thumbnail|right| The main Mariavite House of Worship, [[Temple of Mercy and Charity in Płock, Poland]]
Feliksa Magdalena Kozłowska ( ), known by the religious name Maria Franciszka and the epithet "'", was a Polish religious sister, Christian mystic and visionary who founded a movement of renewal in the Roman Catholic church in the Congress Kingdom of Poland (founded in the Russian Partition of Poland). It was to follow the simplicity of the life of Mary, mother of Jesus. Early in the 20th century, she and this movement were excommunicated and became an autonomous church in fellowship with the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands. In 1935 it split in two and became the Old Catholic Mariavite Church and the Catholic Mariavite Church. Both denominations were part of a single schism from the Catholic Church which declared it as heretical in 1906.
Early life
Feliksa Kozłowska was born in Wieliczna near Węgrów, into an impoverished Szlachta family, bearing the Nalecz coat-of-arms. She was eight months old when her father, Jakub, died in the January Uprising. She was raised by her mother, and paternal step-grandparents, called Pułaski. They lived with those relatives first in Czerwonka węgrowska, and later in Baczki. After home tuition, she graduated from a high school in Warsaw, speaking fluent Russian, English and French. Her first job was as a governess to the family of a general. By all accounts, she was an attractive and accomplished woman who rejected at least one offer of marriage. She planned instead to join the enclosed Visitation Sisters in Warsaw. However, due to tsarist regulations relating to religious orders, it proved impossible. At the age of nineteen, she entered the recently formed Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Afflicted founded by Honorat Koźmiński, whose purpose was to care for the sick. Three years later, she evinced the need for more contemplation and a less busy setting. With permission from fr. Koźmiński, she left the Franciscan sisters.
On 8 September 1887, she formed on Koźmiński's advice, with five other women, a covert religious community in the ancient city of Płock and went to live with them. They followed Franciscan spirituality and supported themselves with embroidery of church vestments. The income was very modest resulting in a relatively strict regime, abstaining from all meat and fish. She became superior of the new community, called the Congregation of Sisters of the Poor of Saint Mother Clare and took the religious name Maria Franciszka. The congregation followed the Rule of Saint Francis and added a fourth vow in addition to the conventional three. It was the promise to engage in perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. In time the needlework brought in commissions from wealthy clients which improved the material position of the women, while Kozłowska fostered their spiritual development.
In 1890 her widowed mother, Anna Kozłowska, having sold her properties in Warsaw, decided to move to Płock and live with her daughter. Initially, Anna had opposed her only daughter's desire to become a nun, as she foresaw a better future for her in marriage, rather than grinding poverty in a convent. She eventually relented and decided to join her daughter's community. In 1903 she made her religious profession by adopting the name, Maria Hortulana
Rift with Koźmiński and the beginning of the Mariavite movement
To begin with fr. Koźmiński had been very pleased with Franciszka's religious progress. Nonetheless, in 1902, when she was forty years old, relations with her mentor broke down irretrievably. The reasons were that he disapproved of the attitude of some of his clerical brethren who, though educated and pious, had fallen under her spell and took spiritual direction from a woman. Another difficulty had been her introduction of certain religious practices without his leave.
In 1893, Kozłowska reported that she had experienced religious visions. The first vision supposedly instructed her to form a new clergy order with the primary goal of propagating the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.