Cuore di una donna
Cuore di una donna (Heart of a Woman) is the title of the first work written by Maria Valtorta. It was destroyed at Jesus' request, without anyone having been able to read it.
The manuscript and its destruction
Some time after the death of her father, in 1935, Marta Valtorta began to write a precursor to what would be her Autobiography. The book, large according to those who held it in their hands, was titled Cuore di una donna (Heart of a Woman).
"It was," wrote Maria Valtorta, hidden under other names and social conditions, the story of my life always so full of struggles, strewn with oppression, misunderstandings, endless pains. I hoped to be able to publish this perfect and strong work. But, as always, I did not have that joy. I was prevented from doing so by lack of money, vanished because of my long illness."[1]
In this book, she confides in her Autobiography, she must have poured out all that a "Heart of a Woman" could carry of burning love. She wanted thereby "to bring God through paths that the reader would have traveled without noticing"[2].
Giving up the publication of Cuore di una donna was a trial, one more. She notes that on earth she would have no right to any satisfaction, neither from the children she loved, nor from this book which was for her: "a creature born of my thought, that I loved like a living flesh creature"[2].
One feels, from these words, that she had put the best of herself into this book. The sacrifice was therefore all the greater when Jesus commanded her:
"Burn everything. It is only for the work (The Gospel as Revealed to Me) that you must be known as a writer."[1]
We suppose that she had to relive Abraham's choice receiving the order to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, a radical, binary choice between the world and God: one or the other. The cross was heavy for the bedridden woman who could not burn the manuscript herself, but she gave clear written instructions. It was her spiritual mother, Mother Teresa Maria, who received them along with a note from Marta Diciotti dated February 15, 1962, a few months after Maria's death. Marta confessed that she had not been able to burn the manuscript without her knowledge. Marta only handed over the large manuscript on August 15, 1978 to Emilio Pisani and Claudia Vecchiarelli, his wife. They burned it in their fireplace without reading it in the slightest, respecting Maria Valtorta's vow.