Matus, Thomas. _Nazarena: An American Anchoress_.  (Paulist Press. New
York/ Mahwah, N.Y.). 1998.  iii, 203 pp.

Reviewed by J. A. Frazer Crocker, Jr., jafcjr@presys.com, Retired
Episcopal priest.

This book is an account of the life of Sister Nazarena, born Julia
Crotta, a Camadolese anchoress. Although there is the appearance of 
scholarly apparatus, this is clearly not a critical nor definitive 
biography.  Most probably _Nazarena_ is best considered as a part of  
the complicated genre of hagiography, which, as Bernard McGinn writes 
"...is didactic, intended not so much to give an historical account of 
a life, as to teach a lesson about how to live.  (_The Flowering of 
Mysticism_ 1998. p xiii).

The author is a monk of Camaldoli, originally of New Camaldoli on the
Big Sur coast of California, USA.  He has divided the book into three
parts: I -- A Desert Journey, II --Questioning Nazarena, III -- A Silent
Prophecy.  There is also a prologue and an appendix.
There is no index.

Julia Crotta was born in Connecticut on October 15, 1907 as a second
generation Italian-American.  Her childhood was remarkable chiefly
because she did not attend Roman Catholic Schools.  While usually
obedient, she had a streak of unbending willfulness.  At the age of four
she thought that she would never get married.  After graduation from
high school in 1926, she moved to New York City for the summer, and
attended a school for chorus girls.  From the fall of 1926 until 1929
she attended the Hartford Conservatory, and then was admitted to the
Yale School of Music, where she received a diploma (not a degree) in
1932.  She then heard "...a strong voice ... (saying) ... Quit Yale and
prepare to transfer to Albertus Magnus Women's College.' " ( _Nazarena_
p. 16).

 In March of 1934 she attended a Holy Week retreat with the Dominican
nuns of the college and had an experience which focused the rest of her
life.  The experience was both auditory and visual, and consisted of
hearing a man's voice calling her name, and then a seeing' of a weeping
man with wounded hands who called her to the desert.  During the weeks
which followed, she had many strong and beautiful' dreams.

After graduation she had a period of discernment, and then in August of
1937 entered a Carmelite house in Rhode Island.  She left there, with a
very negative report, in November.  Her spiritual director then
suggested that she go to Rome, where she arrived in late 1937.  The
years from 1938 to 1945 were spent testing a vocation in the Camaldolese
house of Sant'Antonio (to which she returned in 1945, as an anchoress),
another Carmelite house, and in secular employment.  From 1945 until her
death on February 10, 1990 she lived as a professed Camadolese anchoress
in the Sant'Antonio monastery.

In his first footnote, Fr. Matus writes, "The written documentation on
which this book is based consists of hundreds of letters and notes . . .
It would have been impossible to cite them, without a critical edition,
a chronology and an index. . . .I had to prepare another book, a volume
of nearly four hundred pages, containing a representative selection of
Nazarena's writings (about a fourth of them) and a few other documents,
which I have been able to date with some degree of certitude."  (This
volume is still unpublished.)  We are told nothing about the criteria
which excludes three-fourths of the available material.

This reviewer finds other pieces of information to be consistently
lacking.  The first is the composition date of the document being
referred to.  Neither in the footnotes (which reference the documents
according to Fr. Matus' own inventory), nor in the text, are the
documents dated.  In some cases (as in the dreams which followed the
auditory-visual experience) even the rudimentary footnotes are missing.
The second important kind of information is knowing to whom, and for
what purpose a document was prepared.  Sometimes in the text of
_Nazarena_ this is made clear, more frequently the reader must resort to
conjecture and surmise in lieu of clearly stated information.  This
reviewer is trained both as historian and mental health clinician, and
in both disciplines evaluation depends on the dating of documents (or
memories) and on the context and purpose of the recall and recitation.

The author also depends on conversations he held with individuals
involved with Nazarena.  But we are not told whether the report of the
conversation is based on tape recording, verbatim transcription shortly
after the conversation, or memories written down at some distance from
the conversation.

The title of the book is mildly deceptive: this subject lived the
majority of her life in Rome.  There is little reference to American
eremetical tradition, though there is a labored, but brief, comparison
with Emily Dickinson and Thomas Merton at pp.163.

Nazarena was, perhaps, a  mystic in the sense that McGinn would use the
term:  " ...the mystical element of Christianity is that part of its
beliefs and practices that concerns the preparation for, the
consciousness of, and the reaction to what can be described as the
immediate or direct presence of God."  (McGinn. _The Foundations of
Mysticism_ p. xvii.)  In her case there was one defining mystical
experience which demanded and received her assent.  The present volume,
in a somewhat confused fashion, describes Nazarena's preparation for,
consciousness of, and reaction to, an experience of the presence of
God.


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