Scalpellini da Celvedere, Carlo.

[ECSTASIES AND VISIONS BETWEEN MYSTICAL EROS AND HELLISH TORMENTS – NO COPIES IN NORTH AMERICA] Vita di Francesca Maffei, Vergine Bolognese scritta dal Padre Carlo Scalpellini da Belvedere d' Iesi, Sacerdote de Chierici Regolari Minori [Life of Francesca Maffei, Virgin of Bologna, written by Father Carlo Scalpellini da Belvedere d'Iesi, Priest of the Minor Clerics Regular].

Rome: Appresso gli eredi del Corbelletti, 1664. Small quarto (21.5 × 15 cm). Contemporary full calf over five raised bands; sewn headbands; edges green; [8], 542 [recte 544], [8] pp. with engraved frontis portrait signed B. Thiboust, as well as numerous woodcut vignettes and initials. Pagination jumps back from 473 to 471; early ink ownership note to title: Ad uso di Donna Maria Angela Saty (?)"; endpapers renewed; a few leaves on the inside edge with minimal worm marks; slightly toned and foxstained in some places; one leaf with a tear; else good or better. Item #55215

Only edition of the vita of Francesca Maffei, the virgin from Bologna who died in Rome in 1662. The biography describes in extensive detail her ecstasies and visions, which she had experienced since the age of 12. She would lie completely motionless in church, and even pricks with a needle could not bring her back to a normal state. After these episodes, she reported that she had experienced such love that she desired nothing else but this state. The descriptions are not entirely dissimilar to those of Teresa of Ávila. Francesca is also said to have reported that her heart was literally on fire and that she was completely consumed by love. She also describes her state of ecstasy as ambivalent: “O love, o love, no more, for I can no longer bear it! (...) O love, do not leave me anymore, never again, o God”. It should be noted that both the author and Francesca Maffei were likely familiar with Bernini's group of figures “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,” completed in 1652, in the Roman basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria. Francesca Maffei died in Rome in 1662, where she lived not far from the basilica in Piazza Navona.

However, the Vita not only recounts heavenly visions, but also demonic temptations and apparitions. She claimed to have seen the devil “in the form of hideous animals, snakes, dragons, and rabid dogs”. He also appeared during prayer or standing next to her bed as a “terrible man” who “threatened to kill her”. Sometimes she saw her room in flames, so that she thought she would burn alive. At other times, the house seemed to shake, so that she feared it would collapse and bury her beneath it. Or black shadows, frightening figures, and terrifying voices appeared, trying to prevent her from praying. Also, the devil had shown up to her in the form of a crucified man, “all glowing and with a kind face”.

Divine and demonic visions seemed to alternate. Scarpellini then describes how the heavens opened again and she was shown how the angels “sang hymns of praise and glory to God” (angeli, che cantavano inni di lode e gloria a Dio) and in doing so she “forgot all physical pain and suffering". Then again, the “purgatory with flames and endless torments” (purgatorio con fiamme e tormenti infiniti) opened up to her. While she embraced herself during the heavenly ecstasies, she seemed to beat herself during the demonic apparitions. The Vita reports visible hematomas, and at times her body is said to have been “covered with wounds and marks from scourging”. But after such “struggles”, God had repeatedly comforted her “with many graces and gifts”, “so that it seemed as if the pains were transformed into joy” (dolori si cambissero in contenti).

After a series of such torments are described in detail, there follows a series of visions in which one gains the impression that Christian iconography is being reproduced and relived, as it were. Thus, in the seventeenth century, the depiction of Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child, who is said to have appeared to him when he preached the mystery of the Incarnation, became established. Francesca Maffei is said to have seen the three-year-old Jesus appear to her after Communion, whereupon she “caressed him with loving tenderness and fervent prayers”. Like Bridget of Sweden, she witnesses the birth of Christ and also participates in the arrival of the three kings.

Another time, Jesus had revealed himself to her as a pilgrim, carrying a heavy cross on his back, before settling in her heart to recover from his exertions. Finally, he had planted his cross in her heart. Thus, he had appeared to her "sometimes [...] in radiant glory, sometimes with a suffering face, either with the cross on his shoulder or with a rope around his neck [...], cruelly tied to the pillar of scourging [...], nailed to the cross, completely wet and dripping with blood-red rain, and these drops of blood then all turned into shining and golden rays; another time he showed her his wounds, and from them emanated a glow more beautiful and brighter than the sun; another time she was made worthy to be taken up at his holy side and to taste the joys of paradise from that divine source". Furthermore, a series of visions are described in which the dogmas of the Catholic Church are revealed to her. One chapter describes how “the incomprehensible mystery of the Holy Trinity” (l'incomprensibile mistero della Santissima Trinità) is opened up to her, while another demonstrates the real transformation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ.

The name Francesca Maffei does not appear in the secondary literature available to us. Her ecstasies and visions were probably literally filed away. With the increase in pictorial representations of such visions in the seventeenth century, such experiences also became widespread among the population. However, the Church viewed such reports with great skepticism, and they could have serious consequences for those who spoke of them. While Teresa of Avila's description of a love that flooded through her after a golden dart pierced her heart was an important piece of evidence in her canonization process, the authorities could not help but associate it with physical, earthly eros. Making such a vision public could have consequences quite different from those of canonization. In 1649, the Franciscan nun Juana Asensi was put on trial in Valencia and then convicted after she confessed that Christ had touched her body in a vision, “face to face, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, and so on for the other parts of the body”. (Quoted from Victor Stoichita, Das mystische Auge: Vision und Malerei im Spanien des Goldenen Zeitalters, Munich 1997, p. 124f.)

Modernism ultimately saw in the example of Teresa's ecstasy a way of interpreting the increasingly alien religious experience through biological and thus scientifically accessible phenomena (see Richard von Krafft Ebbing, Psychopathia sexualis, Stuttgart 1907, p. 10). Conversely, the Catholic-influenced surrealist Georges Bataille found confirmation in Teresa's “mystical eros” that physical libido ultimately eludes scientific understanding (ibid., L'Érotisme, Paris 1975). Bataille tentatively circles around this topic and identifies two pitfalls to be avoided. On the one hand, the phenomena should not be explained away by psychiatry; on the other hand, the physical-sexual dimension should not be completely absorbed into the spirit. The forgotten life of Francesca Maffei opens up a further perspective on this much-discussed phenomenon of female mysticism in the early modern period.

As of March 2026, KVK, OCLC show two copies outside of Italy and France, and none in North America.

Price: €2,500.00

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