EMMERICK, ANNA KATHARINA. - Mystic, b.
September 8, 1774 at Fiamale near Coesfeld (Westphalia),
d. February 9, 1824 at Dülmen. Daughter of poor but
deeply religious peasants, who raised their nine
children in the love of God and neighbor and in the sense of
duty, E., of always frail health, soon showed a
inclination to solitary prayer and to devotion
toward the suffering Redeemer, a devotion favored
by the moving medieval crucifix of Coesfeld.
Not free from scruples, in her youth she struggled
decisively against her own faults. At sixteen she felt the
first call to the cloistered life. This plan was
opposed for long years by continual difficulties, in the course
of which A. K. interiorly united herself ever more to the
Passion of the Lord; and it is then that, by her own account,
she felt the pains of the crowning with thorns, though without
visible signs. After many trials and renunciations, purified
interiorly, A. K. in September 1802 was received at twenty-eight years
as a choir sister among the Augustinian nuns of Dülmen. Her
frailty, which her sisters did not fully
understand, became for her a source of ceaseless sorrows.
Meanwhile A. K. distinguished herself by a great fidelity in the observance of the vows, including poverty, and above all by
a profound life of prayer, in which the idea of expiation
occupies the first place.
In the cloister she received the interior pains of the stigmata
of the Redeemer and after the closing of the monastery,
toward the end of 1812, also the visible wounds, of a
reality so authentic as to defy all doubt. Her
knowledge of hidden things, manifesting itself in cardiognosy
and in visions, is abundantly surpassed by
a life of most profound interiority, which reveals itself
in expiatory sufferings, in assistance to the poor and in
inflamed love of God. After death, which
freed her from agonizing pains, her veneration
grows ever more among the people, by whom numerous graces
are attributed to her.
The piety of the Christian people, even outside
Germany, was, especially in devotion to the Passion of Jesus,
widely influenced by three books that go back to her:
*The Bitter Passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ (1833); Life of the holy Virgin Mary* (1852);
Life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (3 vols.,
1858-60). The researches of W. Hümpfer have shown that the contribution of Klemens M. Brentano (v.), to whom is due the redaction of these works according to the visions of A. K., is therein so imposing as no longer to be distinguishable from the literal communications of the visionary. The scientific discussion on the true character of her visions had the drawback of temporarily casting back into the shadows the religious content and the religious mission of the life of the stigmatized woman of Dülmen. Her beatification, for which the process has been introduced, is desired by many of the faithful.
Bibliography6 works
Carlo Baus