Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle
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The Prince, the Widow, and the Cure That Shocked Washington City
Nancy Lusignan Schultz
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In 1824 in Washington, D.C., Ann Mattingly, widowed sister of the city's mayor, was miraculously cured of a ravaging cancer. Just days, or perhaps even hours, from her predicted demise, she arose from her sickbed free from agonizing pain and able to enjoy an additional thirty-one years of life. The Mattingly miracle purportedly came through the intervention of a charismatic German cleric, Prince Alexander Hohenlohe, who was credited already with hundreds of cures across Europe and Great Britain. Though nearly forgotten today, Mattingly's astonishing healing became a polarizing event. It heralded a rising tide of anti-Catholicism in the United States that would culminate in violence over the next two decades.
Nancy L. Schultz deftly weaves analysis of this episode in American social and religious history together with the astonishing personal stories of both Ann Mattingly and the healer Prince Hohenlohe, around whom a cult was arising in Europe. Schultz's riveting book brings to light an early episode in the ongoing battle between faith and reason in the United States.
“Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle uses terrific archival work and shrewd analysis to firmly anchor a remarkable episode in American religious history in a transatlantic context.”— John T. McGreevy, University of Notre Dame
“Nancy Schultz has produced another extraordinary work of historical recovery, bringing vividly to life a cast of characters that could easily populate a major motion picture even as they reveal hitherto neglected aspects of nineteenth-century social, religious, and intellectual history. The provocative questions raised by Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle will linger, satisfyingly, with readers long after they've reached its unusual conclusion.”—Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize
“An entertaining and meticulously-researched study of one of the first accounts of miraculous healing in the young United States. Schultz illuminates every possible angle of the Mattingly story, thereby enriching American and Catholic history immeasurably.”— Paula Kane, University of Pittsburgh
"Mattingly and her family history—a mélange of divisive infighting, tragedy and faith that would make good box-office fodder—makes for fascinating reading, but it's the author's ability to draw her characters in a specific point in history that truly shines."—Kirkus Reviews
“Schultz is at her best when she is blending the theological nuances of early-19th-century American Catholicism into her finely etched portrait of the society in which Ann Mattingly lived.”—Fergus M. Bordewich, The Wall Street Journal
"At a time when academic historians seem to be committed to prose that is deadly dull, Nancy Lusignan Schultz, a professor of English, lets the story emerge as a good yarn, not a big yawn. . . . [she] brings an impressive depth of scholarship to this odd, forgotten chapter of America’s early social history. . . . The result is a gripping slice of history with fresh, often unsettling resonances for the modern reader."—Daniel Stashower, The Washington Post
“Nancy Lusignan Schultz . . . has resurrected important aspects of Catholic life in the history of the United States for a new generation.”—Our Sunday Visitor
“Nancy Lusignan Schultz . . . succeeds at infusing Washington’s ragtag days with an aura of supernatural intrigue.”—Washingtonian
“[Schultz] deftly weaves the story within the context of the social and religious issues confronting the early 19th-century American Catholic Church. . . . Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle provides the reader an invaluable insight into early American Catholicism.”—America Magazine
Publication Date: April 26, 2011
24 b/w illus.
