Overview

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.

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9780300205893

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Reviews

""'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) '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) '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)

Author Information

Nancy Lusignan Schultz is professor of English, Salem State University, Salem, MA.

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