Anne-Catherine Emmerich and Maria Valtorta

Anne-Catherine Emmerich.

Anne-Catherine Emmerich is the first visionary to receive the complete vision of the life of Jesus Christ. Marie d’Agréda, two centuries earlier, had only received the complete life of Mary. Before them, visions were only partial, focused on a few major events.

Anne-Catherine Emmerich therefore had a distinguished privilege which she obtained by her free participation in the Passion of the Christ.

Unfortunately, human clumsiness, although well-intentioned, caused the irreversible deterioration of the visions. Clemens Brentano (1778-1842), who collected them, wanted, through misplaced enthusiasm, to perfect perfection. He introduced his own deductions into the original visions without it being possible to differentiate them.

On January 28, 1949, once the Gospel visions were completed, Jesus gave two works to read to Maria Valtorta: the revelations of Sister Josefa Menéndez and the visions of Anne-Catherine Emmerich.

Maria Valtorta immediately recognized the divine Author in Sister Josefa’s writings, but not in the accounts of Anne-Catherine Emmerich. She was troubled by this. Jesus explained to her:

These pages (the revelations of Anne-Catherine Emmerich), for a whole set of reasons, are not a faithful reflection of the things seen. The dust of what is human has corrupted the purity of the truth. Men wanted to add to God's work and distorted it. As always. As would also have happened for the visions I gave you, if you or others had wanted to add or modify. Like you yourself, if you had wanted to embellish the account, like others thinking to make it more perfect. You and the others would have ruined everything.

Similar deterioration had already happened to Marie d’Agréda when her confessors first asked her to burn her first version, then to rewrite it.

Biography

Anne-Catherine Emmerich (Anna Katharina Emmerick) was an Augustinian nun. She was born on September 8, 1774, in the farming community of Flamschen near Coesfeld (Westphalia - Germany). She was the fifth of nine siblings. From an early age, she had to help with domestic and agricultural work. She attended school only for a short time but had a good religious education.

At the age of thirteen, she worked for three years on a large farm nearby. She learned sewing there before returning to live with her parents.

At sixteen, feeling the call to religious life, she refused marriage, but due to parental opposition and insufficient dowry, she could only enter religious life twelve years later.

She asked to be admitted to various monasteries, without success. However, the Poor Clares of Münster accepted her, provided she first learned to play the organ. Her parents then allowed her to live with the organist Söntgen's family in Coesfeld to undertake her apprenticeship; but she never had the opportunity to learn the organ, as the poverty of the family forced her to work to help them live.

In 1802, she finally entered the Augustinian monastery of Agnetenberg, near Dülmen, with her friend Klara Söntgen. She took her vows the following year, participating fervently in monastic life, always ready to perform the hardest tasks that no one else wanted to do.

From 1802 to 1811, she frequently became ill and had to endure great pain. In 1811, the Agnetenberg monastery was secularized and closed, she became a housekeeper for Abbé Lambert, a priest, confessor of the dukes of Croy, who had fled the French Revolution and lived in Dülmen. She became ill again and from the end of March 1813, never left her bed. She then called her youngest sister who, under her direction, took care of the household.

It was during this period that she received the stigmata. This fact could not remain hidden; Doctor Franz Wesener examined her and was deeply impressed, becoming her faithful friend in the years that followed.

A characteristic of her personality was the love she felt for her neighbor. She always sought to help others, even without being able to get out of bed, where she sewed clothes for poor children. Many personalities involved in the movement of Church renewal in the early 19th century sought to meet her.

The meeting with Clemens Brentano was particularly significant. From 1818, he visited her daily for five years, noting her visions which he later published. During the summer of 1823, Anne-Catherine's health declined and, with death approaching, she decided to unite her suffering with that of Jesus, offering it for the redemption of mankind. She died on February 9, 1824, and her remains rest in the crypt of the Holy Cross church in Dülmen.

Anne-Catherine's life was characterized by a deep union with Christ; the stigmata she bore were proof of it. She also felt a deep devotion to Mary. Through faith and love, she served the work of redemption, saying about this:

I have always considered service to others as the highest virtue. In my youth, I prayed to God to give me the strength to serve my neighbor and be useful. Now I know that He has answered my prayer.

Her beatification process (different from canonization) was opened in Rome in 1892 but was suspended in 1927, mainly because it was difficult to judge the authenticity of Brentano's texts. Reopened in 1973, it ended with her beatification pronounced on Sunday, October 3, 2004 by Pope John Paul II.

The stigmata

Anne-Catherine Emmerich - Gabriel von Max. 1885.

From 1799, Anne-Catherine felt the pains of the crown of thorns; blood flowed every Friday, but she managed to conceal it. In autumn 1807, the pains of the stigmata on the feet and hands began, without blood flow or external marks. On November 25, 1812, a cross formed on her chest; this cross, which doubled at Christmas, usually bled on Wednesdays. In the last days of 1812, the stigmata on the hands, feet, and side became apparent; blood flowed. No vision accompanied the stigmatization, as Anne-Catherine Emmerich would affirm under oath to ecclesiastical investigators.

Because of the indiscretion of a sister, who discovered the wounds on her hands on February 28, 1813, these phenomena became known to the town. The doctor of Dülmen, Doctor Franz Wesener (1782-1832), who visited the patient with the aim to "unmask" her, became (like, after him, Dr. Druffel and others) the object of an impressive proof of her cardiognosis.

On March 25, the vicar general Clemens Auguste von Droste-Vischering (1773-1845), future Archbishop of Cologne, came accompanied by Dr. Druffel and the seminary superior Bernard Overberg (1754-1826). Dr. Krauthausen, former doctor of the convent, tried to treat the wounds, but without success; he was also charged with close medical supervision.

The perpetual fast

Close supervision for ten days (June 10-19) confirmed blood flow from the stigmata and perpetual fasting. Since the appearance of the stigmata, indeed, appetite had disappeared, without relation to any illness; soon Anne-Catherine Emmerich consumed only water. Subsequently, a government investigation (August 5-29, 1819) was unable to prove any deception.

Doctor Franz Wesener took care of the medical treatment. His Journal, conscientiously written from March 1813 to November 1819, as well as the *Short History* he wrote in the year of Anne-Catherine's death for a medical review, constitute "a rare source for the psychological-religious and medical study of stigmata and similar phenomena."

The hierognosis

Doctor Franz Wesener was the first to report, in Anne-Catherine Emmerich, numerous cases of hierognosis. From 1817, Christian Brentano had indeed discovered, as had already noticed Abbé Lambert and Father Limberg, the extreme sensitivity of the stigmatized to the sacred, especially during her ecstasies, whether it was authenticating relics, recognizing consecrated hosts, or obeying orders from ecclesiastical authority.

Other mystical phenomena

Clemens Brentano, for his part, drew Doctor Franz Wesener's attention to the fact that the stigmatized voluntarily accepted to take upon herself illnesses and sufferings of others.

In his *Short History*, the doctor explains:

It was only in the last two years of her life that I understood her mysterious sufferings. Most of her illnesses, in fact, were the spontaneous acceptance of sufferings of her friends, who had confided their worries to her and recommended themselves to her prayers. In her ecstasies, she clearly expressed herself about this, often indicating the moment when her intervention would end.

A nun suffering from severe tuberculosis of the lungs and larynx asked Anne-Catherine Emmerich to intercede with God and was inexplicably healed. Other cases of sudden and simultaneous healing have been attested.

The visions and writings of Clemens Brentano

Clemens Brentano, the confidant of Anne-Catherine Emmerich.

Most of Anne-Catherine Emmerich’s visions have been attributed to her by Clemens Brentano. These works recount the life and passion of Christ and the life of the Virgin according to almost daily accounts from Anne-Catherine Emmerich to Brentano from 1818 to 1824.

Not only did she see the Savior's passion, but for three years, she followed Him on all His journeys throughout Palestine and outside Palestine. The nature of the soil, the rivers, the mountains, the forests, the inhabitants, their customs, all passed before her eyes in clear and distinct images. Moreover, she could peer into a much more distant past (Adam and Eve) and embrace the whole history.

The considerable work of Clemens Brentano, 16,000 pages of various notes, was published in three parts:

• In 1833, nine years after Anne-Catherine Emmerich’s death, *The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ* (Das bittere Leiden unsers Herrn Jesu Christus), preceded by a biographical sketch of the stigmatized.
• In 1852, *The Life of the Virgin Mary* (Leben der heiligen Jungfrau Maria): the printing had begun but was interrupted by Clemens Brentano’s death (1842), then reworked and continued by his brother Christian, who died in 1851, and completed by his sister-in-law, ten years after Clemens’ death.
• In 1858-1860, six years later, the three volumes of *The Life of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ* (Das Leben unsers Herrn und Heilandes Jesu Christi), published by the Redemptorist K. E. Schmöger from Brentano’s manuscripts, deeply reworked and amended.

The controversy

The difference in title from one to the other cannot be overlooked: "according to the meditations" says Clemens Brentano (''Nach den Betrachtungen der gottselingen A.K. Emmerick'') in the first work; "according to the visions" printed by K.E. Schmöger at the head of the last work (''Nach den Gesichten der gottselingen A.K. Emmerick…aufgeschrieben von Clemens Brentano'').

Unfortunately, his "meditations" or "visions" greatly elaborate on the fabric and text of the gospels; they add facts, speeches, and attitudes that seem to come from apocrypha or hagiographical legends. Brentano's part, conscious or not, seems significant. How to disentangle what belongs to the "vision" and what is the writer's own editorial work?

The vicissitudes of their publication do not simplify discernment. "A critical study of the text still remains to be done" concluded Joachim Bouflet, one of Anne-Catherine Emmerich's specialists, in his preface to the recent reissue of *The Life of the Virgin Mary*.

The objective appreciation of Anne-Catherine Emmerich’s visions is delicate. Clemens Brentano and, after him, K.E. Schmöger, Th. Wegener, J. Niessen, and others, consider them without hesitation as authentic private supernatural revelations, precisely because of the topographical precision which at the time seemed to be unknowable otherwise. On the other hand, others have noted inaccuracies; but this does not prejudge the authenticity of the visions, distinct from the way they are reported.

The study of sources has allowed the identification of numerous borrowings. Christian Brentano, Clemens’ brother, noted this in his notes in his brother’s Journal. Clemens admitted the influence of Martin de Cochem’s writings in *The Dolorous Passion*.

The work of L. Stahl (1909), H. Cardauns (1916), and W. Hümpfner have shown these influences without any possible doubt.

Position of the Catholic Church

Attribution of the visions

In 1927, the Congregation of Rites, basing itself on the work of W. Hümpfner, renounced considering Brentano's notes and editorial as writings of Anne-Catherine Emmerich and holding her responsible for them.

This is the position taken by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints during the beatification of Anne-Catherine Emmerich in October 2004 by Pope John Paul II.

Blessed Anne-Catherine Emmerich left us only three letters whose authenticity is certain. The other writings, mistakenly attributed to her, have different origins: the “visions” of the Passion of Christ were freely annotated, reworked without control by the German writer Clemens Brentano and were published in 1833 under the title ''The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ''. […] The works under discussion therefore cannot be considered as works written or dictated by Anne-Catherine Emmerich nor as faithful transcriptions of her statements and accounts, but as a literary work by Brentano who made such amplifications and manipulations that it is impossible to establish what is the true kernel attributable to the blessed.

This does not prevent Pope John Paul II from citing, in the official beatification decree, *The Dolorous Passion.*

The Church and private revelations

The Catholic Church’s position on private revelations is recalled in articles 66, 67 and 514 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).

The first two remind that they are not an alternative to the Gospel:

"Over the centuries there have been so-called 'private' revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. However, they do not belong to the deposit of faith. Their role is not to 'improve' or 'complete' the definitive Revelation of Christ, but to help live it more fully at certain periods of history."

The third highlights all their interest:

"The whole life of Christ is a mystery and […] Many things that concern human curiosity about Jesus are not found in the Gospels."

It only reiterates what John says at the end of his gospel.

Anne-Catherine Emmerich and other visionaries

The visions of Gospel scenes are not a case reserved solely for Anne-Catherine Emmerich. Great saints have benefited from them such as Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Saint Angela of Bohemia (+1243), Saint Gertrude of Helfta (1256-1302), Saint Bridget of Sweden (1302-1373), Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi (1568-1607), and others. But they only provide limited visions on various aspects of Jesus’ life.

Three visionaries received complete visions: the Venerable Marie d'Agréda (María Jesús de Ágreda; 1602-1665), Blessed Anne-Catherine Emmerich, and the Servant of God Maria Valtorta (1897-1961).

But while Marie d'Agréda’s visions concern only the life of the Virgin Mary (scarcely described in the Gospel), Anne-Catherine Emmerich’s embrace for the first time also the life of Jesus, the central subject of the Gospel. They are also the first to give preeminence to historical narration over spiritual commentary, at the beginning of a century that wanted just that. This perhaps explains the immense success of these works, but also the controversy they have generated, as indeed the works of other visionaries.

An excerpt may allow judging Anne-Catherine Emmerich’s specific contribution: it is that of Jesus’ agony on the Mount of Olives. In this excerpt, published during Clemens Brentano’s lifetime, Anne-Catherine Emmerich’s extreme sensitivity makes vivid and palpable Jesus’ anguish up to the sweat of blood and the perverse assaults of Temptation.

The House of Mary in Ephesus

Anne-Catherine Emmerich is famous for having enabled the discovery of the House of Mary in Ephesus (Panaghia-Capouli) where she would have taken refuge with the apostle John and where she would have died.

If, due to various discoveries, it seems likely that Anne-Catherine Emmerich saw the place and described it, it is not established that it is the house where Mary lived, given the presence of various contradictions, some with the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, it could be the place where she was proclaimed Theotokos (Mother of God) by the Council of Ephesus, her greatest title of glory.

Bibliography

No work was published during the visionary’s lifetime. *The Dolorous Passion* is second hand. *The Life of the Virgin Mary* is third hand. The *Visions*, in their French version, are fifth hand.

• *The Dolorous Passion of Jesus Christ* – Anne-Catherine Emmerich / Clemens Brentano – F.X. de Guibert editions, Paris – 2004 ISBN 2-86839-942-8. This reissue corresponds to the first published work, the only one during Clemens Brentano’s life. It was adapted by Lina Murr Nehmé
• *The Passion* – Anne-Catherine Emmerick – Presses de la Renaissance – 2004 – completely retranslated edition by Joachim Bouflet - ISBN 2-7509-0121-9. It corresponds to the same book.
• *The Life of the Virgin Mary* – Anne-Catherine Emmerick – Presses de la Renaissance, Paris 2006. ISBN 2-7509-0239-8. Full text. The original translation and presentation are by Joachim Bouflet and includes two additional chapters extracted from the *Visions*.
• *Visions of Anne-Catherine Emmerich – on the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the dolorous Passion, and the establishment of the Church by the apostles, coordinated into a single whole, according to the order of facts* – 3 volumes – Téqui Editions, Paris 1995 – ISBN 2-7403-0320-3. This 1864 recension is by Fr. Joseph-Alvare Duley based on Charles d'Éberling’s translation of an original text by Karl Erhard Schmöger. This latter work can be consulted online.