Maria Cron

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Sr. Maria de Jesus on her deathbed. Paintings in the Church of St. Monica in Old Goa

Maria Cron ( religious name Maria de Jesus ; * 1608 in Goa ; † January 2, 1683 , ibid) was the daughter of a German trader from Augsburg and a stigmatized nun who was venerated as a blessed in Goa, but never canonized .

Life

Maria Cron was the younger of the two daughters of Ferdinand Cron (1554–1637) from Augsburg, agent of the trading house Fugger in India, and his Portuguese wife Maria Leytoa (1569–1619). The parents were among the most respected citizens of the Indo-Portuguese city of Goa, which was also called "Asiatic Rome" because of its many churches and monasteries.

Both daughters were raised in the faith of the Catholic Church . In 1622, at the age of 14, Maria married the wealthy Portuguese nobleman Manuel de Sousa. He died after four years of marriage and left his 18-year-old wife as a widow.

Maria's relatives pushed for a new marriage, which she refused. She lived as a widow until the age of 23. In 1631 she entered the monastery of St. Monika in Goa and took the religious name Maria de Jesus . Founded in 1606, the Monastery of the Daughters of St. Monika was known and was considered the oldest convent in India. The order, which is only distributed locally, has ceased to exist since 1885.

Sr. Maria de Jesus was known in the city for her life of penance and prayer . She wore visible stigmata on her hands, feet and below the breast, which were examined and certified by several doctors on the occasion of her death on January 2, 1683. Sister Maria de Jesus found her grave in the monastery church. In the former monastery church of St. Monika there is a contemporary painting showing Sr. Maria on her death bed.

The biological sister of Maria Crons

The older sister Isabel Cron was married to Pedro de Almeida, in command of the Portuguese fortress of Diu ; after his death, she married Diego de Melo de Castro, fortress commander of São Tomé near Madras, around 1630 . She gained dubious notoriety because she secretly bit off a finger joint of the indestructible corpse of the famous Asian missionary Franz Xavier, exhibited in 1634 on the occasion of the canonization in Goa , in order to possess a relic of the saint. The act caused a considerable stir among the population and was sharply condemned by the Church. Isabel then returned the relic to Cron and donated a precious silver diadem set with precious stones to the saint as a penance. The story was later partially embellished, various sources even say that Isabel Cron bit off the saint's toe, which is why blood dripped from her mouth and one could follow her trail back home and thus convict her of the crime.

literature

  • Pius Malekandathil: The Germans, the Portuguese and India , Münster 1999, pages 110 and 111, ISBN 3825843505

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ St. Monica Monastery in Old Goa
  2. ↑ St. Monica Monastery in Old-Goa ( Memento of the original from August 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.exoticgoa.co.in
  3. ↑ To the Order of the Daughters of St. Monica in Goa
  4. ↑ To Isabel Cron and St. Franz Xaver
  5. ^ Website about Goa, with names of Maria and Isabel Cron
personal data
SURNAME Cron, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maria de Jesus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-born nun in India, stigmatized
DATE OF BIRTH 1608
PLACE OF BIRTH Goa
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1683
Place of death Goa