Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: The Prince, the Widow and the Cure That Shocked Washington City (review)

Nancy Lusignan Schultz’s new book is both fascinating and strange. It fascinates because of the wondrous historical event that is at the center of this story. Her book is strange because of Schultz’s unusual presentation of the event. The Mrs. Mattingly and widow in the book title was the thirty-nine-year-old Ann Carbery Mattingly, a resident of Washington, DC, suffering from end-stage breast cancer. Mattingly was well known in her parish of St. Patrick’s, and the priests and parishioners launched a novena for her on March 1, 1824. The cure recounted was her miraculous healing from breast cancer on March 10, 1824. The prince was German priest and nobleman Alexander Leopold Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst.

In June 1821 Hohenlohe’s intercession had brought about the healing of the paralyzed Princess Mathilde von Schwartzenberg. This event caused a sensation in Europe, and many people came to Hohenlohe seeking healing. On the tenth of each month Hohenlohe would offer his Mass and prayers of intercession for those who were unable to come to him. On March 10, 1824, Father Stephen Dubuisson, a Jesuit who ministered to Mattingly, offered a Mass at St. Patrick’s church at two o’clock in the morning in the hope that it would coincide with Hohenlohe’s offering of Mass in Germany. Shortly after he took Mattingly a host consecrated at his Mass, she was miraculously healed.

The cure was immediately the talk of Washington. Schultz reports that in the two days that followed her cure 500 people came to visit Mattingly, including many politicians and government officials. Ambrose Maréchal, archbishop of Baltimore, was concerned that the story of Mattingly’s cure would be met by some with skepticism and thus instructed her pastor to collect affidavits from witnesses to the miracle, including both Protestant and Catholic witnesses. The archbishop’s concerns were well founded, as the story of the Mattingly miracle was reported negatively in several East Coast newspapers. Also, a number of Protestant journals treated the miracle as a fraud perpetuated to mislead the simple-minded. However, facts are stubborn things, and the critics were never able to demonstrate that what had happened to Mattingly was anything less than miraculous.

Schultz offers much additional information about the life of Hohenlohe, but in the end he remains a mysterious character. Believed by many to be holy and devout, Hohenlohe was criticized by others, including some church authorities, as being vain and worldly. Even Princess Mathilde’s estimation of him must have been mixed, as in 1848 she requested that church authorities compel the prince to repay money that he had borrowed from her in 1831.

Still, whatever Hohenlohe’s personal shortcomings, many people were healed of very serious illnesses through his intercession. Between 1824 and 1838, there were fifteen such miraculous cures in Washington and Maryland alone attributed to the intercession of Hohenlohe. All but one of those cured were women; ten of these women were religious sisters. As for Mattingly, after a few years, the notoriety of her miraculous cure faded, and she lived a quiet life until her death on March 9, 1855. She was buried the following day, thirty-one years to the day of her cure.

Although Schultz’s book is amply documented with endnotes, it sorely lacks a bibliography. The strangeness of the book is the insertion of supernatural stories at the beginning of each chapter. Although they are supposedly “based on historical material,” Schultz has allowed herself “imaginative free play in writing them” (p. 22). These stories are interesting but do not really pertain to Mattingly’s miracle. Additionally, Schultz suggests, but does not demonstrate, that somehow the Mattingly miracle and reactions to it offer lessons on nineteenth-century ecclesiology, gender roles, and slavery. The real lesson of this miracle is in the power of...