Levitating “Extreme Ascetic Bilocator”: Engraving dedicated to her Inquisitor.
[Luisa de la Ascensión] / Jan-Baptist Barbé. R. P. Petro Balbas ord: Minorum Com[m]issario in ca[us]a M. Ludovicae de Ascensione ord: S. Clarae hanc ipsius iconem. D.D.C.Q. [“Dat, Dicat, Consecratque”] Io. Bap.ta Barbé Iconographus Antwerpiae Qui fecit et excudit c[um] privilegio. S.l. [Antwerp]: Jan-Baptist Barbé, s.a. [c. 1643]. [ x cm], [1] f. engraving. Only minor edge wear.
Extraordinary, unrecorded engraving depicting Ludovica de Ascensione (1565-1636)—a Spanish nun and mystic born as Luisa Ruiz de Colmenares—levitating in front of an altar while tiny crosses rain down from heaven into an open chest. Luisa has been called an “extreme ascetic bilocator” (C. Eire, p. 280), and was renowned for her healing powers, levitation, self-mortification, generation of blessed trinkets, bilocation across Europe and to Japan and the Americas, and ability to survive without eating (see below).
The copperplate for this print, as we read in its inscription, was engraved by the Antwerp printmaker Jan-Baptist Barbé (1578–1649) and dedicated by him to Fray Pedro de Balbás. Balbás was tasked by the Inquisition with reviewing the final, posthumous charges against Luisa between 1643 and 1648 (for claiming not to eat). One imagines that Barbé was hoping for a verdict that would lead to Luisa’s canonization, instead of the tepid acquittal that eventually came. This print would reward further study.
Carlos Eire has recently examined the story of Luisa de la Ascensión in his excellent They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023) (pp. 280-88), and I quote here his passage that helps to explain the iconography of our print: “The most impressive proof of Luisa’s widespread reputation as a living saint, by far, could be found scattered throughout the Catholic world in innumerable small objects connected to her—sacramentalia—which were highly sought after and fervently collected as divine talismans: small crosses, rosary beads, medals and cards imprinted with her image, cloth patches, and other trinkets that she had supposedly touched and blessed and which she claimed had been taken up to heaven by angels and brought back to earth loaded with divine graces. Some of the crosses had her name inscribed on them, and some of the images depicted Sor Luisa trampling on a large reptilian beast resembling a serpent or dragon, an allusion to similar images of the Immaculate Conception. All sorts of wondrous feats and miracles would be attributed to Luisa through such objects, and through her intercession, including innumerable healing cures, some resurrections from the dead, and the release of countless souls from purgatory. Luisa generated many of these talismans herself and was behind their distribution, ostensibly as an act of obedience to her confessors, who had ordered her to do this. According to her, the divine graces conferred by her crosses and beads were a gift that came directly from God, assured by promises made to her while she was enraptured. These sacred objects were in high demand. A priest at the parish church of San Miguel in Madrid boasted of a shrine he had filled with Luisa’s crosses, rosary beads, medals, images, and cloths. And a duke claimed to have 2,000 crosses he had obtained from Luisa herself. Obviously, these sacramentalia had acquired a value similar to that of relics, or identical to them, for their ostensibly heavenly provenance imbued them with the power to convey indulgences and divine favors” (pp. 283-84).
In a final process, Inquisitors gave “Fray Pedro de Balbás the difficult task of drafting a review, which he completed in 1643. Moving at a snail’s pace, the Inquisition finally issued a definitive sentence on May 23, 1648, declaring Luisa innocent of any fraudulence or wrongdoing and, at the very same time, ordering ‘in totum’ the annihilation of all objects connected to her, including beads, crosses, images, relics, and such, as well as all books and other texts on her life and miracles and anything else linked to her” (E. Eire, pp. 288).
“In 1609, at the age of forty-four, as her fame kept increasing, Luisa was elected abbess of her convent, a post she would hold until 1617, and it seemed she was on her way to rivaling or eclipsing the feats of many previous saints, including Saint Teresa of Avila. King Philip III held her in high esteem, as did Pope Gregory XV and many other luminaries of church and state. Pilgrims flocked to the convent of Santa Clara from all corners of Iberia and from other lands as well. Then, suddenly, in 1611, as a bolt out of the blue, six nuns at Santa Clara denounced her as a fraud to the inquisitor general, Bernardo Sandoval de Rojas … Their charge was very specific and limited solely to her claim that all she ever consumed were the consecrated hosts she received in communion, the heavenly morsels provided by angels, and an occasional sip of water … The convent of Santa Clara immediately became a vortex of recriminations” (C. Eire, pp. 280-88).
The final quarter century of Luisa’s life was consumed by the Inquisition. She died of malaria in 1636 at the Augustinian convent in Valladolid.
Note that the inscription at the top of the engraving, “Benedictionem d[a]bi[t] leg[is]lator Ps. 83,” (“For the lawgiver shall give a blessing” [Psalm 83:8, Douay-Rheims]) refers to the role of Fray Pedro de Balbás as Inquisitorial judge.
This engraving is not located by OCLC or KVK, nor have I encountered it in the literature on Luisa de la Ascensión or Jan-Baptist Barbé.
*Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible; Pedro de Balbas, Memorial informativo en defensa de Sor Luisa de la Ascensión (Madrid: Diego Díaz de la Carrera, 1643); García Barriúso, La monja de Carrión.
They Flew:
I continue to quote Carlos Eire at length, because I cannot improve on his treatment of Luisa: “Sor Luisa came to be known simply as the Nun of Carrión due to the location of her convent of Saint Clare, which was in northern Castile, in the town of Carrión de los Condes … the bilocations she supposedly achieved were among the most extreme ever reported, and her inedia—her ability to survive without eating—was as extreme as that of María de la Visitación, the diabolical abbess of Córdoba. Curiously, as in the case of María de la Visitación, it was the claim of inedia that eventually brought ruin to the Nun of Carrión, not any of her other claims, even those of multiple far-flung bilocations. Sor Luisa and María de Ágreda both belonged to the same branch of the Franciscan Conceptionist Poor Clares, befriended Kings of Spain (Philip III and Philip IV), and were enthusiastic promoters of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Both were authors, although Sor Luisa’s writings were limited to mystical love poetry. Both levitated, too, and gained fame for their ecstasies, visions, prophecies, and their numerous bilocations. After receiving a visit from King Philip III in 1613, Luisa remained in touch with him, and in return he showered her convent and the town of Carrión with favors. In addition to supposedly bilocating to Philip’s deathbed in Madrid in 1621, she also ostensibly bilocated to Japan in 1615 to comfort a martyr; to Rome to save Pope Gregory XV from poisoning; to Assisi to venerate Saint Francis at his tomb; to a battlefield in Flanders to cheer Catholic soldiers fighting Protestants; to the Battle of White Mountain near Prague to encourage Catholic troops to a pivotal victory over Protestants; and, most amazingly, to New Mexico many times, where she served as a missionary to the Jumano Indians. Some reports would even pair her up with María de Ágreda, as co-missionaries, and initially, the Franciscans in New Mexico assumed that the so-called Lady in Blue mentioned by the Jumanos must have been Sor Luisa, rather than Sor María. Due to her fame, it is highly likely that Luisa inspired María of Ágreda, who was thirty-seven years younger and undoubtedly familiar with her miraculous exploits, especially her bilocations.
“Luisa Colmenares Cabezón was born in 1565 in Madrid … Intensely pious from an early age, Luisa was sent to live with a widowed aunt in Carrión in 1582, at the age of seventeen. Gradually attracted by the contemplative life of the nuns at the Franciscan convent of Santa Clara, which she visited often, Luisa joined that community in 1584, taking the religious name of Luisa de la Ascensión … From the very start, Luisa displayed a penchant for eating as little as possible and doing so on the floor rather than at a table. Sometime around 1595, she stopped eating altogether—or seemed to—except for the communion wafer offered to her daily at Mass, as well as morsels of heavenly food provided to her by angels. In addition to fasting, Luisa scourged herself bloody every day, wore tight iron rings around her neck, along with prickly hair shirts and metal breastplates studded with sharp barbs, and slept for only a few hours each night on a wooden plank on the floor. Sometimes she would prostrate herself on the floor at doorways and ask the other nuns to step on her as they entered or left the room. In addition, she spent many hours in her cell at night stretched out on the floor, on a life-size cross, praying, and carrying that fifty-pound cross around, too, dragging it up and down the stairs on her bare knees. She also claimed that she was constantly attacked by demons who pummeled her with iron bars and chains, knocked out her teeth, and ripped out her fingernails and toenails. Witnesses who would later testify to the Inquisition said that demons had thrown her down the stairs, knocked her off her choir seat, tossed her from one room to another, and bitten off pieces of her flesh. … Sor Luisa became something of an expert demonologist as a result of these encounters and also a successful exorcist. As could often happen with ascetic nuns, Luisa also began to experience prolonged cataleptic ecstasies and raptures, during which she was impervious to pain, even when pricked with pins or singed by flames. Her ecstasies could occur anywhere and leave her frozen in strange awkward poses. Her levitations were slight, but, as in the case of other levitators, her body seemed to become weightless and could be blown about easily. Sometimes, she was seen levitating along with her life-size cross, giving viewers the impression that she was actually nailed to it, as if crucified. Cataleptic raptures also occurred in chapel every day after she took communion, and these could be witnessed by outside visitors, some of whom traveled from faraway locations just to view her in ecstasy through the comulgatorio window. Luisa also claimed to have received invisible stigmata when she was only four or five years old that caused her intense pain every Thursday and Friday, as well as other constant pains that rivaled those of many martyrs. Luisa’s reputation as a miracle-working mystic and living saint grew gradually, first within the convent and, eventually, beyond its walls."