Magdalene of Canossa

Description

Magdalena di Canossa (1 March 1774 – 10 April 1835) was an Italian professed religious and foundress of the two Canossian congregations. Magdalena was a leading advocate for the poor in her region after she witnessed first hand the plight of the poor following the spillover effects of the French Revolution into the Italian peninsula through the Napoleonic invasion of the northern territories. Canossa collaborated with humanitarians such as Leopoldina Naudet and Antonio Rosmini in her mission of promoting the needs of the poor and setting a new method of religious life for both men and women.

Her beatification was celebrated in Rome on 7 December 1941 and she was later canonized as a saint in Saint Peter’s Square on 2 October 1988.

Magdalene of Canossa was born on 1 March 1774 in Verona to the Marquis Ottavio di Canossa (1740 – 1 October 1779) and Teresa Szluha (3 January 1753 – 19 May 1807; a Hungarian countess). An ancestor was the Countess Matilda Canossa who helped facilitate the meeting between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV. Her parents married in August 1770 in Odenburg. Their first two children Carlo Vincenzo (1771) died soon after his birth and therefore she was the third-born after Laura Maria (1772; an arrival poorly appreciated). She was baptized on 2 March 1774.

Her mother later gave birth to another son who died right after the birth. But in 1776 the male heir that her parents desired was born – Boniface – and after him two other girls (Rosa in 1777 and Leonora in 1779). In 1779 her father died in an accident while at a villa on vacation in Grezzano. In 1781 her mother left their palace and married the widower Marquis Odoardo Zanetti from Mantua on 25 August with the permission of her father-in-law. The children were placed under the guardianship of their uncle Girolamo.

From 2 May 1791 she spent ten months in a Carmelite convent but discerned that this was not her vocation so returned home and undertook the running of her large estate; her time in the convent caused her to miss her sister’s wedding on 3 October 1791. In 1797 Napoleon was a guest at their palace where she received him; he returned as a guest twice more in 1805 and 1807.

Canossa saw her town as one in which the poor suffered and grew worse due to all the social upheavals caused as a result of the invasions of the French forces and the opposing forces of the Austrian Empire which would gain control of Verona. This situation provoked her desire to serve the needs of the unfortunate. Canossa studied under the Carmelites in Trent and then at Conegliano.