Fragrant Odors Immortalize a Virgin Name
These passages come from annals of the First English Carmel (or Carmelite convent) founded in Antwerp in 1619. Beginning with the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, some dispossessed English nuns joined convents abroad or banded together to attempt to continue a contemplative life; some daughters of English exiles entered local cloisters. Then, in the late sixteenth century, women began to found expatriate English cloisters. There were three by 1610; foundations peaked in the 1620s; ultimately, twenty-two contemplative houses were founded in France, the southern Netherlands, and Portugal between 1591 and 1710 (Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents in France and the Low Countries [Basingstoke, U.K., and New York, 2005]).
An account of the death of Anne of the Ascension, First Prioress at Antwerp (1588-1644)
[She was] very dangerously sick of the small pox, which was painful to her by reason of her weakness, so that the doctors did wonder she could live, suffering so much. It happened, being the time of evening song, that there was only one religious with her, who must go out of the room upon some occasion, & when she returned there was such a sweet smell as filled the whole room. It was well perceived, for it continued near half an hour and there came diverse of the religious into the room and did smell it, and some said they would not believe but that our Holy Mother was or had been there. … [Sister Anne of the Ascension herself] said that she did believe her Blessed Mother had been there, but she had not seen her, and that she did leave that sweet smell that the religious might take no hurt by the illness … This strengthened her so much that what was so loathsome to her before did now give her interior comfort … That which was strange that they who washed the linen that came from the sick have often affirmed that they smelled a sweet smell which did comfort them when they prepared to wash it …
An Appendix to the Life of Mother Mary Xaveria. An incorrupt body is found in a dead vault of ye Monastery of Antwerp as she had foretold
[Nuns find that a body buried in the crypt has not decayed. The body is that of Margaret Wake, Mother Mary Marguerite of the Angels. This supposedly incorrupt body was found in 1716.]
The Prelate with his secretary came within an hour to the convent … He was met by the Confessor, three doctors, and a surgeon. The body was removed out of the dead-vault, which was dark, moist and wet, into an adjoining cellar that it might be examined more conveniently … Then his Lordship and the doctors went with the workmen into the vault to examine the grave... also the other coffins...and found those that were last buried corrupted, the other quite consumed. Being returned, he ordered the surgeon to make an incision in the pit of the stomach, through which they discovered the diaphragm perfectly sound. The Prelate put his hand into the wound...and perceived a balsamic1 smell proceeding from the body, which his fingers retained two or three days though he washed them several times. Upon this strict examination, the doctors and surgeon declared that a corruption had never entered that body …
[They declared] it must be supernatural, leaving it to the divines to determine whether it was to be termed miraculous …
1. “Balsamic” means having the delicate smell of balsam, an essential perfume oil usually from various trees. It can mean more generally deliciously fragrant as well as soothing, restorative or healing.