Augustine writes on the heart of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. Unrecorded.

[Writing] / [Nuns] / [Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi]. S. Maria Magdalena de Pazzi S. Augustino Verbum Caro Factum Est. S.l. [Antwerp]: Jac. de Man, s.a. [between 1676 and 1719]. [9.5 x 6.9 cm], [1] engraving on laid paper, with contemporary hand-color. Minor dustiness, colors still fresh.

Unrecorded circa-1700 engraving by the Antwerp printer-publisher Jacques de Man (d. 1719)—here in an example in contemporary hand-color—depicting an unusual scene of writing practice, namely the vision of the Carmelite nun Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566-1607) in which St. Augustine wrote with a quill on her heart the words “Verbo Caro Factum Est” (“The Word Made Flesh,” John 1:14). The event is rarely depicted in art.

“Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, a Counter-Reformation mystic who twice experienced visions in which Augustine wrote the words ‘Verbum caro factum est’ on her heart-first in letters of blood and then in gold. In continuity with medieval nuns, the Italian Carmelite thought of Saint Augustine as the ultimate contemplative lover. Not only did she regard him as her spiritual father, but she declared that he had penetrated even deeper into divine love than Saint John, because the evangelist merely wrote the sacred gospel of the Incarnation whereas Augustine had expounded its meaning. In this scene of mystical inscription, the bishop becomes a chosen instrument of the god of love, while the quill that opens Maria Maddalena’s heart again recalls the traditional arrow as well as the lance that pierced Christ’s heart (B. Newman, p. 275; see also V. Puccini, The Life of St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, a Carmelite Nun [1687], p. 58-59).

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566-1607) was a Florentine noblewoman, Carmelite nun, and mystic, who was celebrated for her extreme mortification of the flesh. She wore a crown of thorns and a corset of nails, read the thoughts of others, predicted future, walked barefoot through the snow, dripped hot wax onto her body, licked the wounds of the diseased, etc. She was beatified in 1626, canonized in 1669.

No copies of this print are located by OCLC or KVK, nor is it recorded at the University of Antwerp (Ruusbroec Institute Library) or at the Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, which are the principal repositories of such prints.

* Barbara Newman, “Love’s Arrows: Christ as Cupid in Late Medieval Art and Devotion,” in The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, Jeffrey F. Hamburger & Anne-Marie Bouché, eds., pp. 263-86; E.-H. van Heurck, “Les images de dévotion Anversoises,” De Gulden Passer, vol. 8 (1930), pp. 67-166, esp. p. 135-6 (on J. de Man); Clare Copeland, Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi; Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi tra Sei e Settecento; Chiara Vasciaveo, ed., Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Detti e preghiere nella testimonianza delle prime Sorelle.