Up on acknowledgment off Katharina’s denunciation, Pope Pius IX bought a study, itself a difficult providers because convent at the Sant’Ambrogio had of several important Jesuit supporters among Vatican high-ups. The examining legal, however, are a Dominican friar, and you will determined to make it to the base of the fresh doings within new convent. Note: I am simplifying the new byzantine network from conflicting people and you may appeal within the latest Vatican right here, even if Wolf does an excellent work regarding laying them out. Additionally the newest densely inspired bureaucracy of one’s Church’s judge program, including the Inquisition, which would eventually laws towards instance on pope’s acceptance.

Precisely what the Dominican do discover is actually a secret, cultlike veneration regarding Maria Agnese Firrao, presenting stories you to definitely she “caught up her language under a heavy brick for 5 in order to six minutes” to cease blasphemy and used “an iron mask with which has 54 directed fingernails,” and other tales out-of self-mortification. Maria Agnese was also reputed to have did miraculous healings, and also the siblings kept including relics just like the scourges she put for her human anatomy, as well as other smaller grisly assets, from the trust that they employed sacred energies. Basically, they managed this new founder of their acquisition as good saint, even if decades before this new Inquisition had invalidated Maria Agnese’s claims to that particular position, sent her on the confinement an additional convent and you can bought her to help you do not have then experience of the woman “daughters.”

That it quasi-heretical conclusion on the part of the fresh new sisters try what most piqued the fresh new Inquisition, whose part is mainly in order to smell out and you may punish abuses away from Catholic philosophy. The night prior to novices would be to profess its vows, they took part in rites that included dancing doing within nightshirts and you can paying the evening between the sheets with the novice mistress, “usually inside a tough accept.”

All of this, Maria Luisa claimed, supported since “purification” (her preferred needs seemed to be old ladies with some sexual sense, you to apparently left him or her tainted) along with already been established by the Maria Agnese, the order’s creator. Invoking the new biblical Elijah, she said that “Goodness gave the brand new creator brand new present of being capable give the lady advantage, their spirit, her purity, of the installing by herself over a great nun. And also as she performed this paltalk search she filled this lady with yet another alcoholic beverages.” The newest detective also learned that the fresh beginner mistress enjoys secretly enrolled a novice having breathtaking handwriting to pencil emails basically about Virgin Mary so you’re able to Padre Peters. During these, the new Holy Mom urged Maria Luisa’s confessor, to engage in an erotic “blessing” towards the inexperienced domme who would invest their to your power so you’re able to bless the girl novices. The guy complied.

Even with the lady decades and simple sources, the fresh new newbie mistress controlled new convent for the education you to definitely she could services as a sexual predator and you can influence actually her very own confessor to your serves you to definitely violated their vows

Just like the Wolf explains, the thing that was going on into the Sant’Ambrogio are both old-fashioned and you can insurrectionary. The fresh new scandal showed up to your the termination of just what spiritual historians recommend in order to while the “this new Marian Century,” when commitment with the Virgin Mary, and you may apparitions of the Holy Mother so you’re able to believers, boomed. Using their visions and you may healings, the brand new nuns off Sant’Ambrogio invoked the female mystics of Center Decades, instance Saint Catherine from Siena, whoever popular breakdown off the lady pretty happy visionary wedding so you can Christ possess heady, sensual overtones. Their men followers within the Chapel steps sought a return to tradition and you can secret up against an effective vein off liberal Catholicism one desired to modernize this new Church from the getting back together it that have technology, secular governments and you can Protestants.

But authorities was basically along with dismayed to discover that Maria Luisa had obligated some novices on the revealing the lady sleep along with involved with different forms from intimate closeness with these people

At the same time, females eg Maria Luisa can use the iconography regarding women mysticism and you can sainthood to accrue official and private power typically refused to Catholic people. Maria Luisa carry out eventually testify you to she simply did these materials because she thought them to end up being the obligations off a frontrunner from the girl buy since defined from the Maria Agnese. Although not, that it lady changed the girl facts too many times and you will advised so of several lays you will never be aware of the details of these. One thing is certain: bitious and you will desired to receive a beneficial convent of her own. At first she excitedly asked Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen once the an abundant and you may better-connected prospective suggest. Afterwards, she attempted to destroy this lady up until the princess revealed what was extremely taking place behind the fresh new convent’s structure.