Cuore di una donna

Cuore di una donna (Heart of a Woman) is the title of the first work written by Maria Valtorta. It was destroyed at Jesus' request, without anyone having been able to read it.

The manuscript and its destruction

Some time after the death of her father, in 1935, Maria Valtorta began to write a precursor to what would be her Autobiography. The book, large according to those who held it in their hands, was titled Cuore di una donna (Heart of a Woman). She wrote:

The 4 sayings from the ancient Laurana of St. Christina which are in the Work written by me, and in which are hidden under a different name and social status, is the story of my ever challenging life, full of never-ending oppression, incomprehension and pain. A perfect and formidable Work which I hoped to publish. However, as usual, even this joy was denied me. I was unable to publish it because of a lack of money, spent on my long illness.

In this book, she confides in her Autobiography, she must have poured out all that a "Heart of a Woman" could carry of burning love. She wanted thereby to lead "people to God over paths they would have traveled without realizing it".

Giving up the publication of Cuore di una donna was a trial, one more. She notes that on earth she would have no right to any satisfaction, neither from the children she loved, nor from this book which was for her: "the child of my thought, beloved as a child of living flesh..."

One feels, from these words, that she had put the best of herself into this book. The sacrifice was therefore all the greater when Jesus commanded her:

"Burn everything. You must be known only as the writer of my Work."

We suppose that she had to relive Abraham's choice receiving the order to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, a radical, binary choice between the world and God: one or the other. The cross was heavy for the bedridden woman who could not burn the manuscript herself, but she gave clear written instructions. It was her spiritual mother, Mother Teresa Maria, who received them along with a note from Marta Diciotti dated February 15, 1962, a few months after Maria's death. Marta confessed that she had not been able to burn the manuscript without her knowledge. Marta only handed over the large manuscript on August 15, 1978 to Emilio Pisani and Claudia Vecchiarelli, his wife. They burned it in their fireplace without reading it in the slightest, respecting Maria Valtorta's vow.