After waking up from her experience, Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione was sitting in a pool of ink. She could feel a piece of paper in her hand, it must have come into her possession during the night.
Nobody could tell what was written on the piece of paper that the nun had. There were undiscernible glyphs that added curiosity to everyone's minds. The nun stated that she had written the message in the night, but no one could read it.
Taking Refuge
Sister Maria was taken away for refuge, she was taken to Sicily - an island with deep roots in Christian beliefs and traditions. It is said that Saint Paul preached there 2000 years ago.
But there is always evil where there is good. And with Christ, there is also the Devil. One of the oldest tenets is the struggle between the balance of Satan and God.
The Convent
Isabella Tomasi was born in 1645 and went to Palma di Montechiaro to join a convent there at the age of 15. At the convent, she was baptized as Maria Crocifissa della Concezione.
At the Benedictine convent, they taught Maria about peace, work, and prayer. She had a lot of devotion for her order but she didn't seem to ever be at peace.
Inner Conflict
Whether or not the Devil is actually real, Sister Maria seemed like she was a catalyst for being tormented. When she got close to the altar in the church she would lose consciousness.
Maria was convinced that the Devil was testing her, trying to make get her to turn against God. She seemed to have nothing but the conflict within herself. She would try to be stronger.
The Possession
It got so bad that one day in 1676, Maria claimed that after getting possessed she had to write a heretical letter to the convent. The other nuns didn't know what to think.
The letter that she wrote to the convent while possessed didn't seem to be written in any alphabet or language that anyone was familiar with. The glyphs were taken as occult symbols that were from the possession.
Not The First Time
This wasn't the first time that a convent was picked on by the Devil. Years before Maria's experiences in 1632, another convent had strange occurrences start happening. This was only six months after a plague epidemic.
17 nuns locked themselves up inside the walls of an Ursuline convent to get away from the plague. But soon things started to spiral in the convent in Loudun, France.
To Begin With
Some of the nuns at the convent allegedly had visions. These visions affected their behavior and soon they started acting strange. The nuns would start acting like anything but nuns.
They started cursing at one another, shouting loudly, and even started barking like dogs. This started up much controversy in Loudon and soon the chaplains of the convent were convinced that the nuns were all possessed.
Investigation
The church decided to launch an investigation and soon it was found that the behavior was because of a local Father Urbain Grandier. He had caused all of the shocking events at the convent.
Grandier claimed to be a sorcerer and had made a pact with Lucifer to get the power to cast dark magic, he said that he had possessed the nuns with his magic. In 1634 the Holy Father was put on trial and was found to be guilty.
The Sentence
The sentence of Grandier read, "We have ordered… Urbain Grandier duly tried and convicted of the crimes of magic, maleficia and of causing demoniacal possession of several Ursuline nuns… He is to be taken to the public square… and fastened to a stake on a scaffold… and there be burned alive… and his ashes scattered to the wind."
Even after Grandier was locked away, put on trial, and subsequently executed after he was found guilty, it did not stop the frequency of claims of possession.
Trying To Crack The Letter
Now back to Sister Maria's letter in Sicily. It was so cryptic that no one around could determine the origin of the strange glyphs scrawled in ink. No one could even determine the alphabet's origins.
The other nuns at the convent believed her claims of possession and put the letter where anyone could see it. Over hundreds of years, many people tried to decipher the note. But only in 2017 was light shed on the page.
LUDUM Science Center
The secrets of the letter were finally deciphered in 2017 by a group of computer scientists at the LUDUM Science Center in Catania. The organization was formed in 1969 and is privately funded.
The organization regularly looks at other educational organizations and collaborates with them. The team wanted to figure out what the deal was with the letter, and they knew that they had the skills to do so.
Hidden Part Of The Web
In fact, the scientists only managed to decipher Sister Maria’s letter with the help of a powerful – and highly controlled – decryption program.
This software is used by governments and doesn’t appear to be widely available, which led the team to source it from the dark web – the hidden part of the internet that, among other things, trades in contraband.
Using Existing Alphabets
The scientists thought that Sister Maria had perhaps created the code by using a blend of existing alphabets.
And thanks to her years of exposure to religious scripture, the nun was indeed a skilled linguist with knowledge of both ancient and modern languages. So it was, then, that the experts’ hypothesis proved to be correct.
Software Used By Intelligence Agencies
“We heard about the software, which we believe is used by intelligence services for code-breaking,” Daniele Abate, the team’s leader, told British newspaper The Times in 2017.
“We primed the software with ancient Greek, Arabic, the Runic alphabet and Latin to unscramble some of the letters and show that it really is devilish.”
Cracking Something
The team did, moreover, manage to crack a portion of the note – 15 lines of it to be exact – although much of it was muddled and incoherent.
However, those parts that did make sense contained heretical statements that would have gotten Sister Maria into serious trouble. She may have been a secret rebel. Or a hoaxer. Or perhaps part of her mind had split off from the rest.
What We Know
What we do know is that the author of the letter claimed that God is an invention of man and that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are “dead weights.” “God thinks he can free mortals,” says the letter.
“This system works for no one.” And in what appears to be a reference to the mythological river that supposedly lies on the edge of the underworld, another sentence reads, “Perhaps now, Styx is certain.”
More Examples
But Sister Maria’s letter isn’t the only purported example of devilish writing. In 1896 a book by John Ashton entitled The Devil in Britain and America claimed to contain a copy of “the only known specimen of the Devil’s handwriting.”
That sample was itself sourced from a 16th-century tome in Latin by Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi. The work’s title can be translated as Introduction to the Languages of Chaldean, Syrian and Armenian and the Ten Other Languages.
Ludovico Spoletano
The handwriting, meanwhile, was supposedly recorded by Italian conjurer Ludovico Spoletano, who is himself something of a mystery to modern historians.
It appears that Albonesi may have first heard about Spoletano through Guillaume Postel – a French intellectual who shared the author’s interest in “magical” languages. Indeed, the two are known to have corresponded on the subject.
Communing With The Devil
The story goes that Spoletano called forth Satan himself and quizzed him with a range of inquiries that the Devil was apparently willing to answer in writing.
However, rather than possessing the conjurer, Satan reportedly caused a pen to float midair. He then wrote the answers directly onto Spoletano’s paper – or so the legend claims.
Derived From Amharic
And according to Ashton, the script may have been derived from Amharic – a language used in the region of Amhara in Ethiopia. The writer claimed, too, “According to a legend, [Amharic] was the primeval language spoken in Eden.”
Of course, many contemporary experts contend that the biblical garden of Eden was nothing more than a mythic creation. Regardless, though, the sample published by Ashton continues to intrigue scholars.
Nobody Knows For Sure
Indeed, both modern-day academics and amateur code-crackers – such as the writer of website Cipher Mysteries – confess that the writing makes no sense. It probably comes as no surprise, then, to hear that no one has yet been able to decipher the text.
Ultimately, the notion that the specimen actually shows the “Devil’s handwriting” may be nothing more than an elaborate prank at Postel and Albonesi’s expense. Still, at least the script has somewhat of a demonic appearance, as a few of the characters seem to resemble pitchforks.
Doubts
Furthermore, despite the religious content of Sister Maria’s scrawled ramblings, Abate claims that it’s doubtful the Devil ever wrote them.
She said to The Times, “I personally believe that the nun had a good command of languages, which allowed her to invent the code. And [Sister Maria] may have suffered from a condition like schizophrenia, which made her imagine dialogues with the Devil.”
Schizophrenia
Indeed, many of the symptoms of schizophrenia appear to closely resemble the supposed signs of demonic possession. They include auditory hallucinations and strange fantasies.
And similarly, the incomprehensible “word salad” spoken by some with the condition – which seems to reflect a breakdown in coherent thought – is perhaps not unlike the phenomenon of speaking in tongues.
In Other Cultures
It’s also worth noting that the type of delusions experienced by sufferers of schizophrenia appear to reflect their cultural context. For example, in Japan such skewed beliefs often revolve around shame.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, friends and family members can be a source of paranoid fantasies. And in strongly Christian societies, the delusions often involve religion – such as believing oneself to be a prophet or, indeed, possessed by the Devil.
Resistances
However, religion itself may be a catalyst for psychotic breakdowns – partly because of its unfathomable themes and otherworldly imagery, and partly because it can engender a splitting apart of the psyche.
It seems significant that Sister Maria experienced her spirituality as a source of conflict. Despite seeking refuge in a convent, she could not find salvation. Instead, the nun was apparently beset by those same demonic forces that the Bible beseeches us to resist.
Not Always A Form Of Mental Illness
Not all psychiatrists believe that demonic possession is a form of mental illness, though. Dr. Richard Gallagher of Columbia University, for one, claims to have seen scores of possession cases.
And according to Gallagher, demons are real – and one of the things they like to do is to speak strange languages.
Other Speculations
“[Demons are] fallen angels,” said Gallagher to newspaper The Daily Mail in June 2018. “They’re extremely bright, much brighter than humans. They’ve been around for millennia, so they speak all languages. I’ve heard them speak Chinese [and] ancient Greek, which I studied.
I’ve certainly heard them speak and understand Latin… [They do it] probably to freak you out or to show off, to boast.”