Voting Station

St. Mary Magdelene De' Pazzi

Please vote to return to collections.

Religious Figure

The Resume

    (April 2, 1566-May 25, 1607)
    Born in Florence, Italy
    Carmelite nun and mystic
    Canonized by Pope Clement X (1669)
    Patron saint of Naples
    Invoked against sickness and sexual temptation

Why she might be annoying:

    She began whipping herself and wearing a hairshirt and crown of thorns when she was nine.
    Some of her behavior -- such as dripping hot wax on her body, wearing a corset lined with flesh-piercing nails, or tearing off her clothes to roll around on thorns -- seems to leap over the line separating self-mortification from S&M.
    Modern psychologists would probably consider her ability to live on nothing but bread and water for months to be less a sign of holiness than a symptom of anorexia.
    Her feast day was bumped from the date of her death to May 27 to make room for Pope Gregory VII (1728).

Why she might not be annoying:

    She made a vow of virginity at age ten.
    When she was being educated in a convent in her teens, the nuns teaching her predicted she would become a saint.
    She came from two wealthy noble families, but renounced worldly riches to become a nun.
    Her feast day was moved back to its original day (1969).
    On the 400th anniversary of her death, Pope Benedict XVI called her 'a great mystic.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 184 Votes: 48.37% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 9 Votes: 11.11% Annoying