Anne Catherine Emmerich, CRV (also Anna Katharina Emmerick; 8 September 1774 – 9 February 1824) was a Catholic Augustinian canoness of the Congregation of Windesheim. During her lifetime, she was a mystic, Marian visionary and stigmatist.
Emmerich was born in Flamschen, an impoverished farming community at Coesfeld, in the Diocese of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, and died in Dülmen (aged 49), where she had lived, bedridden, as a nun. Emmerich purportedly experienced visions of the life and Passion of Jesus Christ, revealed to her by the Blessed Virgin Mary during religious ecstasy.Emmerich, Anna Catherine: The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ page viii
During her bedridden years, a number of well-known contemporaries visited her. The poet Clemens Maria Brentano interviewed her at length and wrote several pages, based on his notes of her description of the visions. The authenticity of Brentano's writings has been questioned, and critics have characterized the books as "conscious elaborations by a poet". Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, Jose Saraiva Martins declared the writings attributed to her the "artistic fantasy of Brentano".Jose Saraiva Martins, Anne Catherine Emmerich, L'Osservatore Romano, 7 October 2004
Pope John Paul II beatified Emmerich on 3 October 2004, highlighting her notable virtues and deep Catholic piety. The purported “House of the Virgin Mary” in Ephesus is piously associated with her name.
Early life
Emmerich was born into a family of impoverished farmers and had nine brothers and sisters. The family's surname was derived from an ancestral town. From an early age, she helped with the house and farm work. Her schooling was rather brief, but all those who knew her noticed that she felt drawn to prayer from an early age. At twelve, she started to work at a large farm in the vicinity for three years and later learned to be a seamstress and worked as such for several years.
She applied for admission to various convents, but she was rejected because she could not afford a dowry. Eventually, the Order of Saint Clare in Münster agreed to accept her, provided she would learn to play the musical organ. She went to the organist Söntgen in Coesfeld to study music and learn to play the organ, but the poverty of the Söntgen family prompted her to sacrifice her small savings in an effort to help them. Later, one of the Söntgen daughters entered the convent with her.
Religious life In 1802, Emmerich (aged 28) and her friend Klara Söntgen were finally permitted to join the Augustinian nuns at the convent of Agnetenberg in Dülmen. The following year, Emmerich took her religious vows. In the convent, she became known for her strict observance of the order's rule; but, from the beginning to 1811, she was often quite ill and suffered great pain. At times, her zeal and strict adherence to the convent's rules disturbed some of the more tepid sisters, who were also puzzled by her weak health and religious ecstasies.
When the King of Westphalia, Jérôme Bonaparte suppressed the convent in 1812, all the nuns were forced to leave. She sought and found refuge in the house of a widow.
Imposition of the Stigmata
In early 1813, marks of the stigmata were reported on Emmerich's body. The parish priest called in two doctors to examine her. When word of the phenomenon spread three months later, he notified the vicar general. With the news causing considerable talk in the town, the ecclesiastical authorities conducted a lengthy investigation. Many doctors wished to examine the case, and although efforts were made to discourage the curious, there were also visitors whose rank or status gained them entry. During this time, the poet and romanticist Clemens Brentano first visited Emmerich.
At the end of 1818, the periodic bleeding of Emmerich's hands and feet had stopped, and the wounds had closed. While many in the community viewed the stigmata as real, others claimed that Emmerich was an impostor and that she conspired with others to perpetrate her fraud. In August 1819, the civil authorities intervened and moved Emmerich to a different house, where she was kept under observation for three weeks. The members of the commission could find no evidence of fraud, yet her stigmata continued. The commission members thus became divided in their opinions.
The cross on her breastbone had the unusual shape of a "Y", similar to a cross in the local church of Coesfeld. The English priest Herbert Thurston surmised that "the subjective impressions of the stigmatic exercise a preponderating influence upon the manifestations which appear exteriorly" and suggested that this phenomena is described in the works of the Augustinian Catholic priest, John of Ruusbroec. However, this supposition is purely conjectural.
Purported apparitions
As a young child, Emmerich claimed to have visions in which she talked with Jesus and saw the Souls in Purgatory.
She further described the essence of the Holy Trinity in the form of three concentric, interpenetrating full spheres. The largest but dimmest of the spheres represented the Father core, the medium sphere the Son core, and the smallest and brightest sphere the Holy Spirit core. Each sphere of omnipresent God is extended toward infinity beyond God's core placed in heaven.
Brentano's writings also suggest that during an illness in Emmerich's childhood, she was visited by the Child Jesus, who told her of plants she should ingest in order to heal, including Morning Glory flower juice, which is known to contain ergine.
A number of figures who were influential in the renewal movement of the Church early in the 19th century came to visit Emmerich, among them Clemens August von Droste zu Vischering, the future Archbishop of Cologne; Johann Michael Sailer, the Bishop of Ratisbon, since 1803 the sole surviving Elector Spiritual of the Holy Roman Empire; Bernhard Overberg and authors Luise Hensel and Friedrich Stolberg. The former vicar—general of the Archdiocese, Clemens von Droste stated that Emmerich "a special friend of God" in a letter he wrote to Stolberg.
According to Clemens Maria Brentano
At the time of Emmerich's second examination in 1819, Brentano visited her. He claimed that she told him he was sent to help her fulfill God's command, to express in writing the revelations she had received. Brentano became one of Emmerich's many supporters, believing her to be a "chosen Bride of Christ".
Professor Andrew Weeks claims that Brentano's own personal complexes were a factor in substituting Emmerich as a maternal figure in his own life.
From 1819 until Emmerich's death in 1824, Brentano filled many notebooks with accounts of her visions, including scenes from the New Testament and the life of the Virgin Mary. Because Emmerich only spoke the Westphalian dialect, Brentano could not transcribe her words directly, and often could not even take notes in her presence. So he would quickly write notes in standard German when he returned to his own apartment, based on what he remembered of the conversations he had with Emmerich. Brentano edited the notes later, years after the death of Emmerich.
About ten years after Emmerich had recounted her visions, Brentano completed editing his records for publication. In 1833, he published his first volume, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich. Brentano then prepared The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary from the Visions of Anna Catherine Emmerich for publication, but he died in 1842. The book was published posthumously in 1852 in Munich.
Catholic priest Karl Schmoger edited Brentano's manuscripts, and from 1858 to 1860, he published the three volumes of The Life of Our Lord. In 1881, a large illustrated edition was published. Schmoger also penned a biography of Anne Catherine Emmerich in two volumes from 1867 to 1870. It has since been republished in English language editions.
The Vatican does not endorse the authenticity of the books written by Brentano. However, it has declared the general message of these books as "an outstanding proclamation of the gospel in service to salvation"."Her words, which have reached innumerable people in many languages from her modest room in Dülmen through the writings of Clemens Brentano, are an outstanding proclamation of the gospel in service to salvation right up to the present day." Quote from 18th paragraph of Vatican online biography Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774-1824) Other critics have been less sympathetic, characterizing his books as the "conscious elaborations of an overwrought romantic poet".Andrew Weeks, "Between God and Gibson: German Mystical and Romantic Sources of The Passion of the Christ", The German Quarterly Vol. 78, No. 4, Fall, 2005 Link to JSTOR
Some argue that these writings indicate racist beliefs and contain a "clear antisemitic strain throughout."Melissa Croteau, Apocalyptic Shakespeare: Essays of Vision and Chaos in Recent Film Adaptations, McFarland, 2009 For example, Noah's son Ham is portrayed as the progenitor of "the black, idolatrous, stupid nations" of the world. Also, in the "Dolorous Passion", it is implied that "Jews[...] strangled Christian children and used their blood for all sorts of suspicious and diabolical practices".Paula Frederiksen, On the Passion of the Christ, California, 2006, p. 203
Claims of forgery
When the case for Emmerich's beatification was submitted to the Vatican in 1892, a number of experts in Germany began to compare and analyze Brentano's original notes from his personal library with the books he had written. The analysis revealed various apocryphal biblical sources, maps, and travel guides among his papers. These could have been used to exaggerate or embellish some of Emmerich's narrations.
In 1923, the German Catholic priest Winfried Hümpfner, who had compared Brentano's original notes to the published books, wrote in his theological thesis that Brentano had fabricated much of the material he had attributed to Emmerich.Emmerich, Anne Catherine, and Clemens Brentano. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Anvil Publishers, Georgia, 2005 pages 49–56 (Note: the hard copy of this book has a wrong ISBN printed within its front matter, but the text (and the wrong ISBN) show up on Google books as published by Anvil Press)Winfried Hümpfner, Clemens Brentanos Glaubwürdigkeit in seinen Emmerick-Aufzeichnungen; Untersuchung über die Brentano-Emmerick-frage unter erstmaliger Benutzung der tagebücher Brentanos Würzburg, St. Rita-verlag und -druckerei, 1923 (in German) By 1928, the experts had come to the conclusion that only a small portion of Brentano's books could be safely attributed to Emmerich.
At the time of Emmerich's beatification in 2004, the Vatican's position on the authenticity of the Brentano books was elucidated by priest Peter Gumpel, who was involved in the study of the issues for the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints: "It is absolutely not certain that she ever wrote this. There is a serious problem of authenticity." According to Gumpel, the writings attributed to Emmerich were "absolutely discarded" by the Vatican as part of her beatification process. Jose Saraiva Martins, who at the time of the beatification of Emmerich was the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared the writings attributed to her the "artistic fantasy of Brentano" and stated that they played no role in her beatification.
Death and burial Emmerich began to grow weaker during the summer of 1823. She died on 9 February 1824 in Dülmen and was buried in the graveyard outside the town, with a large number of people attending her funeral. Her grave was reopened twice in the weeks following the funeral, due to a false rumor that her body had been desecrated and stolen, but the coffin and the body were found to be intact.