We have now all the necessary documents to form a correct estimate of her holiness. Let us glance at the most interesting events in her life, and sum up briefly and simply the chief traits of her inner and exterior character.
Three miles south of Botzen, in a charming landscape, with a prospect extending over a wide and smiling valley, lies the vine-crowned spot in which Maria Theresa von Mörl first saw the light of day, on October 16th, 1812. She was the daughter of a reduced, but noble, vine cultivator in Kaltern, [Footnote 3] Joseph von Mörl, of Mühlen and Lichelburg, who was blessed with a very large family, but not with sufficient means to raise them as became their blood.
[Footnote 3: Kaltern is the German for the Italian Caldaro.—Tr.]
Maria received from her good, sensible mother, whose maiden name was Selva, a pious and simple education; and the young girl grew up in virtue, modest and gentle, affectionate and obliging to all, of good understanding, but with no great powers of fancy. She was an expert little housewife, and aided her mother in the management of their domestic affairs. Frequent illness, which began to trouble her as early as her fifth year and continued to affect her through life, as it had its seat in her blood, rendered her, even at an early age, rather grave, and increased her zeal in prayer, which showed itself especially in her love and veneration for the Blessed Sacrament. This was her character until, in the year 1827, her beloved mother was taken from her by death; and she, at the age of fifteen, was left in sole charge of the family, her father being unable to provide better for the care of her eight younger sisters. Maria undertook the task of their bringing up with courage and readiness. She sought among her increasing labors and responsibilities, more than ever, consolation in religion, and in the frequent reception of the sacrament of the altar.
But the burden was too heavy for her young shoulders, and she sank under it. In her eighteenth year she fell into a wearisome sickness, which was increased in painfulness by reason of violent cramps, which broke down her constitution. Only by slow degrees was her pain alleviated, without the disease having been completely driven out. She never became perfectly sound again. Yet she bore all her afflictions with heroic resignation, although to her physical torments mental struggles were often added temptations of the devil; and troubles of soul which we cannot dwell upon here. [Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: Görres describes them fully in his Christliche Mystik, band iii.]
Such was her condition during about two years, when her confessor, Father Capistran, a quiet, prudent man, and for years a true friend of the distressed family, observed "that at certain times, when she was interrogated by him, she did not answer, and seemed to be out of herself." When he questioned her nurses and others on this point, they informed him that such was always the case when she received the holy communion. This was the first symptom of her ecstatic state, into which she entered in her twentieth year, and which soon became more and more striking. On the feast of Corpus Christi, 1832, which in Kaltern, as throughout the whole Tyrol, is celebrated with unusual solemnity, Father Capistran, for special reasons, gave her the holy sacrament at three A.M., and immediately she fell into an ecstasy which lasted, to his personal knowledge, for several hours! He left her to attend to other duties; and when he returned, at noon on the following day, he found the ecstatic still kneeling in the same place where he had left her thirty-six hours before; and heard, to his astonishment, that she had remained the whole time thus undisturbed in contemplation. The good Franciscan now comprehended for the first time that ecstasy had become almost a second nature to her; and undertook the regulation of this supernatural condition of his saintly penitent.
The power of the perceptive faculties increased wonderfully with her ecstasies, as several presentiments and prophecies demonstrated in a surprising manner. Her fame was soon noised abroad. The report of her ecstatic kneeling and prayer spread through the Tyrol, and great excitement was created throughout the whole land. Crowds of people flocked to see her, and to be edified by the sight. From different and distant places numbers came as pilgrims to Kaltern. During the summer of 1833, more than forty thousand persons, of all classes, visited her, without the slightest disorder or scandal, although sometimes two or three thousand people in a day passed through the room of the rapt maiden, kneeling undisturbed in contemplation. Many sinners were moved and converted by the spectacle.
No one could explain the sudden and extraordinary commotion excited in a whole people. The civil and ecclesiastical authorities wished to prevent the concourse; so it was announced that no further pilgrimages would be allowed. They gradually ceased. The priests, however, bore testimony to the good results which had flowed from those pilgrimages. In the autumn of the same year, Francis Xavier Luschin, Prince-Bishop of Trent, caused an investigation to be made, and the witnesses to be examined on oath, regarding the state of the ecstatic virgin, to prevent any further proceedings and annoyances on the part of the police, but especially to remove all suspicion of pious fraud. The prince-bishop, who was impartial enough not to give a final decision, informed the civil authorities "that the sickness of Maria von Mörl was certainly not holiness, but that her undoubted holiness could not be called a sickness."
All this excitement was unknown to the cause of it, who remained undisturbed by the throngs who came to see her. Her inner life seemed to be completely developed in the year 1834, when she received the stigmata. How this happened is best told in the words of Görres himself: "In the fall of 1833, the father-confessor occasionally remarked that the centre of her hands, where the wounds appeared at a later date, began to fall in, and the places became painful and troubled with frequent cramps. He suspected that stigmatization was about to happen, and the result justified his expectations. At early Mass, on February 4th, of the year 1834, he found her wiping her hands with a cloth in childish astonishment. When he perceived blood on it, he asked her what was the matter. She answered that she did not well understand what it was; that she must have cut herself in some strange way. But it was the stigmata, which from that day remained unchangeably in her palms, and soon appeared in her feet also, as well as in her side. So simply did Father Capistran act in the whole affair, and so little desirous of wonder-seeking did he show himself, that he never asked her what were her interior dispositions or phenomena immediately before the reception of the wounds. They were almost round, slightly oblong, about two inches in diameter, and appearing on both the upper and under parts of her hands and feet. The size of the lance stigma in the side, which only her most intimate female friends saw, could not be determined. On Thursday evenings and on Fridays, clear blood flowed in drops from the wounds; on the other days of the week, a dry crust of blood covered them, without the slightest symptoms of inflammation or the slightest traces of pus ever appearing. She concealed most carefully her state, and all that might betray her interior emotions. But on the occasion of a festive procession, in 1833, she fell into an ecstasy in the presence of several witnesses. She appeared like an angel, blooming like a rose. Her feet scarcely touching the bed, she stood up, with arms outstretched in the shape of a cross, and the stigmata in her palms manifest to all beholders." [Footnote 5]