MARIA MADDALENA DE' PAZZI, saint. — In the world, Caterina, born in Florence on 2 April 1566, died there on 25 May 1604. At the age of sixteen she entered the Carmelite convent of S. Maria degli Angeli in Florence, where on 27 May 1584, the feast of the Trinity, she took her solemn vows and assumed the name M. M.
From that day her ecstasies began, at first more frequent, then increasingly rare; the ecstasies were accompanied by terrible trials: physical illnesses, temptations, and spiritual aridity, which the Saint, in her insatiable love of the Cross, willingly accepted. Hers, in fact, is the cry: «pati, non mori». At the command of her confessors she dictated accounts of her ecstasies, which she subsequently reviewed, approved, or corrected. By divine command she also dictated, during her ecstasies, letters and exhortations to Sixtus V, to cardinals, and to bishops; however, her superiors never delivered them to their destinations, considering it too bold for a humble nun to address such personages. From 1598 to 1604 she was novice mistress and subprioress.
In the history of spirituality the Ecstasies and the Letters occupy a prominent place. Alongside a profound theological doctrine, they reveal an intensely sensitive soul. There was in her a social mission, a reforming vocation that made her, though a woman, a woman of action, concerned with the renewal of the Church. The fact that she has been compared with s. Caterina da Siena already indicates the mettle of this Florentine ecstatic who, while leading the simple and ordinary life of the cloister, kindled religious men and women to a more Christian life through exhortations and writings. Her mystical theory of love, entirely relaxed, which wants, possesses, and desires nothing except what God wills, which does not consider what perfection it might attain or in what state it finds itself because its sole aim is to honor God, remained within the most perfect orthodoxy; for, although the powers of the intellect were silenced, the intellect itself was not annihilated. The thought of M. M. had an enormous influence among the Quietists, who distorted the meaning of the Saint’s conception by annihilating the intellect itself. M. M. was canonized by Clement IX in 1669 (the bull was published the following year by Clement X). Her feast falls on 29 May.