Adrienne von Speyer: Doctor, Mystic, Stigmatist

Adrienne von Speyer

Adrienne von Speyr (1902-1967) was a Swiss medical doctor, Catholic mystic and stigmatist. In addition to her medical work, she authored over 60 books on spirituality and theology.

Adrienne was born to an upper class family in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland to Theodor von Speyr, an ophthalmologist, and Laure Girard, the descendant of a family of noted watchmakers and jewelers. She was their second child. She had a sister named Helen who was a year-and-a-half older, and two brothers, Wilhelm (1905-1978), also a physician, and Theodor (1913-?), who became a bank director in London.

Adrienne's mother scolded her daily. While unpleasant this led to her forming a strong devotion to God and an understanding of sacrifice and renunciation. She also formed a relationship with her grandmother who was a holy woman. Her father, who treated her much better than her mother, would often take her to visit sick children in the hospital where he worked. While she was in primary school she began working with the poor, even forming a society with her friends to help those living in poverty. She was truly a remarkable young girl.

She did well in school and occasionally substituted for one of her teachers who suffered from asthma. Although raised a Protestant she began to reject it for Catholicism. She did not join the Catholic Church until she became an adult. Protestantism was taught in her school's religion classes but, at the age of nine, she gave a talk on the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) before her class. She said that she was led to do this because an angel had appeared to her and told her that "the Jesuits were people who loved Jesus totally, and that the truth of God was greater than that of men, and as a result one could not always tell people everything exactly as one understands it in God". This was not her first spiritual encounter. She later told Fr. von Balthasar, SJ that, at the age of six, she had an encounter with St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, while walking up a street on Christmas Eve.

Adrienne was often sick and always so shortly before Easter. She claimed that this was due to Good Friday.

After two years of secondary school her mother had her removed because of the close association with boys. Adrienne was sent to an advanced all-girls school for a year. Although she disliked this school, it was here that she met her friend, Madeleine Gallet, who shared Adrienne's spiritual point of view. Her father, who supported her desire to become a doctor (her mother did not), allowed her to be readmitted to secondary school.

In November 1917 Adrienne experienced another vision, this time of Mary surrounded by angels and other saints. After this her writings displayed a deep Marian devotion. Shortly after this and with Adrienne's foreknowledge, her father died from a perforated stomach.

While finishing secondary school Adrienne also attended business school but suffered a collapse due to tuberculosis in both lungs. The doctors believed she would die within a year so she was sent to Leysin where she was cared for by Charlotte Olivier, a doctor and a relative by marriage. Her relationship with her mother continued to decline. While in Leysin she would often pray in a cold Catholic chapel. It was here that she decided that she was being called to the Catholic Church. She suffered another physical collapse, after which she returned to school.

Adrienne rejected her mother's attempts to arrange for a job and a husband for her. This resulted in a complete breakdown of communications. She continued her medical studies and became an intern. During this time she continued her ministry to the poor.

In 1927 she met history professor, Emil Dürr, a widower with two young sons. Although she had previously rejected marriage proposals, she were married him, perhaps out of sympathy, but he passed away in 1934. In the interim she grew to love him. Sadly, she suffered several miscarriages. By this time Adrienne had passed her state boards and became the first woman in Switzerland to be admitted to the medical profession. In 1936 she was married to Werner Kaegi, who had been Dürr's associate professor and who took over his Chair of History at the University of Basel on his death. They lived celibately. She may have agreed to the marriage because she still was caring for Dürr's two sons, now teenagers in need of a male role model. Kaegi cared for her and took good care of them.

Adrienne continued her medical practice seeing 60 to 80 patients each day. During this period she contacted several Catholic priests expressing her desire to convert but received no response. Finally, in 1940, she met Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, at the time a Jesuit and the student chaplain in Basel. He baptized her on All Saint's Day (01 Nov) 1940 and confirmed her shortly thereafter. Her conversion was kept secret and her family took this badly. It took years for them to reconcile. A few years later her conversion became public and resulted in a great uproar. Her husband never converted.

Adrienne got to know many of the great Catholic thinkers of her time including Romano Guardini, Hugo Rahner, Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, Reinhold Schneider, Annette Kolb, and Gabriel Marcel. She continued to have mystical experiences of the Trinity and the saints which grew in frequency until her death.

Following her conversion her sufferings increased greatly. This included a heart attack, diabetes, severe arthritis, and blindness. It was during this period that she also received the stigmata - wounds on her hands, feet and side in imitation of the wounds Jesus received on the cross - in addition to her other mystical experiences. She maintained a close relationship with Fr. von Balthasar, who became her spiritual director, and co-founded a secular institute, the Community of St. John. She dictated over 60 books to him including biblical commentaries and other theological topics.

By 1954 she could no longer continue her medical practice so she spent hours each day in prayer and knitting clothing for the poor. She became so ill that the doctors wondered how she remained alive. She went blind in 1964 but she continued to bear her sufferings, finally dying in Basel, Switzerland on 17 Sep 1967.

The writings of Adrienne von Speyr remain controversial to this day. While some believe them to be completely orthodox, others find them, at least in part, contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. One example of the latter is her comments on the Eucharist. She does not use the term transubstantiation. Speyr repeatedly claims that Christ in the Eucharist becomes bread and is bread: "Having become flesh, he now becomes bread…. he gives his body to the bread" and "[Jesus] gives to the church the act of his becoming bread as well as the state of being bread." She adds "The bread is not part of his body; it is his whole body…and thus he achieves the full identity between the two forms of his body" (The Passion from Within, pp. 24, 31, 37).

Sources

* Gardiner, Anne Barbeau. New Oxford Review (Sep 2002): The Dubious Adrienne von Speyr https://www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0902-gardiner 
* Miles, L.M. 07 Nov 2013. First Things: An Introduction to Adrienne von Speyer. http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/11/an-introduction-to-adrienne-von-speyr
* Wikipedia: Adrienne von Speyr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_von_Speyr

Text © 2017 Gary J. Sibio. All rights reserved.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.