Angelus was born in Florence or near there; the year is unknown but it was before 1386. He was the first member of the reformed observance of Our Lady of the Wood, was many times prior of various houses and noted for his work in preaching the Word of God. He died in Florence in 1438.
Bartholomew Fanti was born in Mantua: the year is unknown, but in 1452 he was already a Carmelite priest of the Congregation of Mantua. For thirty-five years at the Order's church in Mantua he was spiritual father and rector of the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for which he composed a rule and statutes. He is especially remembered for his love of the Eucharist. He died in 1495.
Frances was born in 1427, probably in Thouars in France. She was the wife of Peter II, Duke of Britanny. After his death, and under the direction of Blessed John Soreth, the prior general, she took the habit of the Carmelite Order in the monastery she had previously founded in Bondon. Afterwards she transferred to another foundation in Nantes, also erected by her, where she held the office of prioress and nourished the sisters with wise teaching. She is considered the foundress of the Carmelite nuns in France. She died in 1485.
Hilary Januszewski was born on 11 June 1907 in Krajenki (Poland). In 1927 he entered the Order of Carmel and was ordained on 15 July 1934. In 1939, Poland was occupied by the Germans and one year later, Fr. Hilary decided to present himself in exchange for an older and sick friar. He was sent to Dachau, where he was a model of prayer life, encouraging others and giving hope for a better tomorrow. He died from typhus on 25 March 1945, a few days before the liberation of the concentration camp. Fr. Hilary Januszewski was beatified by John Paul II on 13 June 1999.
Bl. Jacques Retouret was born at Limoges in France on 15th September 1746 to a merchant family. He was a serious young man, a lover of books and greatly gifted. At fifteen years of age, he entered the Carmelite house in his native city. After ordination, his zeal and learning were widely admired and large crowds of people were attracted by his way of preaching.
The French Revolution did not spare him. Like the majority of his fellow clergy, Jacques refused to accept the civil law, unilaterally introduced by the state. He was arrested and condemned, together with many other priests and religious, and sentenced to exile in French Guinea in South America. Jacques died at Madame Isle on 26th August 1794 at the age of 48 years. He was beatified, together with 63 other priests and religious, as martyrs for the faith, on 1st October 1995 by Pope John Paul II.
Mother Euphrasia was born on October 17, 1877. Her pious mother taught her to pray the rosary and to participate in the Holy Mass. She had a vision of Mother Mary at the age of nine and she offered her virginity to God eternally. Her father was opposed to her entering the Convent but eventually gave her permission to go to the Carmelite Convent in 1888. For the rest of her life she was immersed in prayer, in contemplation or praying the Rosary. People began to call her “The Praying Mother.” She was most devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and had a great longing to be with the Eucharistic Lord and participate in the Holy Mass and adore the Blessed Sacrament. She was canonized by Pope Francis on November 23, 2014 in Vatican City.
Saint Kuriakos Elias Chavara, co-founder and first prior general of the congregation of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, was born at Kainakary in Kersala, India, February 10, 1805. He entered the seminary in 1818, and was ordained priest in 1829. He made his religious profession in 1855, in the congregation he founded. Throughout his life he worked for the renovation of the church in Malabar. Above all, he was a man of prayer, zealous for the Eucharistic Lord and devoted to the Immaculate Virgin Mary. He died at Koonammavu in 1871. Kuriakose Kathanar was beatified on February 8, 1986 and canonized on November 23, 2014.
Born about 1305 in southern Perigord in France, Peter Thomas entered the Carmelites when he was twenty-one. He was chosen by the Order as its procurator general to the Papal Court at Avignon in 1345. After being made bishop of Patti and Lipari in 1354, he was entrusted with many papal missions to promote peace and unity with the Eastern Churches. He was transferred to the see of Corone in the Peloponnesus in 1359 and made Papal Legate for the East. In 1363 he was appointed Archbishop of Crete and 1364 Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. He won a reputation as an apostle of church unity before he died at Famagosta on Cyprus in 1366.
Raphael Kalinowski was born to Polish parents in the city of Vilnius in 1835. Following military service, he was condemned in 1864 to ten years of forced labor in Siberia. In 1877 he became a Carmelite and was ordained a priest in 1882. He contributed greatly to the restoration of the Discalced Carmelites in Poland. His life was distinguished by zeal for Church unity and by his unflagging devotion to his ministry as confessor and spiritual director. He died in Wadowice in 1907.
Few Saints hold greater attraction for Carmelites of the Ancient Observance than Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi.
Feast Day: May 25
Few Saints hold greater attraction for Carmelites of the Ancient Observance than Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi. Her twenty-five years of religious life, begun in 1582 at the age of sixteen, were spent entirely in a convent of their observance, Saint Mary of the Angels in Florence.[1] The mystical phenomena in her life, the spiritual wisdom of her writings, and, above all, the angelic sanctity which led to her official canonization by Pope Clement IX in 1669 have made her one of Carmel’s brightest lights and best-loved Saints.
...the lives and writings of ... [St. Teresa of Avila and St. Mary Magdalen de'Pazzi] are of one piece in calibre and stature.
Saint Mary Magdalen entered the Order the very year another, more widely-known Carmelite mystic, Saint Teresa, died. Her life and works were to continue the same high ideals of Carmel which were given new life by her illustrious predecessor. Probably Saint Mary Magdalen never heard of her Spanish Carmelite sister; today many outside the Order are familiar with Saint Teresa, but scarcely aware of “La Santa di Firenze”; yet the lives and writings of the two Saints are of one piece in calibre and stature. It is for Carmelites, especially those of the Ancient Observance, to present this fact to the world.
The bibliography on Saint Mary Magdalen is by no means as extensive or as scholarly as that concerned with Saint Teresa. Biographical and devotional literature exists in abundance, especially in Italian, though also in other languages by way of translation, but the larger part of this is diffuse and repetitious and nothing to the two contemporary biographies of the Saint, those of Puccini and Cepari.[2] Saint Mary Magdalen emerges from the pages of these books as an extraordinary prodigy of the supernatural — which she was — but unreal, unappealing, without human qualities, hardly the robust girl of strong features and dark piercing eyes whose authentic portrait still exists in the convent in Florence. One reads these books without enlightenment and without a deeper understanding of the Saint.
There are, however, some notable exceptions to this type in some of the modern, popular biographies of the Saint, in the anonymous Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi,[3] in La Santa di Firenze, which was also published anonymously,[4] in Vaussard’s life of the Saint,[5] or in Raphael Cione’s short but illuminating introduction to his collection of selected critical texts of the Saint’s writings.[6] Any of these four books might serve as an easy introduction to the Saint; each gives an accurate if cursory survey of her life and doctrine. Unfortunately none of them has as yet found its way into English.
The two most important books about St. Mary Magdalen
remain the original biographies by (1) Vincent Puccini, the last ordinary confessor of the Saint, and (2) Virgil Cepari, S.J., her last extraordinary confessor.
But the two most important books about Saint Mary Magdalen remain the original biographies. Vincent Puccini, the last ordinary confessor of the Saint, wrote her life in 1609, and two years later edited her personal accounts of the ecstasies she experienced and added these to the second edition of his work. Virgil Cepari, S.J., the last extraordinary confessor, began publication of her life in 1626, but it was not until 1669 that his work was completed, the last fifteen chapters being written by Joseph Fozi, S.J. Both books, which have gone through numerous editions and translations, are the primary printed sources for a study of the Saint. Each has the merits of contemporary and eye-witness reports. Their shortcomings, which were to characterize subsequent biographies as well, are due to faulty hagiographical standards; there is an overemphasis on the extraordinary, a failure to place events in their proper setting, and a neglect of the personality of the Saint. Cepari seems to have organized his material more neatly, set down facts in better chronology and sequence, and, in general, presented a more readable life, but both biographies are authoritative and deserve a careful reading.
Puccini’s edition of the Saint’s writings has been the source for most of the other editions of her works. This is indeed unfortunate, since his edition mutilated the original text. He added and deleted where he willed, joined different compositions on the same subject, bowdlerized strong statements of the mystic, and inserted pious reflections of his own. Such a method could not but give an unsatisfactory text, not only from the view point of the genuine thought of the Saint, but even for the style of her writings. Certain critics have found her writings heavy and uninspiring, traditional in their pietistic and devotional preoccupation, dry in their scholastic division into points.[7] Puccini’s method is at least partially responsible for this unfavorable criticism, a criticism that is not warranted by the original text. Recently selected passages taken from the manuscript accounts of the Saint have been published.[8] The manuscripts, five large volumes written in the careful hand of the sisters in the convent appointed to be secretaries of the Saint, still exist in good condition in the convent in Florence. Their publication may well be the beginning of a more extensive and a deeper study of the real contribution of this Saint.
[We hope for] a new edition of her works and a serious
investigation by Carmelite scholars of her mystical life and doctrine...
Saint Mary Magdalen deserves to be better known, both inside and outside the Order. It is said that Saint Gertrude was relatively unknown until two-and-a-half centuries after her death, when the first readable edition of her works was published.[9] It is now a little over three centuries since the death of Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi. May we not hope that a new edition of her works and a serious investigation by Carmelite scholars of her mystical life and doctrine will vastly increase her influence in the Church? What are we waiting for?
[1] Until 1520, sixty-two years before Saint Mary Magdalen’s entrance, the convent of Saint Mary of the Angels was immediately subject to the General of the Order in Rome. At that time, however, it was taken from the jurisdiction of the General and placed under the Archbishop of Florence. The Roman rite replaced the Carmelite rite at that time. Ventigmilia, Historia Chronologica Priontin Generalium (Roma, 19), p. 179. These changes, however, did not detract from the essentially Carmelite life of the convent.
There is absolutely no basis for the claim that Saint Mary Magdalen was a discalced Carmelite. At the tercentenary of her death, in 1907, this idea was suggested, but it was effectively answered by members of our Order in Italy. The articles appeared in the Italian press of that time. [back to text ↑]
[2] V. Puccini, Vita della Madre Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (Firenze, 1609); V. Cepari, S.J. — G. Fozi, S.J., Vita della serafica verg. S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (Roma, 1669). [back to text ↑]
[3] [Teresa del Bambino Jesu], S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (Firenze, 1942). The authoress is a member of the Carmelite convent of Florence and signs herself as “Una Carmelitana del Monastero di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.” [back to text ↑]
[4] [Gesualda dello Spirito Sancto], La Santa di Firenze (Firenze, 1906). Suor Gesualda is a sister of Suor Teresa (see above) and a member of the same convent. [back to text ↑]
[5] M.-M. Vaussard, Sainte Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi (Paris, 1925). [back to text ↑]
[6] R. Cione, ed., S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi nell’ estasi.... (Milano, 1926). [back to text ↑]
[7] F. Casnati, “Rassegna Letteraria; Mistici,” Vita e Pensiero, 16 (1925 55-59; Vaussard, op. cit., pp. 8-12. [back to text ↑]
[8] For example, Maurice Vaussard, ed., S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi; estasi e lettere scelte (Firenze, 1924); Cione, op. cit. Within the last few days the published text of the first volume of the MSS, prepared by Father Otger Steggink, O.Carm., has reached the United States: Otger Steggink, O.Carm., ed., I Quaranti Giorni (Roma, 1952). [back to text ↑]
[9] Saint Gertrude died in 1303, but her works were not diffused until the German (1505) and Latin (1536) editions were published. A. Poulain, Des Graces d’Oraison (Paris, 1922), 10th edition, p. 640. [back to text ↑]
Source: Order of Carmelites
