BULLIED BAVARIAN NUN
[HÖSS,] Maria Crescentia, Saint.
‘Wahre Abbildung der From[m]en Schwester Maria Crescentia des Heilige[n] Ordens S. Francisci, welche in diesem Jahr 1744. den 5. April zu Kauffbeuren seelig entschlaffen in dem 62.
Jahr ihres Alters.’ Mindelheim, Lingauer, 1744.
Copper-engraved Andachtsbild (80 x 132 mm, platemark 68 x 123 mm); depicting Maria Crescentia in her coffin, holding a cross and surrounded by candles, with a crucifix at her feet; short repaired tear to verso, some fading to imprint, else well preserved.
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‘Wahre Abbildung der From[m]en Schwester Maria Crescentia des Heilige[n] Ordens S. Francisci, welche in diesem Jahr 1744. den 5. April zu Kauffbeuren seelig entschlaffen in dem 62.
Extremely rare devotional engraving of Maria Crescentia Höss, a mystic and sister of the Third Order Regular of St Francis at the Franciscan convent in Kaufbeuren, Bavaria, issued shortly after her death at the nearby town of Mindelheim.
Maria Crescentia Höss (born Anna Höss, 1682–1744), one of eight children from a poverty-stricken family of weavers, was initially refused admittance to the convent because her father could not pay the expected dowry. ‘The problem was overcome in an unusual way when in 1703 the Protestant mayor of the town, impressed by her fine character, offered the nuns a deal by which if they accepted her as a novice, he would rid them of a noisy neighbouring inn which irked them’ (Oxford Dictionary of Saints). Spurned by the Mother Superior and ostracised by the other sisters for her family’s failure to contribute to the convent financially, Höss was denied a cell of her own, instead sleeping on the floor of other nuns’ cells, and was made to work as a servant until the 1707 election of a new Mother Superior, who appointed Höss portress and later mistress of novices; in 1741 Höss was unanimously elected as her successor.
She became a correspondent and trusted source of advice for over seventy royals, including Bavarian Electress Maria Amalia, Clemens August of Cologne, and the Prince Abbot of Kempten, and ‘from early years she had experienced visions and ecstasies and every Friday from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m. (like certain other mystics) experienced some kind of special sharing in the Passion of Christ. She was sometimes unconscious in this experience’ (ibid.). This Andachtsbild was produced after her death on Easter Sunday, 1744, after which some 70,000 people came to pray at her grave; Höss was beatified in 1900 and canonised in 2001.
We find another example (also printed by Lingauer but with the imprint in the lower right-hand corner) at the Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde in Dresden. Not on OCLC or Library Hub.
