Mother and Tertiary (1769–1837)
Celebration on june 9th.
In the Perfume, from Rome, Louis Veuillot devotes a few touching pages to the soul of’Anna-Maria.
The one whose unseemly name is declared to the world twenty-five years after his death, he wrote, was, by his social condition, a little less than’a simple woman. She was an indigent woman, married to a man of pain, at the Chigi Palace. Thirty years ago, she was seen by the streets, old, crippled, going to visit Our Lord or in a church or on a bed of Sufrance. His poorness corrects, a certain burst of majesty, a certain look of the pasants excised the’attention of the foreign’. He meant to say with respect, sometimes with derivation : « C’est la Sainte ! »
Childhood. – Marriage.
This « Sainte » was born in Siena, Tuscany, on May 29, 1769. His parents, having had sudden setbacks, left their homeland, and, on foot like beggars, came to Rome to hide their misery and seek work. They lived near the SAINTE-Marie des Monts church, where they met Saint Benedict-Joseph Labre.
Luigi Gianetti, the father, obtained a place as a domestic in a good maysson. The mother, Maria Masi, was able to have her services accepted here and there, and the’child, then five years old, was freely admitted to the family Maestre pius (Mistresses magpies) of via Graziosa.
Anna-Maria was a charming little girl, of a little ordinary distinction in a child of the people, intelligent, lively, always cheerful and caring. The trampled’ still prevailed in her on the graces of the young age, and she grew in the’innocence.
At thirteen, she was placed in a work-room where she was occupied in deviating silk, and six years later she entered as a maid at the palace Mutti, where his father was. This is where’elle knew Domenico Taigi, a man of pain at the Chigi Palace, of whom she became the’'s wife, after having prayed and taken the’ opinion of her parents and confessor. She was almost twenty-one years old.
The wedding took place in the’ parish church of Saint-Marcel, on January 7, 1790. On that day Anna-Mary made to God the sacrifice of her own volition in favor of him who deverenched the consort of his life.
The couple’ was not of those that’on is convex to’appel assorted.
The characteristics, tastes, and habits of both spouses were quite different; there was almost an abyss between the delight of’Anna-Maria and the harshness of Domenico; and ; she was quick to understand things, her husband was slow to understand them; she was kind and flexible, he was facilely stubborn and violent.
Domenico Taigi was, it is true, erasing these defects by a sinister trampled, a great love of duty and a beautiful blow of heart. Their union was grim, Domenico liked to go in public with his young wife, elegant and well put. Although poor, he had finished him, according to’usage, some more sought-after adornments, and Anna-Maria, to please him, allowed herself for some time to go to slight vanishments. But soon cruel anxieties enveloped his delicate soul.
Anna Maria becomes Tertiary Trinitarian.
One day, pressed by grace, she came to entrust her remorse to a priest of the’church Saint Marcel. There she resolved to live only for God and to become a saint. Returning to her maysson, she flattered her rudely, and, renouncing from that moment on her adornments, she put on, like a woman of the people, a simple and coarse dress.
Anna-Maria felt the need to rap ⁇ procher still davanstage of God; she S’en opened to her confessor, Father. Angelo :
– I feel a very strong desire to me’offer to the Lord, she says, ''I, in such a way as to appear to him without return and to be before him as a victim atoning for so many sins that are being committed in the world.
– C’is bien, then repon ⁇ dits le P. Angelo ; obtain from your husband the permission of Tertiary deverence. Yes, indeed, it’is God who wants you ain ⁇ si, that’is to say, religious in the middle of the century.
Very devout to the Most Holy Trinity, she obtained from her husband the permission to take the’ of the Tertiary of the fallen Trinitarians, and, from that day on, her prayers were longer, her more rigorous penitences, her loyalty to all her duties as a more absolutist Christian woman. From then on, Our-Lord favoured these commutianities that’he was once associated with Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Therese and so many other Saints.
Miraculous sun.
God performed in favor of his faithful servant a miracle unique in its kind and whose effects were handled in an incessant way, leaning forty-seven years, until the death of the Blessed One.
He granted her the pervasive vision of’a luminous globe, in which she read the diverse needs of the souls that’elle would shake, the’s state of sinners, the perils of the’Eglise, she said, in a word, all that for which she demanded to suffer and atone.
It’ was a luminous disc, of the granulosity of the sun natuirel, surrounded by its rays. At the’ end of the upper rays was a large neck of’epines between. From the two extremities of the neck there were two very long spines, like two yards, whose arched points came to believe themselves under the solar disk and came out on both sides of the rays. In the center, a beautiful woman was seated majestically, her eyes raised to the sky and in the’ attitude of ecstatic contemplaition.
Anna Taigi saw for the first time this strange phoenomene shortly after his admission as a Trinitarian Tertiary, as a result of’a sanghlante dis ⁇ pline that’elle had just imposed.
– Mon Dieu ! s’he exclaimed at once, wouldn't this be a deception of the demon ?
Her leaders, to whom she hid nothing, and God himself in her intimate affairs, reassured her.
She noticed that the light, dazzling as’elle was, was tainted by a few shadows; at the same time, an inner voice taught him that the ray of this clarity would augment as’elle purified its heart. By this means she received all her life new impulses towards holiness.
We can say, with Louis Veuillot, that’elle saw all things in it: things accommodated, things anticipated, things to come revealed themselves to his gaze with their most extensive circumstances
All day, she could take a look’ on this sun always present. But it’is especially in the evening, in the long hours of vigil, when the pious woman recited her habitable prayers, that God did not make naturelous or allegogous figures before her. Often God gave the’ explanation to his servant, which sometimes he let her in the’ ignorance, but he did not want it unless’on took note, because’ someday the’ event would make known the meaning.
If Anna-Maria wanted to see in her sun a deterrent object, for example the answer to a question that had been submitted to her, the’ state of a soul for which she wanted to pray, any strange image was disperse and the sought object was immediately pre-disparse.
People of the world and people, religious people, prelates and princes of the’Eglise, political men, came to consult her. A French diplomat to whom she revealed the secrets of European politics, like those of her conscience, said :
– She has the whole world under her eyes, as I’ai my tabaholete in hand.
As soon as the’on knew, in Rome, this gift of God's servant, priests worthy of all trust were placed near’ in qua'lity of confidants. L’un d’ux, Bishop Natali, who knew her for thirty years, had set his mind to collect all the comments he received from God.
Anna-Maria, always obedient, and whatever’il cost her, made known to whom by right, with a scrupucheuse loyalty, the extraordinary favors of which she was the’ object.
His sufferings.
The immediate result of his visions was to give an aliment to the thirst for’expiation of the servant of God. As soon as’elle had seen a soul in sufrance, a peril for the’Church, a good to be obtained, she began to pray, offering to God her almost contiguous fast, his disciplines and the suffrances which Providence never spared him.
She had long intervals of distressing spiritual dryness: she endured contradictions, calumnies, insults. Her body was tried in all its senses. She suffered continuously from heads which became more painful on Friday afternoons. Her eyes were as if pierced with sharp points which were a continuous torment to her. One of her hands received the power to heal the sick, but, by a sort of compensation, this same hand consistently made her experience acute suffering. Finally, various illnesses came to visit her and made her poor body a ruin long nailed to a pallet.
In her pain, Anna-Maria remained calm, sustained by this thought: "It is for God that I suffice; it is for such and such a soul that I atone." Sometimes, she was heard to cry out suddenly:
– Ab! let us thank the Lord and his most holy Mother! At this moment, the sick person is confessing, he is a soul won over to God.
The wife. – The daughter. – The mother.
From the first day, Anna-Maria studied to render to her husband the most complete obedience, as to a representative of God, His wishes and even his whims seemed sacred to her. Understanding where her duty lay, she even knew how to renounce her devotion to please him.
At the beginning of their marriage, the Taigis lived in a small apartment on the ground floor of Palazzo Chigi. But a few years later, because of their many children, they moved to a poor house located in Via dei Santi Apostoli, not far from the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata.
Every day, the servant of the princes Chigi returned from work very late, sometimes at 2 a.m. When he returned, he always found his wife praying or working while waiting for him.
Sometimes, when I came in, he said, to change my clothes, I found the house full of people. Immediately my wife would leave all these people there, lords and prelates, who came to consult her, and would hasten to run to dry me and serve me with affability and contentment.
The gentleness and virtue of his companion soon took such an influence over Domenico that he did nothing without her consent.
However, there was no lack of discord in the Taigi household. With her husband's consent, Anna-Maria give her mother mercy, and her father also often came to visit her. The somewhat odd character of the in-laws and the proud temper of the son-in-law were bound to cause inevitable conflicts in the household, which she always managed to resolve amicably.
In his old age, Anna Maria's father, embraced and burdened with disabilities, had become unbearably ill-tempered to anyone but his holy daughter. She did her utmost to please him, cared for him as if he were a young child, and still found in her heart a kind word to comfort him.
She prepared him to receive the last sacraments, and when he had broken his last, she wanted to procure many prayers for his soul. She did the same for her mother.
Seven children were born of our marriage, Domenico says in one of his depositions, four boys and three girls. All these children were breastfed by the servant of God. She took care to have them baptized as soon as they were born and confirmed in due time; she took every means to properly instruct her sounds and daughters for the first confession and the first Communion. Thanks to her vigilance, all our children have had a regular and Christian conduct.
She carried caution very far in all that concerned modesty. Not only did she make the boys sleep in a room separate from that of her daughters, but she surrounded each bed with curtains. Morning and evening she went around the little alcohols to teach her children to get up and go to bed under the gauze of God. This was the moment she thing, preferably in the evening, to make, if necessary, to one or the other, some reproach for the shortcomings of the day; then she signed their foreheads with holy water, recommending them to God and to the Virgin Mary, and she kissed them tenderly.
Work.
His house was quite like a small monastery where everything, prayer, work, meals, recreation, took place at fixed times.
In the morning, before daybreak, she went to church. After receiving her God and hearing Holy Mass, she came to wake up her children, made them recite prayers, prepared their lunch, took the little ones to school, arranged work for the older girls to whom she herself gave religious education and the first notions of manual work. Then she put her whole house in order. "She worked, washed and cleaned with an activity that could have fired four women" says Domenico. The rest of the time, she was almost always found sitting at her little work table on which was a work basket, a Crucifix and a rosary. She was never seen.
She was also skilled in all sorts of work. At the time of the French invasion in 1798, food became excessively extensive and Domenico Taigi saw part of his emoluments cut. To provide for her family, the Blessed One fashioned corsets, petticoats, boots, slippers and other objects that she managed to sell at a fair good price. In this way, the Taigis got through this hour of crisis without too much anxiety.
During the meal, the active mother almost never sat at the common table. Always on her feet, she busied herself with serving her mother, her husband and her children. She gave the others healthy and abundant food; for her part, she ate little and was content with coarse foods, sometimes even with spoiled scraps.
After the meal, during the hours of the siesta so dear to every Italian, she opened a book of piety and entered into prayer.
His selflessness.
As assured resources, the Blessed had most often only the six crowns that Domenico earned per month and the product of her own work. She often found herself in difficulty in paying her rent and meeting the most urgent needs. In this case, she would go to pray fervently in a church, and say to the Lord with complete abandonment: "Your unworthy serving awaits from you, O my God, this day's bread." Her trust was never disappointed. Providence feels her what was necessary, sometimes in a wonderful way.
Many times this poor household had the opportunity to enrich itself: it would have been enough for the Blessed One to open her hand. The Queen of Etruria, cured by her of a cruel illness, said to her one day, while opening a drawer full of gold:
Take, take, Anna mia.
"How simple you are, Madam!" replied Anna Taigi. "I serve a Master who is much richer than you. I trust in him, and he provides for my daily needs."
She then offered him a good position with a higher salary for Domenico. Anna-Maria thanks him politically in these terms:
– No, no. I pray Your Majesty to leave us in our media. The Lord wants us in the state we are in; I have complete confidence in his help.
She would not even receive money to distribute to the poor, so as, she said, “not to strain from the royal path of poverty.”
It was not that she was not interested in the fate of the poor; despite her family responsibilities, she helped them in every way. Learning one day that her mother had refused alms to a beggar, she was saddened:
– In the name of heaven, my good mother, she said, do not send away a poor man without giving him charity. If nothing else, you will always find bread in this cupboard.
Even more often, she paid in person; she was often called to the sick. She went there immediately, whatever the weather.
When her daughter Sofia became a widow, Anna Maria suddenly welcomed the poor mother with her six children, and even a maid who Sofia had had had to procure, into her house. Sofia hesitated to impose such a burden on her mother:
“What are you thinking about, my daughter?” she replied; “that you have little confidence in God! You know very well that he never abandons anyone. God will think about it; you will have everything you need.”
Other heavenly favors. – His death.
This is how Anna Maria Taigi appeared in the interior of the domestic hearth. Of her ecstasies, her raptures, her supernatural gifts, Domenico had hardly any suspicion.
However, these phenomena were not rare. Wherever she was, she would suddenly find herself motionless, deprived of her senses, her eyes fixed on an invisible object. Domenico would then call her, and, receiving no answer, would shake her violently. Sometimes, convinced that she was unwell, he urged her to take sedatives. Finally, seeing that this was usual, he attributed these accidents to simple drowsiness; and when his wife, having come to herself, suddenly summarized her gaiety and smile, he would say to her:
– How can you sleep at the table? You see to be completely sleep!
Anna-Maria's youngest daughter, refrigerated, cried out one day when she saw that her mother had no more signs of life:
– Mom is dead!… Mom is dead!…
– No, Sofia told him, more perceptive, Mom is praying.
The Blessed One tried to let nothing of these supernatural favors show, but she did not always succeed. She hid with more success her mortifications, the hair shirts adorned with sharp points, the iron chains with which she girded herself, the bloody disciplines she infected on herself, the Crown of Thorns that she wore under her headdress.
On May 10, 1836, while she was praying at St. Paul Outside the Walls, before a Crucifix that she particularly venerated, Anna Maria heard an interior voice say to her: “My daughter, soon you will be with me in my kingdom.”
Having fallen ill on the following October 26, she took to her bed and remained so for many months, tortured by cruel suffering. Every day, Bishop Natali celebrated Mass in his modest oratory and give her Holy Communion. After receiving Extreme Unction, she died on Friday, June 9, 1837. She was sixty eight years old.
Her funeral took place at Santa Maria via Lata, her parish, and her body was taken to the cemetery of Campo Verano, where her tomb soon became a place of pilgrimage, and then, in 1855, to the church of Santa Maria della Paz. The cause of the Servant of God was introduced on January 8, 1863, and the Superior General of the Trinitarians was appointed postulator. Two years later, on July 10, 1865, the remains of Anna Maria Taigi were taken to the church of San Chrysogono in Trastevere, served by the Trinitarians. This is where they rest definitively. Anna Maria Taigi was beatified by Benedict XV on May 3, 1920 , 9, and her feast day is set for June for the Roman Clergy.
Domenico on ⁇ cut a dozen of’years to his wife. He could only talk about it’in pouring tears of’ tenderening, and then tarnished invaririally his conversions by this sentence :
– Yes, verified, it’was a good woman.
AE A.
Sources consulted. – P. Callixte de La Providence, Trinitaire, Vie de la venerable Anna-Maria Taigi (Paris, 1878). – Louis Veuillot, Le Parfum de Rome (t. II). – P. Gabriel Bouffier, SJ, La, venerable servant of God Anna-Maria Taigi (Paris, 1901). – C sse de Courson, Anna- Maria Taigi (in Contemporary, n° 980). – (VSBP, n bones 1203 And 1204.)
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