The Gospel as Revealed to Me

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The Gospel as Revealed to Me
Cover page of the 2nd edition in French (2016) of "l'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé" Cover page of the 2nd edition in French (2016)
Details of the work
Author Maria Valtorta
Rédaction January 16, 1944 to April 28, 1947
Visions 652
Handwritten pages Environ 9000
Tomes 10
Pages Plus de 5300
Diffusion
Translations 30 languages, including Italian
Authorized resellers List by country
Lire l'œuvre en ligne maria-valtorta.org
valtorta.fr
First edition in Italian
Title Il poema dell'Uomo-Dio
Parution 1956-1959
Éditeur Tipografia editrice M. Pisani
Traduction française 1re édition
Titre L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé
Traducteur Félix Sauvage
Parution 1979
Éditeur Centro editoriale valtortiano
Traduction française 2e édition
Traducteur Yves d'Horrer
Parution december 2016 to january 2017
Editor Centro editoriale valtortiano

The Gospel as Revealed to Me is a literary œuvre considered inspired[1] and is the principal writing of the mystic Maria Valtorta. It consists of dictations and visions received over a period of about three years, which were faithfully transcribed by hand on simple school notebooks of the time, between 1944 and 1947.

These "visions" and "dictations" concern scenes from the life of Jesus 2,000 years ago. They were first published in 1956 under the title Le Poème de l'Homme-Dieu and, from 1993, under the title L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé.

Primitively, this life of Jesus circulated in the form of typewritten copies by le Père Migliorini his confessor: an enormous task. It was in this form that, in 1947, Pius XII became personally acquainted with it. He encouraged its publication in the following terms:
"Publish the work as it is. There is no need to give an opinion as to its origin, whether extraordinary or not. Those who read will understand."

This life of Jesus was published in 1956 in a poor four-volume edition and anonymously, which was Maria Valtorta's wish and Jesus's request: it was to remain anonymous until his death.

This narrative caused controversy and was for a time placed on the Index of Prohibited Books for lack of imprimatur, but only after the death of the Sovereign Pontiff[2].

Amplitude and ordering of contents

Manuscript notebook (archives of the Fondazione Erede di Maria Valtorta)

The totality of Maria Valtorta's transcriptions fits into 122 school notebooks, for a total of 13,193 manuscript pages.

Of these, some 9,000 handwritten pages make up L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé. In Italian, it runs to 10,800,000 characters (including spaces), making it the longest biography of Jesus in history. Maria Valtorta wrote it between January 16, 1944 (the vision of the wedding feast at Cana) and April 28, 1947 (at a cumulative daily rate of 3 years and 3 months, exactly the length of Jesus' public life), for a total working time estimated at some 6,000 hours. She transcribed rapidly, to be as faithful as possible to the dialogues she heard. At times, she could write for 18 hours at a time, with constant attention to detail, with no discernible loss of quality in either form or content. This fact alone constitutes a productive achievement unprecedented in the history of literature.

Of all the visions received by Maria Valtorta, 166 (26% of the content) were received in non-chronological order. They were then put in order by the editor, Jesus himself giving instructions for classification during dictations[3]. Jesus said to her on this subject:

"Necessities of comfort and instruction for you, my beloved, and for others, have compelled me to follow a special order in giving the visions and the dictations relating to them. But in due course, I'll let you know how to divide up the episodes of the three years of public life. The order of the Gospels is good, but not perfect chronologically speaking. A careful observer will notice this. The one who could have given the exact order of events - since he stayed with me from the beginning of evangelization until my ascension - did not do so. In fact John, as a true son of the Light, was concerned and preoccupied with making the Light shine through his vestment nt of flesh in the eyes of the heretics who attacked the reality of the Divinity enclosed in human flesh. John's sublime gospel achieved its supernatural goal, but the chronicle of my public life was not helped. The other three evangelists are factually similar, but they alter the order of time, for only one of the three was present at almost all of my public life: Matthew, and he didn't write it down until fifteen years later. As for the others, they did so even later, and after hearing the account from my Mother, from Peter, as well as from the other apostles and disciples. I want to guide you to gather the facts of the three years, year by year. [...] If you make a book, it will be better to put the events in sequence, in chronological order rather than by categories, limiting yourself to specifying, at the beginning or in a cross-reference, to which category each episode belongs." (EMV 468.1-7).

It should also be noted that she was transcribing, in parallel, other dictations and visions that would go on to compose other important works: Les Cahiers, Le Livre d'Azarias, Les Carnets, etc.

Read l'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé online
French translation from 1979, with interactive links and research notes: maria-valorta.org
French translation from 2016, navigation according to the calendar of the time: valtorta.fr

Notable points

Original title corrected for subsequent volumes to "Poema del Uomo-Dio"

By way of comparison, Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu - 9,609,000 characters (including spaces) - is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest novel in history. Marcel Proust wrote it in 16 years and died of exhaustion. l'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé" is larger (10,800,000 characters) and was written in five times less time (3 years and 3 months).

As abundant as it is, Maria Valtorta's work as a whole remains within the uses of Heaven for want of those of Earth: her 13,193 autograph pages are within the norm of the 10,000 pages of the venerable Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), the 22,000 pages of Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727) and a far cry from the 65,000 pages of Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida, or Conchita (1862-1937).

Conformity with the canonical Gospel

Unpublished facts and evangelical deployments

This private revelation reports facts that are unpublished or simply evoked in the Gospel. Thus, for example, we find in the Work:

  • 179 detailed miracles performed by Jesus (30 in the New Testament);
  • 97 complete parables (39 synthesized in the New Testament) ;
  • 77 pages printed for the Sermon on the Mount, from EMV 169 to EMV 174 and EMV 176 (6 pages printed in the Gospel according to St Matthew, chapters 5, 6 and 7);
  • The 9 points of the Beatitudes are developed, one by one, over 7 pages (EMV 170);
  • Some 200 pages printed for the Passion.

According to what Jesus affirms in the work, this deployment is placed at the service of the authenticity of the eternal Gospel as handed down to us by Tradition, confirming its historical and doctrinal foundations (EMV 652). To support this coherence, this encyclopedia refers the surfer, wherever possible, to quotations from the Gospel and Magisterial texts.

Gospel-referenced and unpublished episodes

The four Gospels couldn't be more different in their choice of episodes: 111 pericopes[4] out of 373 are specific to a single Gospel (4 in Mark, 30 in Matthew, 36 in Luke, 41 in John), the remaining 262 being common to either three or two evangelists (sometimes four, notably for the Passion). The two Infancy Gospels (Matthew 1 - 2 and Luke 1 - 2) do not have a single episode in common.

Maria Valtorta's visions cover them all, but they sometimes differentiate episodes that exegesis usually joins together.

Distribution of episodes across the 10 volumes
Tome Referenced to the Gospels[5] Dedicated entirely to commentaries[6] Evangelical unpublished[7]
Tome 1 31 5 42
Tome 2 13 - 68
Tome 3 25 - 41
Tome 4 25 - 45
Tome 5 20 - 48
Tome 6 11 - 58
Tome 7 9 - 59
Tome 8 11 - 43
Tome 9 13 - 33
Tome 10 17+5[8] 6 24
TOTAL 175+5[9] 11 461
% 27,6% 1,7% 70,7%

The publication

Calendar of the work

Commenced Sunday evening, January 16, 1944, the constituent visions of the life of Jesus ended on Monday, April 28, 1947[10]. [Maria Valtorta]] then writes an attestation signifying that the gift of Heaven she has received is intangible.

This was a true attestation, as she confided to Mother Teresa Maria di San Giuseppe, her spiritual mother. She is thus assured "that the work will remain in the form dictated and enlightened by God, without any of the human retouching that a writer usually uses to perfect his own writings before having them printed[11]".

This attestation is countersigned by Father Sostegno M. Benedetti who visited Maria Valtorta that day. He was the Prior of the Servites of Pisa, not far from Viareggio, and believed in the supernatural nature of the work, which is why he insisted, with Maria Valtorta's agreement, on countersigning the page.
Attestation1947.png
According to a letter received from Father Berti, the typescript had already been on Pius XII's desk since March 28, 1947[12]. She is so impatient for the Holy Father's return that she wonders if Fr. Berti has deceived her. However, she would have to wait another ten long months, until February 26 1948, for Pius XII's encouragement in return. So it was that the work was presented to the Pope in an outline that had been stripped of a few visions, and circulated in the Vatican. In 1951, its content was completed by a few visions relating to the Assumption of Mary.

The first translations and the French translation

Volume 1 of the first edition (1979) translated by Felix Sauvage

The complete translations of the work came out (date of first volume) respectively in:

  • 1976: Spanish
  • 1979: French
  • 1983: German
  • 1986: English.

Félix Sauvage, a self-taught retired teacher, generously completed the first French translation of L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé in the last years of his life. It was the first time the work had been translated in its entirety into a foreign language. The translation was published in 1979, a year after his death at the age of 87, by Centro Editoriale Valtortiano (CEV). The second and final French translation, by Yves d'Horrer and published by CEV from March 23, 2017, took ten years to complete.

Summary

This Work is made up of the 652 visions divided into 7 parts, holding 10 volumes and over 5,300 pages.

  • Proto-gospel (birth and hidden life of Mary and Jesus): visions 1 to 43.
  • First year of Jesus' public life: visions 44 to 140.
  • Second year of Jesus' public life: visions 141 to 312.
  • Third year of Jesus' public life: visions 313 to 540.
  • Preparation for Jesus' Passion: visions 541 to 600.
  • The Passion and death of Jesus: visions 601 to 615.
  • From the Resurrection to Pentecost (Glorification of Jesus and Mary): visions 616 to 651.
  • Farewell to the Work: vision 652.

Characteristics of style

Literary quality

Maria Valtorta's pages, a fortiori in Italian, stand out for their high literary standard. All the more so as they were written:

  • without plans, drafts, notes or preparatory research,
  • by hand, in a single draft, very quickly,
  • when she was under great strain (extreme physical suffering, World War II, civil war).
  • and practically without retouching.

Sometimes, she added a few details and comments at the bottom of the pages or on appendices. These personal contributions, distinct from the visions, were generally made, on separate sheets, after reading the pages typed by Father Migliorini. The aim was not to "correct" the original account, which she refrained from doing, but to underline certain particularly striking features. If these commentaries are to be considered as Maria Valtorta's own, they nevertheless benefit from the assistance of Heaven, which justifies their high theological standard:

"In these cases (the visions), I am always assisted by Our Lord, by Mary or by the Holy Spirit, who come to the rescue of the weaknesses of my memory by repeating to me what I must say or by suggesting to me how to do it, depending on whether they are heard words or contemplative visions [..]. That's why we must be certain that what I have written in the notebooks corresponds exactly to the truth. The same applies to the corrections made to the typed copies: I have the assistance of Our Lord for what relates to the Gospel[13], and that of the Holy Spirit for other lessons (the Masses of the Angels (Azarias) and the epistles of St. Paul, or other lessons that deal with the Bible)[14]".

The commentary on "Mary's soul remembered God" (EMV 10.8), runs to nine pages. It alone would justify this statement by Father Roschini: "Whoever wants to know the Blessed Virgin (a Virgin in perfect harmony with the ecclesiastical magisterium, in particular with the Second Vatican Council, Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church) must draw on Valtorta's Mariology! "

It is customary in the publishing world to say that a well-edited 300-page book contains, on average, seven spelling or grammatical errors. Maria Valtorta's 13,193 handwritten pages - uncorrected - contain none.

The attention to detail

Maria Valtorta often transcribed proper nouns phonetically, not hesitating to use four or five different forms for the same proper noun in order to remain as faithful as possible to what she was hearing at the time (e.g.: EMV 41.3).

This precision in detail was explicitly requested by Jesus, who saw to it that Maria Valtorta scrupulously noted down everything she saw:

"Remember to be utterly scrupulous in repeating what you see. Even a trifle has value and it's not yours, but Mine. So you're not allowed to gloss over it. That would be dishonest and selfish. Remember that you are the cistern of divine water, where water is poured out for all to have access to. When it comes to dictation, you've achieved the most faithful fidelity. In contemplation, you observe with great attention, but in the haste to write, and because of your particular state of health and the atmosphere in which you find yourself, you sometimes omit some detail. This must be avoided; put them at the bottom of the pages, but indicate them all[15]."

Directive that Jesus summarized as follows:

"The more meticulous and precise you are, the more numerous will be those who come to me[16]."

This fidelity in the transmission of visions is the guarantee of the greatest possible conformity to the original source. Moreover, we note the strong appetite of first-time readers for these material details, which open them up to a heightened and immediate understanding of the episodes in the canonical Gospel. In fact, Maria Valtorta's stories are primarily intended to bear witness to a lived experience. Her narrative structure is akin to that of a witness: the text adopts the fluid sequence of a visual reportage of what is unfolding before her eyes: one scene after another.

Maria Valtorta's descriptions are rich, precise, detailed and immersive. They anchor scenes in tangible reality. They faithfully transcribe the vision rendered in an authentic, vivid and evocative way. Maria Valtorta sought to convey what she saw, hence the profusion of visual details and the occasional mention of certain uncertainties or approximations that authenticate her position as witness rather than author. The text is not composed, it is transcribed.

This immersive approach to the Gospel may be disconcerting to some readers accustomed to probing every word of Scripture, but it is reminiscent of St. Ignatius' early advice in his exercises: first imagine the Gospel scene before meditating on it.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ In a dictation of January 28, 1947, Jesus specifies the nature of the work entrusted to Maria Valtorta: "The work delivered to men through little John [=Maria Valtorta] is not a canonical book. Nevertheless, it is an inspired book that I grant you to help you understand certain passages of the canonical books [...]" (Les Cahiers de 1945 à 1950, CEV, p. 330). This passage establishes unambiguously that L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé is not presented as a new gospel, but as an inspired work, intended to illuminate the Revelation already given and to foster a living knowledge of Christ.
  2. ↑ The article in the Osservatore Romano does indeed motivate the placing on the Index by references to volume I and II, which were published in 1956 and 1957, Pius XII being alive. According to the Holy Office censors, the reasons for the condemnation already existed at these dates. The fact that they waited until 1959 and the publication of the last volume to act is further proof of Pius XII's protection of the work he had read. The censors should have acted as soon as they noticed the faults.
  3. ↑ Example: EMV 174.10; EMV 182.6; EMV 229.4; EMV 273.8; EMV 298.1; EMV 336.1; EMV 352.4; EMV 352.17; EMV 360.16; EMV 378.1; EMV 410.7; EMV 415.7; EMV 418.8; EMV 429.4; EMV 467.12; EMV 468.1; etc.
  4. ↑ A pericope designates an extract forming a literary unit or coherent thought, usually in a sacred text.
  5. ↑ Corresponding to a precise evangelical reference
  6. ↑ Other than commentaries included in certain episodes
  7. ↑ Not mentioned in the Gospels or corresponding to a simple evocation
  8. ↑ Three episodes referred solely to the Acts of the Apostles.
  9. ↑ The difference with the Gospel's 373 narrative units (pericopes) is explained by the fact that several evangelists can report the same fact. Only the fact is counted here.
  10. ↑ The feast of St. Zita of Lucca (the diocese of Viareggio) and the day of Maria Goretti's beatification, Maria Valtorta points out in her correspondence (Letters to Mother Teresa Marie, vol. 2, April 30, 1947, p.. 99). It was on April 28 that she received the vision of Pentecost, which closed the messianic cycle and opened that of the Church. Jesus speaks of St. Zita (EMV 640)..
  11. ↑ Lettres à Mère Teresa Maria, tome 2, April 28, 1947, p. 97.
  12. ↑ Lettres à Mère Teresa Maria, tome 2, April 30, 1947, p. 102. "Silence from Rome. It is now thirty-three days since Father Berti wrote to announce that the file was on the Holy Father's desk... but I think it is one more lie."
  13. ↑ It's the Gospel as it was revealed to me we're talking about.
  14. ↑ Les Carnets, July 2, 1948, p.139
  15. ↑ EMV 236.12.
  16. ↑ Les Cahiers de 1944, January 25, p. 95. Recalled in the dictation of February 4, p. 112.
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