Magdalena de la Cruz

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Magdalena de la Cruz (1487–1560) was a Franciscan nun of Córdoba in Spain, who for many years was honored as a saint. However, St. Ignatius Loyola had always regarded her with suspicion. Falling dangerously ill in 1543, Magdalena confessed to a long career of hypocrisy, ascribing most of the marvels to the action of demons by which she was possessed, but maintaining their reality. She was sentenced by the Inquisition, in an auto-da-fé at Córdoba in 1546, to perpetual imprisonment in a convent of her order, and there she is believed to have ended her days most piously amid marks of the sincerest repentance.

During the early decades of the sixteenth century she was considered saintly and was in constant and intimate communication with God, and her devotees included the general of the Franciscan Order, Fray Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones; Fray Francisco de Osuna, the mystic whose writings were so appreciated by Santa Teresa; and the archbishop of Seville and inquisitor general, Alonso Manrique. Indeed, on the birth of the future Philip II in 1527, "the hábitos of this nun were sent off as a sacred object so that the infante could be wrapped up in them and thus apparently be shielded and protected from the attacks of the Devil." In 1533 Magdalena was elected abbess of her convent and was at the height of her power and popularity. But only in 1546, and after many prophecies, visions, and miracles, including even a pregnancy by the Holy Spirit, did the Cordoban Inquisition finally try her and sentence her to life imprisonment in a convent in Andújar.