EMMERICK, ANNA KATHARINA. – Mystic, n. 8 Sept. 1774 at Fiamale near Coesfeld (Westphalia), d. 9 Feb. 1824 at Dülmen. The daughter of poor but deeply religious peasants, who raised their nine children in the love of God and neighbor and in a sense of duty, E., whose health was always precarious, early showed an inclination toward solitary prayer and devotion to the suffering Redeemer, a devotion fostered by the moving medieval crucifix of Coesfeld.
Not free from scruples, in her youth she fought resolutely against her own faults. At sixteen she felt the first call to the cloistered life. For many years, continual difficulties opposed this plan, during which A. K. became ever more inwardly united with the Passion of the Lord; it was then that, by her own account, she felt the pains of the crowning with thorns, though without visible signs. After many trials and renunciations, inwardly purified, A. K. was admitted in Sept. 1802, at the age of twenty-eight, as a choir nun among the Augustinian nuns of Dülmen. Her frail health, which her fellow sisters did not fully understand, became for her a source of unceasing suffering. Meanwhile A. K. distinguished herself by great fidelity in ob-
a profound life of prayer, in which the idea of expiation
occupies first place.
In the cloister she received the inner sufferings of the
stigmata of the Redeemer and, after the closing of the monastery,
towards the end of 1812, also the visible wounds, of a
reality so authentic as to defy every doubt. Her
knowledge of hidden things, manifested in cardiognosy
and visions, is abundantly surpassed by
a life of most profound inwardness, which reveals itself
in expiatory sufferings, in assistance to the poor, and in
ardent love of God. After her death, which freed her
from excruciating pains, her veneration continually
increases among the people, who attribute numerous
graces 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 deriving from her:
*The Bitter Passion of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ (1833); Life of the Holy Virgin Mary* (1852);
Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (3 vols.,
1858–60). The researches of W. Hümpfer have shown that the contribution of Klemens M. BRENTANO, FRANZ (v.), to whom the editing of these works according to the visions of A. K. is due, is so considerable that it is no longer possible therein to distinguish it from the literal communications of the visionary. Scholarly discussion of the true character of her visions has had the drawback of temporarily casting into the shadows the religious content and religious mission of the life of the stigmatized woman of Dümmen. Her beatification, the process for which has been introduced, is desired by many faithful.