What brought an estimated forty thousand pilgrims to the small South Tirolean town of Kaltern between July and October 1833? In this fascinating book, Nicole Priesching provides the answer: they came to see the young Maria von Mörl, daughter of a family from the town's lesser nobility, who was experiencing ecstatic visions and stigmatic symptoms. Drawing skillfully on a range of documents from local archives, ecclesiastical foundations, printed sources, and, above all, personal correspondence, Priesching resurrects the figure of von Mörl and places her within the context of religious revival and ultramontane piety in mid-nineteenth-century Tirol.

The author begins by locating von Mörl's life in a province experiencing a sustained upturn in manifestations of Catholic piety after its return to Austrian rule in 1814. In the period 1815–70, almost 380 lay confraternities were founded in the region. The conservative-romantic religious renewal also sharpened the contours of public debate, leading to a growing political polarization, especially after the expulsion from Tirol of Protestant families living in the Zillertal (1837) and the recall of the Jesuits (1838). Hence, the case of Maria von Mörl was just one especially intense manifestation of a broader politico-religious nexus (and indeed, at least six other cases of “stigmatization” were subsequently reported in Tirol).

Mörl's life was defined early by illness. Especially from the age of five onward, she suffered from repeated inflammations of the lungs, coughing fits, and side pains. An instance of physical abuse is said to have occurred in her ninth or tenth year at the hands of her good-for-nothing father. It remains uncertain whether a sexual element was involved, or if it was physical violence that her father carried out in a drunken state. Nevertheless, Mörl was well enough to be sent away to the Val di Non to learn Italian, but her stay was ended after her mother's death in February 1827. The loss of her beloved mother, together with the strain of looking after younger siblings and managing family affairs, began to tell on Mörl; and she sought consolation in prayer and the advice of her confessor, Father Johannes Kapistran Sojer. Sojer was instrumental in encouraging Mörl to join the Tertiary Sisters in Kaltern, thus fulfilling the pious young woman's long-held desire. From late 1830 Mörl's health began to deteriorate as she suffered extreme spasms and cramps and began experiencing demonic visions. Various medical experts were unable to offer a clear diagnosis or much remedy. Sojer, who was a key figure in making Mörl's case public, became convinced that a struggle for her soul (and body) was taking place between the forces of darkness and light. He thus pressed for an exorcism to take place. Although the Episcopal authorities were initially reluctant, this eventually occurred in May 1833. As word spread about the story, the flood of visitors soon began. Concerned by issues of public order and manifestations of superstition, both political and ecclesiastical, authorities then acted to put a brake on the mass pilgrimages, even if Mörl continued to attract visitors from far and wide right down to the end of her dolorous life in 1868. Yet, despite the fame that Mörl achieved in her lifetime, her cult soon dissipated after her death, mainly due to a series of quarrels among her heirs and testament executors.

Mörl herself interpreted her suffering as a trial that had to be borne, never seeing herself as somehow marked; nor did she refer in her letters to the stigmatic wounds that had eventually appeared in February 1834. The many visitors were actually a source of consternation and alienation, aside from a few favored friends. For herself, then, Mörl sought little more than a life of prayer, which was centered on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Hence, it was very much the actions of others that led to her fame, with the crucial roles being played by Sojer and Josef von Giovanelli. The latter was a distant relation of Mörl, a local noble landowner and a leading conservative politician with links to Josef Görres's circle in Munich. Giovanelli was convinced that Mörl's experience was a manifestation of God's mysterious power and passed her story on to Görres who was collecting material for his study of Christian mysticism. While several doctors and Tirolean liberals were convinced there were scientific explanations for Mörl's symptoms, Görres's intervention proved decisive. After visiting Mörl, he produced a report testifying to the genuinely wondrous nature of the case, which both appeased the anxious episcopacy and authenticated the stigmata for Catholic believers. Priesching carefully reconstructs the elaborate social and familial network around Giovanelli and how the South Tirolean Catholic nobility helped promote the “worship” of Mörl, assisted by their contacts in Southern Germany and religious orders in Tirol and neighboring Salzburg.

The author has carefully reconstructed a remarkable story, but it is one that was typical of the ultramontane piety evident in much of Catholic Germany and Austria at the time. Although the text might have benefited from more stringent editing in places, Priesching successfully recaptures the texture and mood of religious devotion in Tirol. More could certainly have been made of the case's wider impact, such as the fact that several members of the Habsburg dynasty visited Mörl. While the “Austrian” dimension to the story is rather narrow—for example, there is nothing on liberal reactions outside Tirol—Priesching provides a stimulating analysis of a neglected subject. Tirol may have been notoriously ultramontane but, in the final analysis, it was only the extreme part of a much wider trend. Comparative investigation along the lines of this excellent study would be very welcome.