XV
Then Anna, in distress, took the turtle and went to ask succour of Donna Veronica Monteferrante. As the poor woman had already done several services for the monastery, the Abbess, pitying her, gave her work as a serving-nun.
Anna, though she had not taken the orders, dressed in the nun’s costume: the black tunic, the throat-bands, the head-dress with its ample white brims. She seemed to herself, in that habit, to be sanctified. And at first, when the air flapped the brims around her head with a noise as of wings, she shuddered with a sudden confusion in her veins. Also when the brims struck by the sun reflected on her face the colour of snow, she suddenly felt herself illuminated by a mystic ray.
With the passing of time, her ecstasies became more frequent. The grey-haired virgin was thrilled from time to time by angelic songs, by distant echoes of organs, by rumours and voices not perceptible to other ears. Luminous figures presented themselves to her in the darkness, odours of Paradise carried her out of herself.
Thus a kind of sacred horror began to spread through the monastery as if through the presence of some occult power, as if through the imminence of some supernatural event. As a precaution the new convert was released from every obligation pertaining to servile work. All of her positions, all of her words, all of her glances were observed and commented upon with superstition. And the legend of her sanctity began to flower.
On the first of February in the year of Our Lord 1873, the voice of the virgin Anna became singularly hoarse and deep. Later her power of speech suddenly disappeared. This unexpected dumbness terrified the minds of the nuns. And all, standing around the convert, considered with mystic terror her ecstatic postures, the vague motions of her mute mouth and the immobility of her eyes from which overflowed at intervals inundations of tears. The lineaments of the sick woman, extenuated by long fastings, had now assumed a purity almost of ivory, while the entire outlines of her arteries now seemed to be visible, and projected in such strong relief and palpitated so incessantly, that before that open palpitation of blood a kind of dread seized the nuns, as if they were viewing a body stripped of its skin.
When the month of Mary drew near, a loving diligence prompted the Benedictines to the preparation of an oratory. They scattered throughout the cloisteral garden, all flowering with roses and fruitful with oranges, while they gathered the harvest of early May in order to lay it at the foot of the altar. Anna having recovered her usual state of calmness, descended likewise to help at the pious work. She conveyed often with gestures the thoughts which her obstinate muteness forbade her to express. All of the brides of Our Lord lingered in the sun, walking among the fountains luxuriant with perfume. There was on one side of the garden a door, and as in the souls of the virgins the perfumes awoke suppressed thought, so the sun in penetrating beneath the two arches revived in the plaster the residue of Byzantine gold.
The oratory was ready for the day of the first prayer. The ceremony began after the Vespers. A sister mounted to the organ. Presently from the keys the cry of the Passion penetrated everywhere, all foreheads bowed, the censers gave out the fumes of jasmine and the flames of the tapers palpitated among crowns of flowers. Then arose the canticles, the litanies full of symbolic appellations and supplicating tenderness. As the voices mounted with increasing strength, Anna, impelled by the immense force of her fervour, screamed. Struck with wonder, she fell supine, agitating her arms and trying to arise. The litanies stopped. The sisters, several almost terrified, had remained an instant immobile while others gave assistance to the sick woman. The miracle seemed to them most unexpected, brilliant and supreme.
Then, little by little, stupor, uncertain murmurs and vacillation were succeeded by a rejoicing without limit, a chorus of clamorous exaltations and a mingled drowsiness as of inebriety. Anna, on her knees, still absorbed in the rapture of the miracle, was not conscious of what was happening around her. But when the canticles with greater vehemence were begun again, she sang too. Her notes from the descending waves of the chorus, at intervals emerged, since the devotees diminished the force of their voices in order to hear that one which by divine grace had been restored. And the Virgin became from time to time the censer of gold from which they exhaled sweet balsam, she was the lamp that by day and night lighted the sanctuary, the urn that enclosed the manna from heaven, the flame that burned without consuming, the stem of Jesse that bore the most beautiful of all flowers.
Afterwards the fame of the miracle spread from the monastery throughout the entire country of Ortona and from the country to all adjoining lands, growing as it travelled. And the monastery rose to great respect. Donna Blandina Onofrii, the magnificent, presented to the Madonna of the Oratorio a vest of brocaded silver and a rare necklace of turquoise came from the island of Smyrna. The other Ortosian ladies gave other minor gifts. The Archbishop of Orsagna made with pomp a congratulatory visit, in which he exchanged words of eloquence with Anna, who “from the purity of her life had been rendered worthy of celestial gifts.”
In August of the year 1876 new prodigies arrived. The infirm woman, when she approached vespers, fell in a state of cataleptic ecstasy; from which she arose later almost with violence. On her feet, while preserving always the same position, she began to talk, at first slowly and then gradually accelerating, as if beneath the urgency of a mystic inspiration. Her eloquence was but a tumultuous medley of words, of phrases, of entire selections learned before, which now in her unconsciousness reproduced themselves, growing fragmentary or combining without sequence.
She repeated native dialectic expressions mingled with courtly forms, and with the hyperboles of Biblical language as well as extraordinary conjunctions of syllables and scarcely audible harmonies of songs. But the profound trembling of her voice, the sudden changes of inflection, the alternate ascending and descending of the tone, the spirituality of the ecstatic figure, the mystery of the hour, all helped to make a profound impression upon the onlookers.
These effects repeated themselves daily, with a periodic regularity. At vespers in the oratorio they lit the lamps; the nuns made a kneeling circle, and the sacred representation began. As the infirm woman entered into the cataleptic ecstasies, vague preludes on the organ lifted the souls of the worshippers to a higher sphere. The light of the lamps was diffused on high, giving forth an uncertain flicker, and a fading sweetness to the appearance of things. At a certain point the organ was silent. The respiration of the infirm woman became deeper, her arms were stretched so that in the emaciated wrists the tendons vibrated like the strings of an instrument. Then suddenly, the sick woman bounded to her feet, crossed her arms on her breast, while resting in the position of the Caryatides of a Baptistery. Her voice resounded in the silence, now sweetly, now lugubriously, now placid, almost always incomprehensible.
At the beginning of the year 1877 these paroxysms diminished in frequency, they occurred two or three times a week and then totally disappeared, leaving the body of the woman in a miserable state of weakness. Then several years passed, in which the poor idiot lived in atrocious suffering, with her limbs rendered inert from muscular spasms. She was no longer able to keep herself clean, she ate only soft bread and a few herbs and wore around her neck and on her breast a large quantity of little crosses, relics and other images. She spoke stutteringly through lack of teeth and her hair fell out, her eyes were already glazed like those of an old beast of burden about to die.
One time, in May, while she was suffering, deposited under the portal, and the sisters were gathering the roses for Maria, there passed before her the turtle which still dragged its pacific and innocent life through the cloisteral garden. The old woman saw it move and little by little recede. It awakened no recollection in her mind. The turtle lost itself among the bunches of thyme.
But the sisters regarded her imbecility and the infirmity of the woman as one of those supreme proofs of martyrdom to which the Lord calls the elect in order to sanctify and glorify them later in Paradise and they surrounded her with veneration and care.
In the summer of the year 1881, there appeared signs of approaching death. Consumed and maimed, that miserable body no longer resembled a human being. Slow deformations had corrupted the joints of the arms; tumours, large as apples, protruded from her sides, on her shoulder and on the back of her head.
The morning of the 10th day of September, about the eighth hour, a trembling of the earth shook Ortona to its foundations. Many buildings fell, the roofs and walls of others were injured, and still others were bent and twisted. All of the good people of Ortona, with weeping, with cries, with invocations, with great invoking of saints and madonnas, came out of their doors and assembled on the plain of San Rocco, fearing greater perils. The nuns, seized with panic, broke from the cloister and ran into the streets, struggling and seeking safety. Four of them bore Anna upon a table. And all drew toward the plain, in the direction of the uninjured people.
As they arrived in sight of the people, spontaneous shouts arose, since the presence of these religious souls seemed propitious. On all sides lay the sick, the aged and infirm, children in swaddling clothes, women stupid from fear. A beautiful morning sun shed lustre upon the tumultuous waves of the sea and upon the vineyards; and along the lower coast the sailors ran, seeking their wives, calling their children by name, out of breath, and hoarse from climbing; and from Caldara there began to arrive herds of sheep and oxen with their keepers, flocks of turkey-cocks with their feminine guardians, and cart-houses, since all feared solitude and men and beasts in the turmoil became comrades.
Anna, resting upon the ground, beneath an olive tree, perceiving death to be near, was mourning with a weak murmur, because she did not wish to die without the Sacrament, and the nuns around her administered comfort to her, and the bystanders looked at her piously. Now, suddenly among the people spread the news that from the Porta Caldara had issued the image of the Apostle. Hope revived and hymns of thanksgiving mounted to the sky. As from afar vibrated an unexpected flash, the women knelt and tearfully with their hair dishevelled, began to walk upon their knees, towards the flash, while intoning psalms.
Anna became agonised. Sustained by two sisters, she heard the prayers, heard the announcement, and perhaps under her last illusions, she saw the Apostle approaching, for over her hollow face there passed a smile of joy. Several bubbles of saliva appeared upon her lips, a violent undulation of her body occurred, extended visibly to the extremities of her body, while upon her eyes the eyelids fell, reddish as from thin blood, and her head shrank into her shoulders. Thus the virgin Anna finally expired.
When the flash appeared more closely to the adoring women, there shone in the sun the form of a beast of burden carrying balanced upon its back, according to the custom, an ornament of metal.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes
Original spelling and punctuation have been preserved as much as possible. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Cover created by Transcriber and placed into the Public Domain.