[2] 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.

[3] Margareta Ebner was born circa 1291 in Donauwörth to aristocratics; she received a thorough education in her home.

[1] In about 1305 she entered the Kloster Mödingen convent of the Dominican Nuns near Dillingen and made her profession around 1306.

[4] 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.

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.

Upon her return her nurse died and she grieved without consolation until the secular priest Heinrich von Nördlingen assumed her spiritual direction in 1332.

[3] At his command – beginning during the Advent of 1344 – she began to write with her own hand a full account of all her revelations and her conversation with the Infant Jesus as well as all the answers that she had received from him including those given to her in her sleep.

[citation needed] The Revelations preserved in Ebner's own hand became widely known in the 18th century thanks to a selection of her manuscript letters and memoirs compiled by Eustachius Eichenhut.