Margaretha Ebner
Photo from nuernberg.de.
Born of rich parents at Donauwörth, 1291; d. June 20, 1351. She received a thorough classical education in her home, and later entered the Dominican convent at Maria-Medingen near Dillingen, where she was solemnly professed in 1306. In 1312 she was dangerously ill for three years, and subsequently for a period of nearly seven years she was most of the time at the point of death. Hence she could exercise her desire for penance only by abstinence from wine, fruit, and the bath. On her return from home, whither she had gone during the campaign of Louis the Bavarian, her nurse died, and Margaretha grieved inconsolably, until Henry of Nordlingen assumed her spiritual direction in 1332. The correspondence that passed between them is the first collection of this kind in the German language. At his command she wrote with her own hand a full account of all her revelations and intercourse with the Infant Christ, as also all answers which she received from Him even in her sleep. This diary is preserved in a manuscript of the year 1353 at Medingen. From her letters and diary we learn that she never abandoned her adhesion to Louis the Bavarian, whose soul she learned in a vision had been saved.
THOS. M. SCHWERTNER (Catholic Encylopedia)
