice of angels and of Jesus, and she also seems to have appeared to observers as a beautiful young man. (Interestingly, the founder of the order of Theatine nuns, Ursula Benincasa, also had visions and ecstasies, for which she was called to Rome and examined by the pope.) 

All the while, Carlini also was an excellent manager of the convent's resources, in particular of their silk works. The convent was near completing its new building, and it was hoping that its long-sought status as a regular convent was soon to be granted. And then, on the second Friday of Lent, 1618, in the middle of the night, Carlini claimed that Jesus appeared to her one and spoke to her, an event that resulted in the stigmata appearing on her hands feet and side. Her companion, Crivelli, confirmed this miraculous event. 

Benedetta Carlini's successful management of the convent, along with the gift of stigmata, seems to have led to her election as abbess in 1619, at some point between February and May, when she was thirty years old.

And then things got crazy. Carlini, now abbess, began delivering sermons within the convent--women did not normally preach, even heads of convents--and while she preached, the listening nuns scourged themselves with whips. Her confessor was present, and he seemed to have had no objections to Carlini's sermons.

There were more visions and visitations, including one from Catherine of Siena, another from a beautiful guardian angel named Splenditello, and more visits from Jesus. One night he told Carlini to rip the heart out of her body--which Crivelli confirmed, saying she had felt the empty space in Carlini's chest. Jesus returned three days later and put his own heart into the abbess's body. 

On 20 May 1619 she had a vision that would lead to her downfall. On that night, she claimed that Jesus appeared to her and said he wanted to marry her. He provided her with all the details of the ceremony, the decorations, the attendant celebrations, and the guests to be invited. Again her confessor was aware of the vision and of her plans.

At the wedding, as the other nuns watched and listened, Carlini claimed that Jesus had a golden wedding ring for her and that, as he put it on her finger, the Virgin Mary looked on. Then, speaking through Carlini, Jesus gave a sermon--in it, he expounded on Carlini's extraordinary qualities.

Image of Theatine nun,
1714

''I would like that this, my bride, be empress of all the nuns,'' Jesus said. He also commanded that the Grand Duke of Tuscany should be informed about her greatness. And, he added, anyone who did not obey, believe and cherish Carlini would be punished. 

But observers of this ceremony--especially those from the town--grew concerned, particularly at Jesus's warning, delivered through his bride, Carlini: "And he who does not believe in my bride shall not be saved." 

The provost of Pescia, Stefano Cecchi, the leading ecclesiastical officer of the city, ordered all who had witnessed the ceremony not to speak of it. And Carlini was removed as abbess of the convent. 

The investigation of Benedetta Carlini began on 27 May 1619--or, at least, that's when the record of the testimony begins. 

Carlini was first subjected to a physical examination--in particular the sites of the stigmata were examined, and testimony was taken from Carlini about the "how those wounds came to be on her body." The stigmata were examined again on 7 June, and then they seemed to be healed. A week later, on 14 June, the wounds on her hand, feet, side, and head seemed fresh and were again bleeding.  

But, by July, the investigation was drawn to an uneasy end, and Benedetta Carlini was restored as abbess. For another two years, she managed the convent and continued with her mystical visions. But then she went too far--on Annunciation Day ( 25 March) 1621, Carlini died. 

The frightened nuns called the confessor, who immediately arrived. He commanded Carlini to rise--which she did. And Carlini, "restored to life," began recounting all that she had seen while she was dead, including her vision of Paradise. Once again Stefano Cecchi was summoned.

This time, he did not conduct the examination himself. Instead, two papal investigators were summoned, and they began their examination with a quick summary of the premises with which they opened their report from 1623: "all novelty is dangerous and all unusual events are suspect." They believed Carlini was "deluded by the Devil."

They began to reinvestigate Carlini's claims to have received the stigmata and also her claims, not investigated earlier, about her extraordinary fasting. 

Two nuns were examined who reported seeing Carlini poke herself with a needle in order to produce her bleeding stigmata. There were also questions about the gold wedding ring Jesus had given her during their marriage ceremony. It was at first invisible to everyone except Carlini, but it miraculously appeared on her finger during the examinations. This "proof" was undercut, however, when strange yellow marks were also noted--suggesting that the "gold" ring was some kind of fake.  

This was followed up by another remarkable revelation that would be funny if it weren't so tragic. One of the great manifestations of Carlini's holiness was her fasting, and in particular her refusal to eat meat--but she was reported to have been seen eating--in secret--salami!

The final devastating revelations were made by Carlini's companion, Bartolomea Crivelli, who revealed to examiners that at night Carlini claimed to be transformed into the beautiful angel Splenditello. As Splenditello, Carlini made passionate and frequent love to Crivelli. 

During the day, while teaching Crivelli to read and write, Carlini, as Splenditello, kissed Crivelli, touched her breasts and called her his beloved. In her testimony, Crivelli said that she was the unwilling object of these erotic attentions.  

On 5 November 1623, the papal examiners issued their "final report." They noted that all traces of Carlini's stigmata had disappeared--along with them "her angels, visions, apparitions, revelations, and ecstasies." When asked about them, Carlini said that they had all gone. She also said everything she had believed and done had been because she was under the influence of the devil. The visions and her actions were not the result of her consent or of her own will--"they were done while she was out of her senses by the work of the devil." 

Things did not turn out as badly as they might have, however. Bartolomea Crivelli seems to have been unpunished for her role in events, and in particular for her sexual relationship with Carlini, perhaps because she claims to have been an unwilling participant.

But Benedetto Carlini survived what might have been a disastrous end. She disavowed all her visions.  According to the investigators, she then began living the life of an "obedient nun" under a new abbess, presumably still at the convent in Pescia. 

But, something does seem to have changed--decades later, on 7 August 1661, an unnamed nun wrote "Benedetta Carlini died at age 71 of a fever and cold pains after eighteen days of illness. She died in penitence, having spent thirty-five years in prison." While it is not clear, this entry suggests that, some time after the documentation of her life ends, Benedetta Carlini came to be more strictly held, and thus a "prisoner." 

In writing extensively about Benedetta Carlini--in fact, her archival work brought Carlini's life out of its hidden past--Judith C. Brown speculates that Carlini must have gotten herself into some kind of trouble again some three years after her investigators reported her living as an obedient nun under a new abbess--something that resulted in her imprisonment. But no further details survive.

Brown's Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, details her discovery of the documents relating the life of Benedetta Carlini.

Her subtitle--her identification of Carlini as lesbian--resulted in some controversy, not so much for her claims of same-sex relationships between two women as her identification of the modern concept of lesbian identity with a seventeenth-century woman's experiences. But the book remains a terrific read, and I recommend it highly.  

Milburgha of Wenlock, Patron Saint of Birds

Milburgha of Wenlock (died 23 February 715)

Milburgha (or Mildburh) of Wenlock was the daughter of Merwald (or Merewalh), a minor king in Mercia, one of the seven kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon Britain, and of his wife, "Domina Aebbe" (Lady Aebbe)--according to legend, Queen Aebbe was the granddaughter of Eadbald, king of Kent from 616 to 640. 

An imagined portrait of Milburgha of Wenlock,
painted in the seventeenth century by
Juan de Roelas

Milburga's mother was one of three sisters who became saints--she is most frequently referred to as St. Ermenburga, although this seems to be the name of her sister . . .

The three sisters--Milburga's mother and two aunts--are St. Ermenburga (more properly St. Aebbe), perhaps the founder of a double Benedictine abbey in Thanet;* St. Ermengitha, who served as a nun in the abbey at Thanet; and St. Etheldreda of Kent (there's another, earlier and much better known St. Etheldreda as well, but she's not this one).

As for Milburga, she was also one of three sisters, the eldest of the daughters born to Merwald and Aebbe--like her mother and her two sisters, Milburga and her two sisters were dedicated to the religious life, and all three became saints. 

As her story goes, Milburgha was much sought after as a wife by a neighboring prince--and he refused to take no for an answer. Resorting to violence, he attempted to take the young woman by force, but she fled from him and his invading army. She managed to cross a river, and her pursuer was foiled when the river became impassable. 

After her fortunate escape, she seems to have been in France, where she was educated at Chelles Abbey, a Benedictine double monastery near Paris. 

According to at least one account of Milburgha's life, she returned to England and founded the nunnery of Wenlock (now Much Wenlock), with the assistance of endowments provided by her uncle, the king of Mercia, and by her father. But other sources offer different information--that Milburgha did become a nun at Wenlock, but that the double monastery had been founded by her father and Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury and was, at the time of her entry, headed by a French abbess, Liobinde of Chelles. In this account, Milburgha succeeded her predecessor as head of the monastery. 

The convent flourished under Milburgha, not least because of her remarkable power over birds--she could keep them from damaging crops. Noted for her humility, Milburgha was also credited with restoring sight to the blind and with the gift of healing. 

Milburgha died on 23 February 715. Milburgha's Wenlock was destroyed by the Danes, but the site was rebuilt in the twelfth century by Cluniac monks, who also believed that they had located Milburgha's bones--they established their rebuilt monastery as a pilgrimage site.

The ruins of Wenlock are of the later Cluniac Abbey, built on the site
of Milburgha's Wenlock, destroyed by the Danes. 

As for Milburgha's sisters: Saint Mildred (or Mildred) became abbess of Thanet, her mother's abbey, while Saint Mildgith seems to have first entered the religious life in a monastery in Kent before succeeding Mildred as abbess of Thanet.

*According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, a double monastery is a religious institution

comprising communities of both men and women, dwelling in contiguous establishments, united under the rule of one superior, and using one church in common for their liturgical offices. The reason for such an arrangement was that the spiritual needs of the nuns might be attended to by the priests of the male community, who were associated with them more closely than would have been possible in the case of entirely separate and independent monasteries.

This form of monastic foundation was frequently seen in Anglo-Saxon England, where the institutions of monks and nuns were governed by abbesses, such as the renowned Hilda of Whitby. 

Blessed Margareta Ebner, Nun and Visionary

Margareta Ebner (died 20 June 1351)

Born in southeastern Germany (Swabia) in 1291, Margareta Ebner was a member of an aristocratic family and well-educated. Without any of the opposition or controversy that many young women experienced before entering into a religious life, Ebner joined the Dominican nuns at the convent of Maria Medingen, near the Bavarian town of Dillingen, probably around the year 1305. She spent the rest of her life there. 

The tomb of Margareta Ebner,
convent of Maria Medingen

From 1312, she suffered a series of traumatic, debilitating illnesses--at times she experienced bouts of uncontrollable laughter and tears that lasted for days at a time, while at other times she was bedridden, occasionally for months at a time. 

However, as Bernard McGinn notes, her illnesses became "the occasion, even the stimulus, for her conversion to a deeper mystical life of devotion."

In 1315, her "mystical life" began; she would later record these experiences in her Revelations, "a kind of mystical journal, or autohagiographical narrative." She was encouraged by the priest Henry of Nördlingen, a spiritual adviser with whom she exchanged letters (fifty-six of his letters to her survive; unfortunately, only one of hers, to him, survives). 

Ebner began the process of composing her Revelations in 1344 and completed her task in 1348. She died on 20 June 1351. 

Interestingly, Nördlingen not only provided the impetus for Ebner's recording of her visionary experiences, he also translated the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead into Middle High German and sent a copy to Ebner. (The original seems to have been written in Mechthild's Middle Low German; it had then been translated into Latin.) 

Henry of Nördlingen also correspond with, visited, and inspired the Dominican nun, mystic, and writer Christina Ebner (1277-1356)--to whom he also gave a copy of Mechthild's The Flowing Light of the Godhead. With his encouragement, Christina Ebner began a correspondence with Margareta Ebner--despite sharing a name, their religious order, and their mystical experiences, the two are not related.

Margareta Ebner was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 24 February 1979.

For an account of Ebner's visionary experiences, I recommend Bernard McGinn's The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism--1200-1350, the third volume of his monumental history of western Christian mysticism. Her Revelations is also available in a Classics of Western Spirituality edition, Margaret Ebner: Major Works.