1. The Establishment of the Visitation in the United States (ca. 1860), 130–48, Georgetown Visitation Archives (hereafter referred to as GVA), Washington, D.C. The Georgetown Visitation nuns were a contemplative order, and their convent was established in 1799.

2. Two articles treat the subject of the miracle cures. Robert Emmett Curran, S.J., focuses on the conflicted Catholic response to the miracle cures, and he shows the way the cures resulted in tensions between American and continental Jesuits (the latter group was primarily responsible for promoting the cures). “All the tensions between the native Jesuits and their British colleagues on the one hand, and the continental Jesuits on the other, were finding expression in the Mattingly cure. Differences over religious observance, ecclesiology, and American values were predisposing Jesuits toward their position on the miracle.” Robert Emmett Curran, “‘The Finger of God Is Here’: The Advent of the Miraculous in the Nineteenth-Century American Catholic Community,” Catholic Historical Review 73, no. 1 (January 1987): 51. Nancy Lusignan Schultz examines the Catholic and Protestant response to the miracle cures, and she focuses on the ethnic, class, and gender tensions that surrounded their response. Nancy Lusignan Schultz, “Prince Hohenlohe's Miraculous Meddlings: Transatlantic Intercessions in Washington, D.C., and Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1824–1827,” U.S. Catholic Historian (1999): 1–19. Schultz has also authored a forthcoming book on the Mattingly cure: A Capital Miracle: Biography of a Cure (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming 2008).

3. The cured women and the communities of women surrounding them told their own stories of the miracle cures, and they were very different from men's stories. Women's narratives of the miracle cures are the subject of a future study.

4. [William Matthews], A Collection of Affidavits and Certificates, Relative to the Wonderful Cure of Mrs. Ann Mattingly, Which Took Place in the City of Washington, D.C., on the Tenth of March, 1824 (Washington, D.C.: James Wilson, 1824), 6, 22, Maryland Province Archives (hereafter referred to as MPA), Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington, D.C. 5. For information on Hohenlohe and the cures associated with him, see Kselman, Thomas, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983 Google Scholar); Taves, Ann, The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 57 Google Scholar; Curran, “‘The Finger of God Is Here’; and Schultz, “Prince Hohenlohe's Miraculous Meddlings.”

6. [Matthews], Collection of Affidavits, 8.

7. Curran, “‘The Finger of God Is Here,’” 53. “Miracle Cures” occurred within the Georgetown Visitation Convent, St. Josephs Convent in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky, and the Carmelite monastery at Portobacco, Maryland. With the exception of the Carmelite community, all these religious orders had connections with French Jesuits or Sulpicians. At the time of their cures, the nuns ranged from 20 to 49 years old, with the average age 34.5. Curran notes that the gender domination of females in the miracle cures was not peculiar to America. The high percentage of nuns among the cured was, however, an American Catholic phenomenon (53, 60).

8. The Miraculous Medal depicted a vision of Mary attributed to Catherine Labourè, a French nun who was later canonized as a saint. The first medals were struck in 1832, and, after a canonical inquiry, the medal was given papal approval in 1842. The Miraculous Medal was widely employed for healing. See Taves, The Household of Faith, 37.

9. Establishment, xxi, 4–5; Annals of the Visitation Convent of Georgetown (ca. 1830), 75, GVA.

10. Annals, 76.

11. Apollonia Diggs to Stephen Dubuisson, January 25, 1831, MPA, 74:210 (extras); Establishment, xxi, 8.

12. Annals, 82.

13. Establishment, 250–53.

14. Annals, 8.

15. Memoirs of Sister Mary Bernardine of the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown, By her Brother, W.H.W. (1838), Ward to “Betty,” February 4, 1838, GVA.

16. Annals, 87. According to Dubuisson, Sister Eugenia and the mistress of novices had agreed that, if Sister Eugenia were cured, “she would, as a sign of it, stoop down and kiss the floor, at [these] words.” It was customary for sisters to kneel and kiss the floor at this point in the liturgy, but Sister Eugenia had not been able to do so for two years. Stephen Dubuisson, A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, a Nun in the Convent of the Visitation, in Georgetown [District of Columbia], on the 10th of February, 1838, 21, GVA. This manuscript was written by Dubuisson in the late 1830s. He apparently intended it for future publication, but it was never published. The first twenty-seven pages (which are paginated) are Dubuisson's account of and reflections on Sister Eugenia's cure. At the end of this section, he affixed “affidavits” of the cure from Sister Eugenia, the superior and other members of the community, and the infirmarian sisters. These “affidavits” are in his own hand, and they appear to be coached by him if not almost completely crafted by him. When quotations are taken from these “affidavits,” I simply cite the title of the pamphlet and the section from which the quote is taken. I cite page numbers if they are given.

17. For information on the anti-Catholicism of the period, see Billington, Ray Ann, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York: Macmillan, 1961)Google Scholar; Franchot, Jenny, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 Google Scholar); Griffin, Susan M., Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 Google Scholar); and Smith, Ryan K., Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006 Google Scholar).

18. Taves, , The Household of Faith, 64 Google Scholar.

19. Sermons of Father J. P. Clorivière, 1819–1825, February 20, 1825, book 9, 20, GVA.

20. Taves, Ann, “Context and Meaning: Roman Catholic Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” Church History 54, no. 4 (December 1985): 482–95Google Scholar.

21. Ibid., 482–93; Taves, , The Household of Faith, 89–102 Google Scholar.

22. Sermons of Father J. P. Clorivière, February 20, 1825, book 9, 16, GVA.

23. Kselman, , Miracles and Prophecies, 48–49 Google Scholar.

24. Taves, , The Household of Faith, 103 Google Scholar.

25. John Tessier to Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal, April 2, 1824, Archives of the Archdiocese of Baltimore (hereafter referred to as AAB), 20U21. 26. Establishment, xx, 2.

27. Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 260 Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., 271.

29. [Dubuisson, Stephen], Narrative of Two Wonderful Cures Wrought in the Monastery of the Visitation at Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, in the Month of January, 1831 (Baltimore: James Myers, 1831), 4–5 Google Scholar.

30. For the power dynamics of “the gaze,” see Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979 Google Scholar); and Foucault, Michel, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception, trans. Sheridan, A. M. (New York: Vintage Books, 1978 Google Scholar).

31. For the “modernization” of Catholic miracle narratives, see Harris, Ruth, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (New York: Penguin Compass, 1999 Google Scholar); and Kaufman, Suzanne K., Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005 Google Scholar).

32. [Dubuisson, ], Narrative of Two Wonderful Cures, 21 Google Scholar.

33. John England, Examination of Evidence and Report to the Most Reverend James Whitfield, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, Upon the Miraculous Restoration of Mrs. Ann Mattingly, of the City of Washington, D.C., by the Right Reverend John England, D.D., Bishop of Charleston. Together with the Documents (Charleston, 1830), 6, MPA, Varia: 13–235.

34. [Dubuisson, ], Narrative of Two Wonderful Cures, 21 Google Scholar.

35. Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, 25 Google Scholar.

36. Dubuisson, , A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, 22 Google Scholar.

37. Annals, 80–81; Narrative of Two Wonderful Cures, 19–22.

38. Annals, 80–81; Narrative of Two Wonderful Cures, 19–22.

39. Annals, 81–83.

40. Dubuisson, , A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, 26 Google Scholar.

41. Kaufman, , Consuming Visions, 97–98 Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., 119.

43. [Dubuisson], Narrative of Two Wonderful Cures, 7–8. 44. Dubuisson, A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, 5.

45. Wojcik, Daniel, “Polaroids from Heaven”: Photography, Folk Religion, and the Miraculous Image Tradition at a Marian Apparition Site,” Journal of American Folklore 109, no. 432 (Spring 1996): 141 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. England, , Examination of Evidence, 3 Google Scholar.

47. Ibid., 41–42. The report indicated that Mattingly's “feeling of extreme delicacy gave not opportunity even to her sisters of seeing the more ulcerated portion of the body, and one of them, though under the impression that she must have seen the shoulders in their state of ulceration, could not bring it so distinctly as she could wish to her recollection” (21). Another “witness” noted that, although Ruth Carbery (Mattingly's sister) did not have the opportunity to “see that part of her back which gave her most pain … [Ann Mattingly] gave her the plasters which had been removed from the ulcers, and they were generally offensive in their appearance” (41).

48. Ibid., 5, 34.

49. Dubuisson, A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, “Infirmarian Sisters.”

50. Dubuisson, A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard.

51. While Dubuisson's first draft of the narrative of Sister Apollonia's cure included Doctor Bohrer's “description of the case” with no reference to her menstrual cycles, by his second draft Dubuisson had elicited from Bohrer a short statement indicating that “the Catamenia [menstruation], as is common in the last stage of consumption, had been obstructed for many months … [and after the cure] they have been restored.” Sister Mary Apollonia (Georgetown), handwritten MS, ca. 1831, no page number, MPA, 13–15. Evidently, Dubuisson met some resistance in publishing this. On a separate attached sheet, Dubuisson wrote, “Dr. Bohrer, as requested, has inserted, in his note, the observation concerning the Catamenia—But, he very strongly suggests the propriety of leaving out that sentence in the intended publication in print.” Seven years later, in writing A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, Dubuisson continued his exploration of the sisters’ menstrual problems. England also included information about Mattingly's menstrual cycles in Examination of Evidence (33).

52. Dubuisson's anxiety over the sisters’ health set in almost as soon as they were cured. Sister Apollonia wrote to Dubuisson four months after her cure, “My Dear Father, you seem to intimate that you have had news of some return of bad health to me. This I assure you is not true. I have never had better health in my life … so that if any one supposes I have been sick, you will be able, after this to contradict the report” (Diggs to Dubuisson, May 5, 1831, GVA). Nine years later, Sister Apollonia was still mindful of her responsibility to stay in good health. In a letter written in 1840, she assured Dubuisson that, although she had come down with a “severe cold,” she had recovered quickly: “Remembering your advice of the obligation I was under to take care of myself, I endeavored to be very careful in following the prescriptions of Dr. Bohrer” (Diggs to Dubuisson, January 26, 1840, GVA).

53. Dubuisson, , A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, 3 Google Scholar.

54. Butler, Jon, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990 Google Scholar; repr., 1992), esp. 225–56, “Toward the Antebellum Spiritual Hothouse.” Butler indicates that interest in “supernatural healing” was high among Americans in general at this time. See also Albanese, Catherine, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006 Google Scholar); Braude, Ann, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, 2d ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Taves, , The Household of Faith, 56–57 Google Scholar.

55. See Brown, The Body and Society; Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987 Google Scholar); Bynum, Caroline Walker, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992 Google Scholar); Miles, Margaret R., Fullness of Life: Historical Foundations for a New Asceticism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981 Google Scholar); and Perkins, Judith, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (New York: Routledge, 1995 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

56. Orsi, Robert, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 74 Google Scholar.

57. Meredith McGuire writes, “Bodily sensations produce a confirmation that what one is experiencing is real, not just imaginary.” McGuire, Meredith, “Why Bodies Matter: A Sociological Reflection on Spirituality and Matter,” in Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality, ed. Dreyer, Elizabeth A. and Burrows, Mark S. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 124 Google Scholar.

58. Many studies treat the theme of suffering in the Christian tradition. See Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; Glucklich, Ariel, Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 Google Scholar); Orsi, Robert, “‘Mildred, Is It Fun to Be a Cripple?’: The Culture of Suffering in Mid-Twentieth Century American Catholicism,” South Atlantic Quarterly 93, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 548–90Google Scholar; and Wiethaus, Ulrike, ed., Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993 Google Scholar).

59. Orsi, “Is It Fun to Be a Cripple?” 551.

60. Brown, , The Body and Society, 222–23Google Scholar.

61. Bynum, , Fragmentation and Redemption, 235 Google Scholar.

62. Bynum, , Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 211 Google Scholar.

63. Griffith, , Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 26, 206CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the nineteenth century, Griffith writes, North Americans saw bodies as “visible and highly accurate diagrams of inner character”(64).

64. Coakley, John, “Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate and Szell, Timea (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 245 Google Scholar.

65. Juster, Susan, “The Spirit and the Flesh: Gender, Language, and Sexuality in American Protestantism,” in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Stout, Harry S. and Hart, D. G. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997): 338 Google Scholar. See also Taves, Ann, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999 Google Scholar); and Reis, Elizabeth, “The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England,” Journal of American History 82, no. 1 (June 1995): 15–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Coakley, “Friars as Confidants of Holy Women,” 245, 225. See also Mack, Phyllis, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992 Google Scholar), who shows the way that women were seen as highly “permeable” and, thus, more suited than men to serve as “empty vessels” for the divine (24–34).

67. Bynum, , Fragmentation and Redemption, 195 Google Scholar.

68. Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, 136 Google Scholar.

69. Bordo, Susan, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 17 Google Scholar.

70. Miles, Margaret R., “Violence against Women in the Historical Christian West and in North American Secular Culture: The Visual and Textual Evidence,” in Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture, ed. Atkinson, Clarissa W., Buchanan, Constance H., and Miles, Margaret R. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987), 18–19 Google Scholar.

71. There is an immense literature on this topic. See, for example, McDannell, Colleen, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994 Google Scholar); and McHugh, Kathleen Anne, American Domesticity: From How-To Manual to Hollywood Melodrama (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 Google Scholar).

72. Chisholm, Ann, “Incarnations and Practices of Feminine Rectitude: Nineteenth-Century Gymnastics for U.S. Women,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 3 (2005): 744, 751Google Scholar. See also Todd, Jan, Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful: Purposive Exercise in the Lives of American Women, 1800–1870 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998 Google Scholar).

73. Chisholm, “Incarnations and Practices,” 753.

74. Bloch, Ruth H., “American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of the Moral Mother, 1785–1815,” Feminist Studies 4, no. 2 (June 1978): 100–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bloch, Ruth H. Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75. For an analysis of the way women were “read” through their clothing and comportment in nineteenth-century America, see Klassen, Pamela, “The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century, Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 14, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 39–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mattingly, Carol, Appropriate(ing) Dress: Women's Rhetorical Style in Nineteenth-Century America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002 Google Scholar).

76. Griffith, , Born Again Bodies, 26 Google Scholar. Griffith notes that these practices flourished in the nineteenth century, a time when “anxieties over sincerity and transparency were high” (26).

77. Chisholm, “Incarnations and Practices.”

78. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 23–29, 234–46Google Scholar.

79. [Anonymous], The Washington Miracle Refuted; Or, A Review of the Rev. Mr. Matthew's Pamphlet (Washington, D.C.: Riggs Library, 1824), 5, box 13, 235, MPA. 80. Nancy Lusignan Schultz treats in depth the Catholic and Protestant response to Mattingly's cure in her forthcoming book, A Capital Miracle. A Protestant view of Mattingly's cure is detailed in The Washington Miracle Refuted: or, A Review of the Rev. Mr. Matthew's Pamphlet (Georgetown, Ky: Georgetown College, 1824).

81. Schultz sees this as an indication of the “feminization” of American Catholicism: “As in mainstream American culture, Catholic women's more sentimentalized devotional life probably led to such manifestations. Here, too, the miracles may be seen as an assertion of a significant female presence in the building of the new American Catholic Church” (“Prince Hohenlohe's Miraculous Meddlings,” 9).

82. Diggs to Dubuisson, May 5, 1831, 210 (extras), MPA.

83. William Matthews to Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal, March 10, 1824, 19B15, AAB.

84. Memoirs of Sister Mary Bernardine, Ward to “Betty,” February 24, 1838, GVA.

85. Annals, 74–78.

86. Kane, Paula M., “‘She Offered Herself Up’: The Victim Soul and Victim Spirituality in Catholicism,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 71, no. 1 (March 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kane writes, “In the case of women religious, cultivation of victimhood was ubiquitous in convent training prior to Vatican II” (103).

87. Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 161 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kselman, , Miracles and Prophecies, 102 Google Scholar. The Catholic ideology of the “true woman” differed little from Protestant and secular versions. See Penny Edgell Becker, “‘Rational Amusement and Sound Instruction,’: Constructing the True Catholic Woman in the Ave Maria, 1865–1889,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 8, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 55–90; McDannell, The Christian Home, 52ff.; Taves, The Household of Faith; 47ff.; and Thomas, Samuel J., “Catholic Journalists and the Ideal Woman in Late Victorian America,” International Journal of Women's Studies 4, no. 1 (1991): 89–100 Google Scholar.

88. Coburn, Carol K. and Smith, Martha, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 80 Google Scholar. See also Cohen, Daniel A., “Miss Reed and the Superiors: The Contradictions of Convent Life in Antebellum America,” Journal of Social History 30, no. 1 (Fall 1996): 149–84Google Scholar.

89. Many Georgetown nuns attested to looking forward to death in order to consummate their spiritual marriage to Jesus.

90. “Duplicate” of a letter from Diggs to Dubuisson, January 25, 1831, 64:7, MPA.

91. Sister Eugenia Millard described a similar experience at the moment of her cure: “Oh! how can I express what then took place in me? So soon as the sacred Host touched my tongue, an awful sensation ran through me, something like a shivering… . I rose up,—walked without assistance back to my place in the choir: indeed, it seemed to me as if I did not touch the floor, but glided along.” Dubuisson, A Narrative of the Wonderful Cure of Sister Mary Eugenia Millard, section “Sister Eugenia.”

92. Katz, Steven T., “The Conservative Character of Mystical Experience,” in Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. Katz, Steven T. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 3–61 Google Scholar. According to Katz, “Over and over again, since at least the time of Origen's commentary on the Song [of Songs], Christian mystics of both sexes have used its imagery as a key to understanding their encounter with Christ in mystical ecstasy” (11).

93. Sermons of Father J. P. Clorivière, April 19, 1824, book 8, 28, GVA.

94. While both Curran and Schultz suggest that the cured women (and the communities of women surrounding them) exercised a noteworthy influence on the public presentations of their cures, I have not found this to be the case. However, women did tell stories of the cures in ways that gave them power and influence within their own communities and vis-à-vis the Catholic males in their personal and community lives.

95. Nineteenth-Century Sermons and Letters from Priests to Georgetown Novices and Sisters: “A Sermon from One of the Fathers on the 2d of Jan., 1859,” GVA.

96. Peter Brown writes of ascetic Christian women in the fourth century: “The girl who found herself among the ‘brides of Christ’ was spoken of by the clergy as a human ex voto. She was no longer a woman; she had become a ‘sacred vessel dedicated to the Lord’” (The Body and Society, 260). See Hills, Helen, Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 Google Scholar), for a different understanding of nuns as “living relics” (179).