Red hair in the visions of Maria Valtorta

On this blog we have two articles about Catholic mystics Therese Neumann and Anne Catherine Emmerich who, in their visions, saw Jesus and other Biblical characters as having red/auburn hair.

I recently found out that another mystic, the Italian Maria Valtorta, had similar visions.

Maria Valtorta at age 15, 1912 

Maria Valtorta (14 March 1897 – 12 October 1961) was a Franciscan tertiary and a lay member of the Servants of Mary who lived much of her life bedridden in Viareggio, Tuscany.

She is best known for her 5,000 page book The Poem of the Man-God, first published in 1956 and later titled The Gospel as Revealed to Me. The book was mostly written from 1944-1947 and was later translated into many languages.

Valtorta was born in Caserta, just north of Naples. Her parents were from Lombady, northern Italy. Her father, Giuseppe, was in the Italian cavalry; her mother, Iside, was a teacher of French. Following her father’s regiment, the family moved first to Faenza and then to Milan. In 1913, after Giuseppe’s retirement, the family settled in Florence.

In 1917 Valtorta volunteered as a Samaritan nurse and for 18 months worked at a military hospital set up in Florence to care for the wounded soldiers who had returned from the war.

In 1918, at age 21, in the uniform of a Samaritan nurse, during the First World War

In March 1920, when she was 23 years old, Maria was walking on a street in Florence with her mother, when the young son of her mother's dressmaker struck her in the back with an iron bar and shouted a slogan against the wealthy and the bourgeoisie. As a result of that injury, she was confined to bed for a few months and although she seemed to have recovered, the complications from that incident eventually confined her to bed for 28 years, from April 1934 to the end of her life.

In October 1924, when Maria was 27 years old, the Valtorta family moved from Florence to the nearby city of Viareggio.

In 1942, Valtorta was visited by Romualdo Migliorini, then a priest of the Servants of Mary and later a bishop. He became her spiritual director and suggested she write her autobiography, which she completed in 1943.

After completing her autobiography, in Valtorta began writing a series of what she claimed were messages from Jesus. From 1943 to 1947 Valtorta wrote about 15,000 pages in her notebooks, 10,000 of which were later selected as the basis of her main book The Poem of the Man-God, and the rest were gradually organized and published after her death. Valtorta was initially reluctant to have any of her handwritten notes published, but in 1947 her priest convinced her to agree to their publication.

Maria Valtorta died in 1961, at age 64, and was buried in the town cemetery in Viareggio. Later, in 1973, her remains were moved to the chapel of the great cloister of the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

Valtorta's work has continued to remain controversial and various Biblical experts, historians and scientists support and criticize it to this day, and yearly conferences on the scientific and theological aspects of her writings are held in Italy. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) and Archbishop Dionigi Tettamanzi have written letters stating that the material in the book is just literary and has no supernatural origin.

Tomb of Maria Valtorta at the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata in Florence

Here are some excerpts from Valtorta’s notebooks.

29 December 1943 

Capelli più chiari nella Madre, più accesi nel Figlio, ma sempre d’un biondo tendente al color rame e ugualmente fini, morbidi e mossi in onde…

Hair fairer than his Mother’s, more vibrant in the Son, but always of a coppery blond, equally fine, soft and wavy...

7 April 1944 

Capelli divisi alla metà del capo e ricadenti in lunghe ciocche sino alle spalle. Ondulati per un buon palmo, poi terminanti in vero ricciolo. Lucidi, sottili, ben ravviati, di un colore biondo acceso che specie nel ricciolo finale ha decise tonalità di rame... Essa [la barba] è, dove è folta, di un color rame scuro: un biondo-rosso scuro. E così sono i baffi...

Hair parted in the middle and falling in long strands to the shoulders. Wavy for a good hand's breadth, ending in a true curl. Shiny, fine, well-styled, a bright blonde colour that, especially in the final curl, has bold copper tones… It [the beard] is, where it is thick, a dark copper colour: a dark red-blond. And the moustache is the same...

7 June 1944

… folte ciglia di un castano scintillante di biondo-rosso ... bei capelli lunghi e morbidi, dal biondo rosso più vivo nei punti in luce e più cupo nel fondo delle pieghe.

… thick lashes of a shimmering red-blond brown... beautiful long, soft hair, with a brighter red-blond in the highlights and darker at the bottom of the folds.