The diabolic saint, Magdalena of the Cross – part 6

Today, the name of this Magdalena of the Cross is forgotten.  Her story seems to be quite unknown.  However, the opinion of the great lawyer and writer, Maurice Garcon, for whom Magdalena is an important “historical figure”, is completely founded.

She was very well-known in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, and all of the theological and demonological treatises make precise and detailed allusions to her case.  A lot of demonstrations in these matters are illustrated by documents drawn from her trial.

***

It is from the transcript of her trial, which is in the form of two very precious manuscripts, of which there are only two copies in the world, one in London, the other in Paris, that Maitre Garcon drew up his remarkable study.

When the doubts and suspicions begin to surface – Magdalena is then fifty-seven – the Holy Inquisition immediately takes hold of the case.  The Institution is over three hundred years old at this time, and acts with variable rigour.  According to the convictions of the different Popes, or the vigour of public reaction that is engendered.

In the Spain of the XVIth Century, it is particularly active, mostly against heretics, “sorcerers” and relapsed Jews.  The Grand Inquisitor is “the red Cardinal” Ximenez, Primate of Spain, appointed by Isabella of Castile, herself, who founded the Holy Office, of sinister memory.  It is because of this, that Magdalena is transferred to the Alcazar prisons to be interrogated.

***

The fact that she made such a co-operative and detailed revelation, after fifty-two years of dissimulation, is incomprehensible if the ecclesiastic subtlety of that time is not taken into account.  The Church relies on the principle that divine works are eternal and infinite.  Those of the demon, on the other hand, are always limited in time and space.

If Magdalena confesses, it is because, in 1544, her pact with the devil has arrived at its end.  It is fear of Hell, as she says herself, which precipitates her revelations.

It is also God who inspires her first admissions, through a providential delirium, due to her illness.  It is God who assures her that she will live if she confesses.  Basically, she again succeeds in turning the subject to her advantage and appearing like someone privileged by supernatural powers.

***

This attitude is to her judges’ taste, and is also the explanation for the tribunal’s relative clemency.  Magdalena had arrived so high in her reputation for sainthood that she had been the counseller of kings, emperors, and above all, of the great Church dignitaries.

Abasing her too much, burning her at the stake, would have, at the same time, destroyed part of the prestige and authority of the whole Roman Catholic religion…

The trial’s conclusions about this are very interesting.  The whole effort of the judges tends to prove that the only real dupe in this affair… is the devil, himself.  His subterfuges have turned against him:  by perverting Magdalena, he has only reinforced the faith of the Clarissas, and she who has been submissive to him for so long, escapes his rule in the end.

What also contributes to saving Magdalena from the stake, is her extreme youth when the devil has dealings with her for the first time.  The Inquisition had several times had children, recognized guilty of sorcery or complicity, burnt at the stake.  In the present case, this circumstance seems to be considered as… attenuating.

***

So, who really was Magdalena of the Cross?  Louis Pauwels, whose work I have translated, writes:

“I believe that she was, from childhood, a gifted simulator, a sort of little Mozart of supernatural interpretation.  In any case, it is an unique example of mystical lying.

“At an epoch when a young, intelligent person of modest origin can only become famous by playing the game of religious folly or diabolic possession.  Or both at once, as in her case, finally winning on all fronts.”

***

Magdalena’s astonishing pregnancy was probably an hysterical pregnancy.  Or perhaps a young, attractive Franciscan monk?  But most likely, an hysterical pregnancy…

In fact, Louis Pauwels thinks that Magdalena was

“pregnant her whole life.  Pregnant with prodigious vanity.”

***

Sister Magdalena of the Cross, venerated by the whole of Spain, confessed, one day, that the Devil had been visiting her in her cell.

Don Juan of Cordua, Doyen of the Spanish church, was given the task of exorcising Magdalena of the Cross.

The diabolic saint, Magdalena of the Cross – part 5

Don Juan of Cordua establishes a faithful witness statement which causes consternation in town, and from there, throughout the whole of Spain.  The following day, the Provincial, in person, goes to the dying nun’s bedside.  He remains there for several hours and receives a complete confession, of which he says nothing.

But this man, young, reputed for his righteousness, his bounty and his cheerful character, does not leave the cell the way that he entered it.  All those who meet him on this day, notice that he has aged, that his face has been permanently transformed, that his back is bent as if under the weight of a frightful secret, an hallucinating nightmare which has lasted a whole lifetime;  the lifetime of the “saint”, Magdalena of the Cross, the diabolic Abbess of Cordua.

By order of Cardinal Tabera, an Inquisitor is next to present himself in the nun’s cell.  He is young and inspires her with confidence.  She reveals to him that the beautiful dark-haired young man who appeared to her at the age of five, was in fact the devil.  He had promised her celebrity and the respect of everyone, if she would consent to obey him blindly.

It is also the devil who leaves his mark by touching her two fingers which stop growing.  Who teaches her the subterfuge of the wafers, and the simulation of ecstasies.  Her cries in the night are in no way inspired by the ecstatic love that she has for the Creator, but by the demon’s caresses.

Upon hearing such consternating admissions, the Inquisitor, horrified, signs himself.  Immediately, the nun starts to insult the priest with words of superhuman triviality.  She rolls around in her cell and bites anything she can, while striking poses of unnameable impudicity, miming the copulations that she has performed with Balban for nearly fifty years.

As a practised Inquisitor, the monk has asked the most pious and worldly-wise nuns to stay in the corridor to write down the fallen nun’s words, so as to be able to subsequently serve as witnesses.  Magdalena of the Cross’ case is rapidly prepared.

In the course of the interrogations, during which Balban is dislodged by exorcisms, but almost immediately retakes possession of his prey, it is learnt with what hideous spells he has undermined Magdalena’s soul as a child.

When she becomes nubile, Balban ceases to appear to her as a beautiful young man, as he has been doing since she was five.  One night, when the young girl is waiting for him as usual, he presents himself to her in the form of a scintillating mist which condenses and takes the form of a very tall man, hairy and radiating a reddish light.  She cries out “Jesus”, but this, of course, greatly displeases Balban, who lifts her with his burning hand and drops her on the paving stones.  She is then forced to contemplate the creature who rises before her, inflicting the spectacle of his lubricity on her.

The infernal creature is not very attractive, and the possessed girl remembers in horror his wide, flat nose, his twisted horns and his toothless mouth.  He commands her to immediately become his wife, assures her that she will not lose her virginity, and that her apparent sainthood would only grow in measure with the unimaginable pleasures that she would enjoy with him.

Vanquished, Magdalena then gives in, and it is again the dark-haired, infinitely attractive young man that she receives in her.

She then admits that it is also the devil who comes to feed her in secret, and that she had really been pregnant by him.  She had been warned by him that she risked nothing if she followed his instructions.  It was to play a joke by troubling the minds of the nuns and the Corduan clergy, that he had made her pregnant with an…  enormous caterpillar which escaped from her body with a loud wind… before changing into Balban and possessing her, that famous Christmas night, with unprecedented refinements.

So, the whole of Christendom discovers with horror that she, whom it thought was God’s most-beloved, was in fact the most-beloved creature of the devil.

She is judged on 3 May 1546.  Until her arrest, and although she is sixty-one years old, she has remained uncommonly young.  But, in the last days of the case’s preparation, Balban reveals that he is leaving forever the body and soul of the possessed woman.

She has suddenly aged a lot, and it is a poor broken, rheumaticky woman who implores the court to put a rapid end to her torments and deliver her to the purifying flames.  The judges decide otherwise.  Because of her great age, her spontaneous confession, and the quality of her repentance.  A little, too, because they consider her to be a pitiful victim of the demon, and a lot, in memory of the days of her glory which they, themselves, had exalted.

The judges do decide, however, that she is to be led to the scaffold with a gag in her mouth, a Spartan cord around her neck, and a candle in her hand.  That she remain exposed there for the time of a Grand Mass, and that she should then abjure her errors.  For three months, she cannot wear the black veil, and must always walk last in all of the movements of convent life.

She abjures in tears, in front of the Cathedral that she had had raised thanks to her spells.  Taken to a Clarissa convent in Burgos, she lives long years without ever falling again into the slightest error.

Magdalena’s great pride had given her everything.  The exegetes of her time were later sure that her final humility would even have made her worthy of Paradise…

***

To be continued.

The diabolic saint, Magdalena of the Cross – part 4

Soon, the nuns’ confessions begin to show some of the sisters’ true state of sin.  Penances are measured to the exact gravity of the faults.  Does Abbess Magdalena always distinguish what is real from what is imaginary?

No matter!  For the moment, it is necessary to totally expiate sins, and to succeed, the cord whips are replaced with iron ones, garnished with nails or spur rowels.

As for the manner in which the whip should be applied, the Abbess modernises it…  Before, when the Miserere liberated the whips, the candles were extinguished.  From now on, the nuns are given all the necessary time to raise their habits in full light…  in Magdalena’s mind, the spectacle of suffering reciprocally inflicted should be an encouragement for each to make her partner suffer more.

Away with little penances consisting of begging food from each table;  a soul with little pride can submit to that easily.  It is with exacerbated physical pain that the Abbess finds the salt of true penitence.  The sisters now remain on their knees on clamps garnished with iron spikes, they sleep with belts of the same kind or remain stretched out in a doorway so that the others can walk on them.

They also imitate Christ’s Passion.  Veils fall from heads and crowns of thorns are rammed onto them instead…  A rope around their necks, the nuns walk in lugubrious and plaintive processions and, in a corridor, blows rain down on their faces from canes.  These severities in no way harm the love given by the community to their Abbess.  She is twice resoundingly re-elected.

Is it the admiration she receives from the greats of her time – Queen Isabella sends her her portrait and the Archbishop of Seville calls her in the letters that he writes to her “the happiest creature in the world” – that incites her to relax many points of the Order of the Clarissas’ Rule?

Because of her saintliness, Saint Francis, who appears to her one night, dispenses her from future Confessions.  To be able to support even greater mortifications, she authorises the sisters not to fast on Fridays, and explains that it is an insult to them to be separated from their confessor by a grille.  Many then think that the great reform of the Order that she is planning will bring new prosperity to the convent.

She says that, one night, a dead woman had come to confess to her.  She immediately wants the young nuns and novices to confess to her at night in her cell.  This innovation of course causes murmurs.  Particularly from Isabella of the Holy Trinity who still hasn’t forgotten being beaten by Magdalena in the 1533 elections, and on whom the Abbess has inflicted the severest humiliations ever since…

The sisters are gradually getting used to living with the almost daily prodigies performed by Magdalena.  Through dreams, apparitions and macerations endured with heroism…  One morning she says:

“The Holy Virgin has appeared to me and led me about the corridors last night.  She smiled at you, Sister, but she only gave a long look of scorn to you.”

These revelations strongly displease those who are the victims.  Their protestations join those of the families who, outside, see their daughters refused entrance to the convent, because their ancestors were perhaps Jewish.  Magdalena of course receives her information from the Holy Virgin, herself, but in the families, indignation and anger rumble…  The 1542 elections bring a surprising result.

Magdalena receives only a handful of votes and Isabella of the Holy Trinity is elected.  In rightful retaliation for her own humiliations, that same evening, she obliges Magdalena to make as many signs of the cross on the floor with her tongue as there are tiles in the refectory…

In the middle of this, the former Abbess falls into ecstasy.  When this happened before, the sisters carried her to her cell.  Now, she is left to macerate where she is for part of the night.  With no strength left, she finally reintegrates her cell on her own.

Closely watched, Magdalena is again suspected of receiving food clandestinely.  She is still supposed to be fasting most of the time.  For more than thirty years, now.

One day, a little iron box containing Communion wafers is brought to the Abbess.  This box, found under Magdalena’s bed, seems to prove that the miracle of spontaneous Communion, repeated many times since, has been just a trick.

In 1543, she falls gravely ill.  This seems a good occasion for the Abbess to oblige her to confess.  But when Magdalena sees her confessor, she goes into convulsions.  A doctor, who is also a wise demonologist, is sent for.  He notices that during one of her ecstasies, Magdalena’s eyes do not have all the fixity which is the distinctive mark of real ecstasies.  He stabs her with a needle and obtains no reaction.  But when he dips the needle in Holy Water, the nun exhales a low moan.

The nun’s illness seems to get worse.  Unlike what used to happen, she is worried and often asks the doctor to keep her informed on the evolution of her illness.  One December day, she hears:

“You are dying.  You will not see another Christmas.”

Greatly anguished, Magdalena twists on her bed and lets out mysterious words:

“1544!…  The forty years announced; cursed dog!  Take me to Hell?”

Then she falls back and proffers revolting blasphemies before being ripped from her bed and held in the air.  She then falls heavily several times, but apparently without hurting herself.

The Abbess has the Church Doyen, Don Juan of Cordua, called, and asks him to exorcise the Clarissa immediately.  The old man orders:

“Leave this poor woman and dare to say your name!”

The demon first lets out a terrible cry in which it is thought that the name “Balban” is recognised.  The laughing amplifies and becomes incomprehensible.  The demon glories in all the disorder that he has been able to cause over so many years in the convent, and swears that he will return…

To be continued.

The diabolic saint, Magdalena of the Cross – part 3

More submissive, more radiant, more discrete than ever, Magdalena increases the severity of her penances, walking on pieces of broken bottles and tearing her shoulders by whipping herself.  Before covering her wounds with the roughest cilice that she can find…

The Archbishop of Seville sends three expert matrons to examine Magdalena.  Having very carefully examined her, they decree that it is true that the nun is pregnant, but that it is also a fact that her virginity is unquestionable…  Prayers of thanksgiving explode in all the churches and, inside the convent, doubting gossipers are soon reduced to silence and cruel penances.

On Christmas Eve, Magdalena confirms that she will very soon give birth.  A little house at the end of the garden is prepared for her, for her guardian angel recommends that she give birth alone, so as to suffer more.  Magdalena stays locked up there for three days, during which time, the whole community remains in prayer.  The story that she tells when she comes out, is absolutely prodigious.

During Christmas night, at midnight, she gives birth to a magnificent baby, who radiates so much light, that she can see as if it were noon.  The icy air of her chamber is suddenly heated and the divine child doesn’t suffer at all from the cold.

Strangely, Magdalena’s hair begins to grow very fast and, from crow black that it was, changes to the brightest blond, its length allowing her to envelop the child in it and keep him warm in the softest of coats.

As proof of the miracle, she cuts a few curls before her hair turns back to normal.  The nuns then compete for a few of the miraculous hairs to keep in reliquaries…

The Clarissa reports that, in the morning, she finds herself alone, her beautiful little child gone, but with her breast chapped from suckling him, and all the stigmata of recent delivery still on her body.  The matrons come again to check on the reality of these facts and verify that Magdalena’s virginity has not suffered from the event.  A solemn Te Deum is then sung in the cathedral and donations flow in like never before.

A few particularly evil-minded people continue to gossip, however…  To put a definitive end to the calumnies, an exorcist monk arrives at the convent one morning, while the nun is in ecstasy.  He approaches her and plants two long needles in her body, one in a foot, the other in a hand.  The nun remains perfectly insensitive to them…  When the needles, which have remained in place for quite a while, are withdrawn, a little stream of vermilion blood flows from the wounds…

Despite this proof, the saint has to pass another test.  It is now being insinuated that novices are secretly bringing her food.  It must be remembered that Magdalena has been submitting herself to an almost absolute fast for a long time.  At this epoch, she has taken no food for more than eleven years.

The Abbess then has a vigilant guard mounted by two monks, and she even orders that the shutters of the chamber be nailed shut.  After a few days, it is discovered that Magdalena has disappeared.  They look for her everywhere, and soon find her in the completely opposite part of the garden, asleep near a fountain.  The monks assure that they have not relaxed their surveillance for an instant.  The Clarissa then reveals that it is Saint Francis who transported her to this place.  No-one is able to give any explanation for this prodigy, and it is concluded that there has been another miracle.

Magdalena now enjoys a much greater prestige than the Abbess, herself.  She is consulted for all the big decisions that need to be taken by the community.  Her advice is even sought from outside, and soon the young nun and the other Clarissas are better informed of what is happening in town than the Archbishop, himself.  As it furnishes the greatest part of the money, the convent is also consulted on the new cathedral’s appearance…  In 1523, important works begin.  Muslims and Jews are obliged to participate, while wearing a distinctive sign on their chests, so that Christians have time to step out of their path…  It is at this epoch that a decisive event will take place.

For twenty-nine years, the Clarissa’s notoriety has grown in proportion to her virtues.  For twenty-nine years, she has led an existence which, although full of sometimes astounding events, has contributed, for the essential, to the convent’s enrichment, by gifts from heaven and manna from Christians.  Always disposed to sacrifice, lively, intelligent, she literally fascinates the Spanish high clergy.  Why not then give her a place in the convent more suited to her merits?  The first, for example, that of Abbess, since the current Abbess is practically infirm…  Magdalena protests, and mentions her feeble administrative abilities.

“Let them elect Sister Isabella of the Holy Trinity, instead.”

The nuns want her so much that, on 17 February that same year, Magdalena is elected Abbess, in presence of the Order’s Superior, by forty-four votes against the seven given to Isabella of the Holy Trinity.

In the beginning, life in the convent hardly changes.  Although the paranormal gifts of the new Abbess sometimes produce difficult scenes.  At Confession, the sisters, by hypocrisy or fear of too difficult a penance, usually only accuse themselves of tiny misdemeanours.  Magdalena enters into holy furies which engender unspeakable fear in the sisters.  Ordered to admit to more blamable actions, the poor things think that the Day of the Last Judgement has arrived.  Some burst into tears, others, more fragile, roll on the floor and arch their bodies, before slowly coming back to normal.

To reprimand the scandal that they are causing, the Abbess orders them to crawl on their knees in the refectory and make the sign of the cross with their tongues on the shoes of all the assembled nuns.

To be continued.

The diabolic saint, Magdalena of the Cross – part 2

On Easter Saturday, in the year 1497, Magdalena is dying.  At midnight, she lets out a great scream, sits up on her bed, once more rips off her dressings, saying that she is healed.  She says that it is Jesus, himself, who has just appeared to her to announce her recovery…

Three months before her First Holy Communion, she stops eating for reasons of purety.  The objurgations of her poor parents make no difference:  she fasts right up until the Sunday of this great day, without losing her healthy appearance.  On the day of the ceremony, at the precise moment of consecration, she lets out another dreadful cry and prostrates herself for a long time.  When she exits the church, she explains that the Lord, himself, put a wafer in her mouth, without her needing to approach the priest.

At sixteen, Magdalena is the most saintly, but also the most beautiful, girl in Aguilar.  When she whips herself to bleeding point, her wounds are miraculously healed the next day.  Everything about her is beauty, purety and good health.  Everything, except two fingers which have not grown like the others:  at sixteen, they are no longer than the size of a normal phalange.  These two fingers are those that Christ touched one night in her childhood, during an apparition…

In 1504, Magdalena at last obtains the unique desire of her life:  to enter a Cordua convent.  There, she immediately inspires the admiration of her companions.  Always discrete about her merits, she inflicts unparalleled mortifications on herself:  carries a heavy cross all around the cloister, kisses her companions’ feet, accomplishes, while singing, the vilest tasks.  She stops eating almost completely, and lives only on the Holy Communion.

In 1509, at twenty-two, she already has such a reputation for sainthood, that it is thought necessary to let her take her vows alone.  In Cordua, this event is brilliantly prepared.  All the nobles scheme to obtain a good place in the church and, for the circumstance, the Archbishop has his throne covered by a dais of richly embroidered velvet.

At last, the day of the ceremony arrives.  Magdalena, in religion Sister Magdalena of the Cross, in memory of her heroic crucifixion, advances.  Her face hidden by a veil, but very upright, until she kneels to hear the Cardinal’s speech.  To tell the truth, the Cardinal has a bit of trouble delivering it, he is so emotional.  Rather than exhort the novice to piety, as is usual, he wants to ask for her protection.  He owes it to this young saint…

When they get to the Kyrie Eleison, something unusual happens:  a dove, which seems to descend straight fron the sky, makes everyone look up…  The bird lands right against Magdalena and seems to speak in her ear.  The pigeon only flies away at the end of the ceremony, and the good people of Cordua see it rise so high, and for so long, that the sky finally seems to close over it.

In the convent, Magdalena soon reveals extraordinary faculties.  Without ever going outside the walls, she knows everything that happens on the other side.  Particularly in the neighbouring Franciscan convent, or in the patrician homes of Cordua.  Her ecstasies are numerous and, while her companions withdraw discretely after having carried her to her cell, they hear a gentle muttering of unknown words, moans too, in which joy seems to be stronger than suffering.

The gossip around these events swells, and soon spills out of Spain.  Thanks to the donations which pour in, Magdalena’s convent is soon the most important one in town.  It is at this time that another singular faculty of the nun becomes known:  she can predict the future.

In 1515, she announces the death of King Ferdinand for the following year, and the regency of Ximenez over the kingdom of Castile.  In sign of gratitude, the Grand Inquisitor has a superb vermilion ostensory given to her, which increases the admiration of her sisters, even more.

But then, on 25 March 1518, the day of the Annunciation, she gives her Abbess some news which fills this lady with great perplexity:  the preceding night, she had conceived the child Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  The nun Magdalena, the shining light of the convent of Saint Elizabeth of the Angels, is pregnant.

Forseeing the enormous scandal that such news risks provoking, the Abbess orders Magdalena to keep absolutely quiet about this business.  She discretely watches her nun and, after a few weeks, she is obliged to bow to the evidence.  The nun’s body is visibly rounding out, and the moment is going to come when they will no longer be able to hide the work… of the Holy Spirit…  or of nature.

Soon, the convent is divided into two camps.  On one side, those who feel hidden jealousy for the nun…  Certainly, no-one doubts her sainthood, but all these miracles, all this money flowing in, tend to relegate the other sisters to the bottom of the ladder of perfection.  A lot of them must have accused themselves of jealousy to their confessor, and still have some rancour toward her.  To those, this supernatural pregnancy appears inconceivable.  Such a miracle is not announced in the Holy Scriptures.

On the other side, there are those, also numerous, who say that God works in mysterious ways, and that the Most High has been pouring all sorts of extraordinary graces on his humble servant, the Clarissa of Cordua.  Anyway, how could she have sullied her purety, she who never leaves the convent grounds?  To that, the others reply that she receives her confessor alone, and that the bars on the convent fence are so widely spaced as to allow the passage of much more cumbersome entities than the Holy Spirit.

A vow of silence is agreed upon, but impious murmurs are soon heard in Cordua.  What does the Clarissa do?  She treats these insinuations with superb indifference…

To be continued.

The diabolic saint, Magdalena of the Cross

On 15 May 1527, the whole town of Cordua, in Andalusia, is preparing to celebrate a memorable event.  Since yesterday, an unprecedented fever of decoration has taken over both the old Moorish part of the city and the new Christian suburbs.  Draperies, tapisteries and banners are spread over the facades of patrician houses.  The houses of the poor have sheets and floral bouquets hanging from their windows…

The Christian, Jewish and Muslim workers, who have been building a superb cathedral for the past year, are all on holiday, just like the other inhabitants of this active city.  The high clergy has led the great lords and all of the townspeople to the road, where they wait, their eyes turned toward Madrid.  Toward the messengers of Charles Quint, sovereign of the Netherlands, King of Spain, Emperor of Germany.

They approach, in a great cloud of dust.  Isabella, the Very Catholic Queen, is expecting a child, and Charles Quint, himself, has sent his emissaries to the Archbishop of Andalusia.

In the stone-paved streets, a procession forms while the bells of the Alminar peel loudly.  The crowd starts to sing hymns and, at its head, the cavalcade takes the direction of the convent of Saint Elizabeth of the Angels.  In this convent lives a nun whose reputation of sainthood has spread throughout the whole of Christendom.  The great Teresa of Avila, who is only twelve at the time, would never have as much prestige, in her lifetime, as Magdalena of the Cross, at this epoch…  Her piety, the miracles that she performs, go back to her childhood.  She was healing already at the age of five.

Charles Quint asked for the habit of Magdalena of the Cross to wrap around the future Philip II at his birth.

So, Charles Quint, sovereign of the Spanish apogee, wants to give this birth the best possible start.  He sends a high-born prince to solicit the Clarissa nun Magdalena’s habit so that the royal child can breathe the effluves of sainthood from birth.

If he has a son, Charles will call him Philip and he will reign under the name of Philip II.  To call divine grace upon him, he will be wrapped in this habit before being fitted with a blessed bonnet.  A bonnet which the saintly Clarissa nun, herself, will have been so kind as to bless.

It is rare that sovereigns, even at the height of their power, are able to count on the direct intercession of saints.  Above all, of a living saint, in this case so glorious, that enormous donations arrive in her name at the Cordua convent.  So much so, that the convent of Saint Elizabeth of the Angels is the richest in Spain and can even finance the construction of the cathedral.

But who is Sister Magdalena of the Cross?  When she is born, in 1487, the Moors still occupy Andalusia.  The conjugal problems of Henri IV, King of Castile, said to be impotent, have the whole of Spain laughing, and when he wants to make his bastard daughter the heir to the throne, the Castilian nobles revolt.

He then has to repudiate twice his second wife Leonora of Portugal, and it is finally Isabella, his sister, who will succeed to the throne.  She marries Ferdinand of Aragon who helps her for everything concerning war and diplomacy.  The young sovereigns have a lot to do in this domain.  Dreadful brigands devastate Castile, murdering, raping and laying waste.

Under Isabella’s presidency, the tribunals have hundreds of guilty people garrotted, and the Grand Inquisitor Ximenez has others burnt at the stake…  The brigands finally dead, the Queen turns her attention to the Moors, who are pushed out to sea in 1492.  It is in this country, devastated by war, that Magdalena grows up.  When she is five years old, she hears at church, which she already willingly attends, a celestial concert of infinite sweetness.  A beautiful young man, with thick, black hair, appears to her, wearing a jacket so brilliant that she has to close her eyes.  The word spreads throughout Aguilar, and many want to see little Magdalena.

In the midst of her family, poor artisans having miraculously escaped the wars, Magdalena remains of exemplary modesty and conduct.  Visions continue to arrive, and one day she flees the paternal home to take refuge in a nearby cave where she falls into ecstasy.  When she awakes, she realises that she has been transported to her bed by her guardian angel.

Soon, Christ in person appears to her and asks her to somewhat moderate her asceticism so as not to compromise her health.  He informs her that a great destiny awaits her and that she will need all her strength intact.  She runs to the church to thank the Lord and meets a man with a limp who asks her to lend him her hand to climb the steps.  He has hardly walked three paces when he stands erect and runs through the whole town crying out that he is healed.

Magdalena then falls into such deep ecstasy that the earth falls away from under her.  Someone goes to look at her face and sees the heavens ajar and the Holy Trinity surrounded by the Communion of Saints reflected in her eyes.  Like Jesus at the Temple, she is submitted to all sorts of interrogations to discover any subterfuge…  To completely convince the clergy, she gives speech to a mute. 

Around the age of ten, Magdalena is already a little beauty.  Her breasts are formed, her hips rounded, and she is already careful to hide her slim ankles under long black skirts.  She still finds herself too beautiful, and one day, to punish herself, she crucifies herself on the wall of her bedroom.  She starts by nailing her two feet, then her left hand.  Blood flows, and she faints from the atrocious pain.  Her flesh tears and, falling heavily onto a chest, she breaks two ribs.  She is then gravely ill, and keeps ripping off the surgeon’s dressings:  she wants to suffer terribly for expiation.

To be continued.