Fogazzaro and Maria Valtorta

Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911). Source: Wikipedia commons

Maria Valtorta mainly read books on spirituality or lives of saints. One book particularly marked her: The Saint by Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911). When she discovered it, Maria Valtorta was 24 years old and going through a dark period in her life during which she eagerly sought the light of faith. She was then staying with relatives in Reggio Calabria, recovering from an anarchist assassination attempt in which her back had been broken with an iron bar. Her cousin Clotilde had an extensive library from which she drew endlessly.

"I liked the others more or less. But I liked them as real novels - that is, beautiful stories read to pass the time which, once read, are over and done with. The Saint, however, left an indelible mark on my heart. And a good one. [...] It sent me sailing along the great river - indeed, the ocean - of divine mercy and comforted me to hope in the supernatural values of the expiation of repentance, which, like a second baptism, renders us once again snow-white and acceptable to God. Seeing the progress, spiritual victories, and elevation of Franco into the kingdom of the spirit gave me wings and energy to become bold in love.

Until then, on remembering my falls, I had always been a bit paralyzed. Like a child who knows he has been naughty and, though aware of being forgiven, is still intimidated by the memory of his prank. For over a year I had been hoping deeply in the Lord and in his mercy. But I still did not dare tell Him, “I love You. I consecrate myself to You. I place myself entirely at your service.” I had so pained my God...! Fogazzaro convinced me that no fault is so great that it is not amenable to redemption, that no memory of past blame should be an obstacle to our advancing in Goodness, and that we must not offend the good Lord by thinking He is so little a Father as to be more a Judge than a Savior.

I later found this holy doctrine in the writings of Blessed Claude de la Colombière and especially of Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero, which are nothing but dictations from Jesus. But for over two years the one who cast me into the great sea of Divine Mercy was Fogazzaro, with his Saint. I sometimes think that for the good that book has done to my soul and other souls wounded like mine, fearful like mine, God must have given the writer his peace."

"The Saint" and its author

Il Santo (1925)

This book, published in 1905, was a great success, but it was also put on the Index of prohibited books. It was accused of giving in to "modernism," which Pope Pius X would soon condemn in his encyclical Pacendi Dominici gregis. The period was not simple for Italian Catholics: It was the time when Italy was building its unity and identity around Rome. The Church was gradually ceasing to be a temporal power leading the Papal States to become the spiritual power of the Vatican. Antonio Fogazzaro did not share the hardening and withdrawal caused by these upheavals. On the contrary, he proclaimed the power of faith he had regained at age 31 (1873). For him, science and democracy served God's work and did not fight it. This brilliant mind, who became a senator in 1900, was called on to deliver the eulogy of Giuseppe Verdi, the great musician.

Antonio Fogazzaro, like Maria Valtorta and many others, endured the hardship of this condemnation. His last book Leila was also placed on the Index. However, it contained his epitaph which he had composed in advance:

"He loved nothing on earth more than the Church [...]. The true character of his work was not to agitate theological questions where for him the ground was not sure; it was to call the believers of every order and condition back to The Spirit of the Gospel."

How can one not recognize a premonition in the resurgence of the work of Fogazzaro and Maria Valtorta who writes to her confessor:

"I was getting ever closer to my God, still a little timidly because I did not know how far a Soul may dare on the path of love and confidence. And my Master gave me through this book a great push. Do not be scandalized, Father, if I tell you it was a book on the Index."

She therefore knew but did not concern herself at the time. However, twenty years later, she had this reflection on the Indexing of Fogazzaro’s book which applies so well to the life of Jesus that she would receive it through private revelation:

"I do not dwell on the reasons that led to its placing on the Index. That is a matter that does not concern me. The competent authorities who condemned it must have had good reasons. But I too now ask myself this question and asked God and priests, who nevertheless did not give me a satisfactory answer. But for me this book did me the greatest Good, and I met people who affirmed the same to me regarding themselves."

It is noteworthy that it is the word "reasons" she underlines, and not the word "good." Indeed, she raises the question that would later be the unanswered question of Maria Valtorta's readers and herself: why was The Gospel as Revealed to Me, which does the "greatest Good," put on the Index?

Modern and not modernist

In the novel The Saint, the main character, Benedetto, is inspired by the theses of Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855) which Fogazzaro adhered to and which therefore struck the Soul of Maria Valtorta. The site Nominis presents Blessed Rosmini as follows:

"Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855) founder of the Institute of Charity and the Sisters of Providence. Antonio Rosmini, a great figure of a priest and eminent man of culture, animated by a fervent love for God and for the Church, testified to the virtue of charity in all its dimensions and at a high level, but what made him most famous was his generous commitment to what he called 'intellectual charity', that is to say the reconciliation of reason with faith."

It also notes:

"Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855), placed on the Index by the Holy Office in 1849 for some of his writings before being rehabilitated more than 150 years later, in 2001, was beatified at Novara on November 18, 2007 and praised by Benedict XVI at the Sunday Angelus [...] Judged once by the Vatican in 1854, he was acquitted. He died in Stresa on July 1, 1855. In 1887, the Church condemned 40 propositions extracted from his works, a condemnation that was lifted in 2001, in the form of a note by the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger."

He is therefore an additional victim of the excesses that finally engulfed the Index of prohibited books, suppressed in 1966. A further sign: it was Cardinal Ratzinger who rehabilitated Antonio Rosmini’s writings in 2001 as he had done ten years earlier with Maria Valtorta’s writings. All these precursors suffered from the Church, for the Church to which they remained faithful.

If modernism, rightly condemned, used science against Revelation, these actors, like Maria Valtorta's work, used it to authenticate it.

In-depth research on God, faith, religious Doctrine.

Manifestation of the Holy Spirit after the Bible to a person or particular group. It is individual and relative.

The Gospel as Revealed to Me (Maria Valtorta).