Margaretha Ebner

Blessed Margareta Ebner O.P.
Religious; Mystic
Born	1291 Donauwörth, Duchy of Swabia
Died	20 June 1351 (aged 59–60) Mödingen, Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	24 February 1979, Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II
Feast	20 June
Attributes	Dominican habit

Blessed Margareta Ebner (1291 – 20 June 1351) was a German professed religious from the Dominican Nuns. Ebner – from 1311 – experienced a series of spiritual visions in which Jesus Christ gave her messages which she recorded in letters and a journal at the behest of her spiritual director; she was ill for well over a decade as she experienced these visions. Ebner's religious life was at the time of infighting due to the Western Schism though she remained dedicated to serving the Roman pontiff who was the true claimant to the papal see.

Ebner's beatification cause began in the 1600s well after her death though stalled for a time until 1910 when the initial process was concluded; Pope John Paul II beatified Ebner in 1979 after confirming her longstanding "cultus" – or popular devotion to her – rather than recognizing a miracle as would be the norm.

Margareta Ebner was born circa 1291 in Donauwörth to aristocratics; she received a thorough education in her home. In about 1305 she entered the Kloster Mödingen convent of the Dominican Nuns near Dillingen and made her profession around 1306.

From 1312 to 1325 she suffered a grave illness and in her later Revelations described how she had "no control over herself" and often would laugh or weep on a constant level with sometimes little reprieve. This illness was the stimulus for her conversion to a deeper spiritual life of devotion to God. This illness seemed to even put her at the point of death on occasion and even when she seemed to recover she still remained in bed for well over a decade. It was from 1311 that she began to experience her visions of Jesus Christ who graced her with messages. Ebner became prone to further bouts of illness for the remainder of her life. But she could exercise her desire for penance and mortification via abstinence from wine and fruit as well as bathing which were considered some of the greatest pleasures of life in that time.

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