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Document Details : Title: The Earliest Version of the 'Memoires' Concerning Mary Margaret of the Angels (Maria Margaretha der Engelen), the 'Holy Nun of Oirschot' (1605-1658) Author(s): LINDEIJER, Marc Journal: Ons Geestelijk Erf Volume: 90 Issue: 1-2 Date: 2019-2020 Pages: 104-177 DOI: 10.2143/OGE.90.1.3288401 Abstract : Although one of the most remarkable Catholics of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, the Discalced Carmelite Sister Mary Margaret of the Angels (1605-1658) has not been the subject of a scholarly biography yet. The main sources published thus far are the printed biography by Jean Joseph de Loyac (1661) and two manuscript biographies, dated 1711-1712 and edited by Daniel Papebroch (1711) and Carlos De Clercq (1965). To this, we can now add the earliest Life written in 1658 by Sister Maria Theresa of Jesus and Joseph, Mary Margaret’s successor as vicar of the Oirschot Carmel. It was most probably the basis of Loyac’s biography and certainly influenced the various Lives written around 1700 by Sister Angelica of the Incarnation, a niece of Mary Margaret. This article presents a critical edition of the 1658 Life, a 28-page manuscript kept in the Roman Archives of the Discalced Carmelites, together with an English translation, so as to make accessible to a wider audience the fascinating figure of the ‘Holy Nun of Oirschot’, her life, virtues, and especially the unusual phenomena concerning her dead body, which made the Carmel of Oirschot an instant place of pilgrimage. |
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