Magdalena de la Cruz

Magdalena de la Cruz (1487–1560) was a Franciscan nun of Córdoba in Spain, who for many years was honored as a living saint. However, St. Ignatius Loyola had always regarded her with suspicion. Falling dangerously ill in 1543, Magdalena confessed to a long career of hypocrisy, ascribing most of the marvels to the action of demons by which she was possessed, but maintaining their reality. She was sentenced by the Inquisition, in an auto-da-fé at Córdoba in 1546, to perpetual imprisonment in a convent of her order, and there she is believed to have ended her days most piously amid marks of the sincerest repentance.

During the early decades of the sixteenth century she was considered saintly and believed to be in constant and intimate communication with God. Her devotees included the general of the Franciscan Order, Fray Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones; Fray Francisco de Osuna, the mystic whose writings were so appreciated by Saint Teresa of Ávila; and the archbishop of Seville and inquisitor general, Alonso Manrique. Indeed, on the birth of the future Philip II in 1527, "the hábitos of this nun were sent off as a sacred object so that the infante could be wrapped up in them and thus apparently be shielded and protected from the attacks of the Devil." In 1533 Magdalena was elected abbess of her convent and was at the height of her power and popularity. But only in 1546, and after many false prophecies, visions, and miracles, including a controversial pregnancy, did the Cordoban Inquisition finally try her and sentence her to life imprisonment in a convent in Andújar.

References

•  "Impostors". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
• Geraldine McKendrick and Angus MacKay, Visionaries and Affective Spirituality during the First Half of the Sixteenth Century

External links

• The Stigmata of Lilian Bernas- Joe Nickell. CSICOP