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Life and Works of St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, Compiled by the Rev. Placido Fabrini, 1900, p. 290


On the public display of her body after death as is customary in Carmelite Monasteries:

“During the brief interval after the services, during which the church was kept closed, an event occurred which is deserving of mention. A very few persons remained within; among them was a certain Father Claudio Siripandi, a Jesuit, who, whilst enraptured by the superhuman beauty of the sacred body and fixedly looking at it, saw all at once that it moved the head and turned the face to the opposite side.

“Seeking the reason for it, he was unable to find any natural cause, as neither the pillow-cushion, nor the vestments, nor the bier had been touched in the least. It was a prodigy of the Divine Goodness, Who wished thereby that the virginal purity of Mary Magdalen should condemn the impurity and lasciviousness of a young man who, among the few others, was standing at the bier. Hence God moved the Jesuit to address the young man in these words : ‘See what this holy virgin has done; I think she did it on thy account.’ The young man, being already frightened and confused at the sight of so wonderful an event, answered with much compunction: ‘I think so, too;’ and, having repented of his past transgressions, began a new life.”

But he who through those windows of the body heedlessly looks without, very often falls even against his will into the delightfulness of sin, and being fast bound by desires, he begins to will what he willed not. For the precipitate soul, whilst it does not forecast beforehand, that it should not incautiously see what it might lust after, begins afterwards with blinded eyes to desire the thing that it saw.

Pope St. Gregory the Great