MARY MAGDALENE DE' PAZZI, Saint. - In the world, Caterina, b. in Florence on 2 April 1566, d. there on 25 May 1604. At the age of sixteen she entered the Carmelites of S. Maria degli Angeli in Florence, where on 27 May 1584, the feast of the Trinity, she made her solemn vows and took the name M. M.
From that day the ecstasies began, at first more frequent, then more spaced out; to the ecstasies were added terrible trials: physical infirmities, temptations, aridity of spirit, which the Saint, in her insatiable love of the Cross, welcomed willingly; hers, in fact, is the cry: «pati, non mori». By order of her confessors she dictated the accounts of her ecstasies, which she then reviewed, approved or corrected. By divine command she also dictated, during her ecstasies, letters and exhortations to Sixtus V, to cardinals, to bishops, which, however, her superiors never allowed to reach their destination, judging it too bold for a humble nun to address such personages. From 1598 to 1604 she was mistress of the novices and vice-prioress.
In the history of spirituality the Estasi and the Lettere occupy a place of the first rank. Alongside a profound theological doctrine they reveal an intensely sensitive soul. There is in her a social mission, a reforming vocation that makes her also a woman of action, concerned with the renewal of the Church. To have compared her to St. Catherine of Siena already says of what temper this Florentine ecstatic was, who, while leading the simple and common life of the cloister, with exhortations and writings inflamed religious to a more Christian life. Her mystical theory of love in all things relaxed, which wills nothing, possesses nothing and desires nothing except what God wills, which does not consider to what perfection it might attain nor in what state it finds itself because its sole aim is to honor God, remained in the most perfect orthodoxy because, even if 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 twisted the meaning of the Saint's conception into 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.
Bibliography5 works
Gennaro Auletta