Crescentia von Kaufbeuren’s controversial vision of the Holy Spirit. Unrecorded.
[Crescentia von Kaufbeuren]. Der Göttliche heilige Geist, wie er der Frommen Mutter Crescentia zu Kauffbeÿrn nach ihrer eignen Aussage, solle erscheinen seÿn. S.l.: “Slr. Sc.,” s.a. [late 18th century]. [13.8 x 8.7 cm], [1] f. engraving. Some mostly marginal staining.
Unrecorded 18th-century engraving depicting, as the German caption reads, “The Divine Holy Spirit, as it was said to have appeared to the pious Mother Crescentia von Kaufbeuren according to her own account.”
Crescentia von Kaufbeuren’s (1682-1744) visions of the Holy Spirit as an androgynous youth dressed in a gown, with curly hair and with seven flames hovering around his head, caused some theological controversy given that her account greatly differed from the traditional image of the dove suggested by the Gospels (a dove descended at Christ’s baptism in the River Jordan) and which was widely taken up by later art.
Visions of the androgynous youth regularly appeared to Crescentia in her childhood and even more frequently after she entered the convent. Eventually the painter Joseph Ruffini (d. 1749) was brought in to make a sort of forensic sketch of the Holy Spirit based on Crescentia’s description. The image soon proliferated in engravings (by Belling, Störcklin, Sondermayr and others), although typically without reference to Maria Crescentia as its visionary originator. The engraving here is signed by a certain “Slr” (“Slr sc[ulpsit]”), whom I have not been able to identify.
Third Order Regular sister Maria Crescentia (1682-1744) was born Anna Höff in Kaufbeuren (Bavaria). In early life she worked as a weaver and aspired to join the Franciscan Tertiaries in town, but she did not have the proper dowry. In 1703 the mayor of Kaufbeuren donated a tavern to the convent with the condition that she be accepted into the community. There she took the name Maria Crescentia and initially was met with much resentment from her fellow sisters of higher social standing. She soon gained a reputation for hard work and wise counsel (and as a mystic), and she was eventually elected mother superior in 1741.
A 1775 canonization process for Maria Crescentia faltered in that era of secularizing movements. She was beatified in 1900 and at last canonized in 2001. (Somewhat controversially, one of her qualifying miracles was that her body, preserved in the Crescentiakloster in Kaufbeuren, was said to have protected the town from allied bombing during the Second World War.)
This print is not located by OCLC or KVK, nor have I seen them reproduced in the literature on Maria Crescentia (similar designs are known, however).
* Karl Pörnbacher, Die heilige Crescentia Höß von Kaufbeuren; Karl Kosel, “Crescentia Höß von Kaufbeuren (1682-1744): Zur Ikonographie ihrer Visionen,” Jahrbuch des Vereins für Augsburger Bistumsgeschichte e.V., vol 28 (1994), pp. 277-300, and vol. 32 (1998), pp. 219-41; Hans Albrecht Oehler, “Der Heilige Geist als Jüngling: Die Visionen der seligen Crescentia von Kaufbeuren im süddeutschen Barock,” Das Münster, vol. 15, no. 4 (1998), pp. 316-326; François Boespflug, Dieu dans l’art: ‘Sollicitudini nostrae’ de Benoît XIV (1745) et l’affaire Crescence de Kaufbeuren; A. M. Miller, Die heilige Crescentia von Kaufbeuren: Das Leben einer schwäbischen Mystikerin; R. Gläser, Die selige Crescentia von Kaufbeuren: Leben, Worte, Schriften und Lehre.