Magdalena di Canossa (1 March 1774 – 10 April 1835) was an Italian professed religious and foundress of the two Canossian congregations. Magdalena was a leading advocate for the poor in her region after she witnessed first hand the plight of the poor following the spillover effects of the French Revolution into the Italian peninsula through the Napoleonic invasion of the northern territories. Canossa collaborated with humanitarians such as Leopoldina Naudet and Antonio Rosmini in her mission of promoting the needs of the poor and setting a new method of religious life for both men and women.
Her beatification was celebrated in Rome on 7 December 1941 and she was later canonized as a saint in Saint Peter's Square on 2 October 1988.
Life
Childhood and obligations
Magdalene of Canossa was born on 1 March 1774 in Verona to the Marquis Ottavio di Canossa (1740 – 1 October 1779) and Teresa Szluha (3 January 1753 – 19 May 1807; a Hungarian countess). An ancestor was the Countess Matilda Canossa who helped facilitate the meeting between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV. Her parents married in August 1770 in Odenburg. Their first two children Carlo Vincenzo (1771) died soon after his birth and therefore she was the third-born after Laura Maria (1772; an arrival poorly appreciated). She was baptized on 2 March 1774.
Her mother later gave birth to another son who died right after the birth. But in 1776 the male heir that her parents desired was born – Boniface – and after him two other girls (Rosa in 1777 and Leonora in 1779). In 1779 her father died in an accident while at a villa on vacation in Grezzano. In 1781 her mother left their palace and married the widower Marquis Odoardo Zanetti from Mantua on 25 August with the permission of her father-in-law. The children were placed under the guardianship of their uncle Girolamo.
From 2 May 1791 she spent ten months in a Carmelite convent but discerned that this was not her vocation so returned home and undertook the running of her large estate; her time in the convent caused her to miss her sister's wedding on 3 October 1791. In 1797 Napoleon was a guest at their palace where she received him; he returned as a guest twice more in 1805 and 1807.
Canossa saw her town as one in which the poor suffered and grew worse due to all the social upheavals caused as a result of the invasions of the French forces and the opposing forces of the Austrian Empire which would gain control of Verona. This situation provoked her desire to serve the needs of the unfortunate. Canossa studied under the Carmelites in Trent and then at Conegliano.
Foundation and recognition
Using her inheritance she began charitable work among the poor and sick, in hospitals and in their homes, and also among delinquent and abandoned girls. On 1 April 1808 she was given an abandoned convent where she took in two poor girls from the slum of the San Zeno neighborhood to care for them and to also provide them with an adequate education. One month later on 8 May she moved out of her ancestral palace and moved into what is now the Saint Joseph Convent where other women soon joined her and with whom she formed the Canossian Daughters. In May 1810 the Servants of God Father Antonio Angelo and Brother Marco Antonio Cavanis invited her to Venice for collaboration. In the meantime, her uncle Girolamo died in July 1814, entrusting his motherless son Carlino (born c. 1797) to her care.
Canossa wanted the pope to legitimize her work by granting formal recognition to the congregation. She decided to meet with Pope Pius VII in Genoa in 1815 and arrived in Milan on 14 May to learn that the pope had left for Rome. She reached the pope on 23 May at Piacenza where she was received in an audience but she recounted later that she lost her courage before him. The pope noticed and did not wish to prolong the audience further so instructed Canossa to follow the usual protocol and send the Rule and other documents to Roman authorities for assessment. She tried again some hours later and was again brought before Pius VII who gave her the same vague response; this hurt her because she thought the audience was too formal with a lack of concrete results.