Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1869-09-01
CRACOW.
The Prison Convent and the Appliances
for TOrturing-The Horrors OF a
Modern InquiSitiSn


Modern InquiSitiSn
The Austrian correspondent of the
| London Times writes as follows in
relation to the case of the imprisoned
nun at Cracow:
While the inquiry into the nun.
merry case in CracOw is being contin.
ued, driblets of information only here
and there OOze out. As for the inn
INJURED nun herself, since she has been
removed to the lunatic asylum she
seems to recover gradually from that
state of almost savageness in which
she was at first. She has ceased to
talk in obscure language, as she did
at first, and, now that she is in clean
apartment, that constant complaint
about the bad smells TO which she
gave vent at first is never heard of -
| She has become quite a pattern of
cleanliness, and as for tearing her
dress or the bed-clothes, which was
alleged as the cause of her being
without clothing, she never once at
tempted to do it. The brother of the
eX-cOnfessor of the convent writes To
the Cracow papers that his brother,
who, as you remember, died suddenly
when the whole story got abroad,
died a natural death, having been Ill
for several weeks befo-5. The deposit
tions of the nuns, which are being
taken, seem rather to indispOse public
feeling against them, for they all 90
TO show that they took in earnest the
vow of banishing all human emotions
from the sisterhOOG. One of the nuns
who has been repeatedly superior of
the convent, let out that Barbara
Abryk was not taken to the lunatic
asylum because the General of the
Order in Rome forbade it, and because
she herself thought that, after pass
ing her fiftieth year, Barbara would
become calm and more composed.
The London Daily Telegraph says ::
"The famOusCracOw convent seems
to have possessed more elaborate ap-
plianees for torture than a dark cell
The commission which has been ap-
pointed to examine the house is said
to have found a whole collection of
such instruments of torture and ty-
ranny welded in medieval times
The crosses each weighing eighty
pounds, and intended to be worn on
the backs of the nuns, as a punish
ment; two heavy blocks of marble,
which the penitents placed on their
chests; crowns of thOTns with long
iron spikes, which they wore on their
heads; and girdles with nails point
ing inwards, which they wore next
their skin, were among the weapons
found in the spiritual armOry of the
religious house. We are not inform
ed whether they have been recently
used for the purpose of waging war
against the world, the flesh, and the
devil. Indeed, they recall the worst
spirit of medieval barbarity, rather
than the humane spirit of our own
time. 1t is true that people shut out
from the world like the nuns of Ora
COW, cannot feel the humaniZing in
fiuence of this age so keenly as the
secular and the prOfane, and hence
they must beguided by less enlight-
ned cOnsciences. After the horrible
revelations of the manner in which
the have treated one of their sisters,
it is also possible to believe the Cra-
cow nuns guilty of anything. Never
theless, it is uncomfortable to reflect
that in the nineteenth century con-
vent should Systematically use in
struments of torture which would
have found fit place only in those
religious houses which centuries ago
We're dens of depravity."