The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-23
THE CRACOW HORROR.

THE CRACO W HORROR.
The case of Barbara Ubryk who was recently
released from confinement in a Carmehte
nunnery at Cracow, has already become MS
toric. The story of her sufferings, as we
have published it by extracts from our for
eign exchanges, is so heartsickening that 1t
borders on the incredible, and for the sake OF
humanity it is to be hoped that the writers
who have attempted to portray the horrors ot
that living grave have been led astray by
their zeal in the cause of sensationallsm.
But the facts that the accounts given IN the
papers of Catholic Austria and Protestant
England are essentially the same, and that the
prosecutors of the unfortunate woman have
as yet found no open apologists, lead us
reluctantly to the belief that the story as we
have given it is essentially correct.
The main bearing of any discussion of the
case is it's effect upon the whole monastic
system of the Austrian empire. Happily
there is no issue involved between Catholi-
cism and Professionalism as rival phases of
Christianity. Austria is essentially Roman
Catholic country, and the warfare which is
now being waged against the Carmelite nun
merry of Cracow is apparently confined within
the limits of the Church to which the institu-
ton owes allegiance. The Austrian Minister
of Public Worship, who certainly is, or ought
to be, a devout Catholic, desires the opinion
of the Bishop having jurisdiction over the
establishment ''as to whether the maintenance
of the nunnery is desirable, even on behalf
of the Church itself, and expresses the belief
that ''under the most favorable hypothesis,
4 ! f,N1,
many years.
The discovery in some of the recesses
of the building, subsequent to the release of
the imprisoned nun, of certain instruments of
torture, has, it would seem, decreed the fate
of the institution, even though it should be
proven that they had been rusting in idleness
for centuries. And when this one institution
is dismantled, the whole system receives a
shock which, while it may not operate to en-
tirely undermine it, will tend to render i'm
possible for all time to come the perpetration
of such brutal outrages as are said to have
marked the miserable career of Barbara
Ubryk. This will result as all right-minded
people can not but acknowledge, in positive
gain to the Church and in extending widely
the sphere and influence of the different re-
hgious bodies.
Whatever may have been the moral or
mental condition of the unfortunate woman
when she was first immured in her cell, the
only accounts which have thus far reached us
show that at the time of her release her reason
had been entirely unsettled, and that such
had, in all probability, been her state for
years. In this view of the case, the treat
ment to which she was subjected was utterly
inexcusable. Her evident insanity was made
an excuse for continuing the restraint in
which she had been placed, and one of the
nuns whose testimony has been made public,
and who had frequently acted as superior of
the convent, apologized for it on the ground
that there was a hope that the prisoner would
in time become calm and composed Yet the
marked change which has been noted
in her demeanOr since her re-
moval to a regular lunatic asylum
shows how utterly groundless was this hope,
how radically wrong the course pursued by
the authorities of the nunnery, even when
we give them credit for being actuated solely
by desire to prevent their victim from in
hicting injury upon herself and others, and
to bring about a speedy restoration of her
mental faculties. Under the class of treat
ment which experience has demonstrated to
be the best for persons of shattered intellect,
Barbara Ubryk has gradually been trans
formed from the wild and slavering idiot
which her filthy, sunless cell revealed, into a
cleanly, harmless, and melancholy woman.
Both the moral and mental aspects of her
| case are not without lesson to the world at
large, and to the Church in particular, and
the result of the exposure of her sufferings
will react quite as benefcially upon the
Church as upon the victim of the Cracow
| nunS