ROMANISM IN AUSTRIA

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 31, 1869

ROMANISM IN AUSTRIA.

The following article, which we clip from the editorial columns of the Battle Creek Journal, illustrates the wicked cruelty of the “Man of Sin,” whom the Lord is to “consume with the spirit of his mouth,” and “destroy with the brightness of his coming.” Such recitals lead us to exclaim, Hasten the day. Even so, come, Lord Jesus:

A horrible discovery was made last month, at Cracow, in the Empire of Austria. An anonymous letter, written in a woman’s hand, gave information to one of the civil courts that a nun named Barbara Abryk had been for many years immured in a dark cell in the Carmelite Convent in that city. The convent was accordingly visited by an officer, who, though at first refused, insisted upon being shown to the cell of the imprisoned nun, where a revelation was made, which, if the facts were not well attested, we should suppose to belong entirely to the realm of fictitious invention. A human being crouched in a narrow prison six by eight feet in size, the window of which had been walled up, so that light was occasionally admitted through a very small aperture. In the language of one of the Vienna journals:

“In a dark, stinking hole, on a heap of straw, sat, or rather cowered, a naked, wild-grown, half-witted woman, who, at the unusual appearance of light and human beings, dropped her hands and implored piteously, ‘I am hungry; pity me; give me meat; I will be obedient.’ This dungeon, with its little straw, and much filth, and a dish of mouldy potatoes, without fire, bed, table, or even chair, which no sunstreak cheered, or fire-blaze ever warmed, had the inhuman ‘Sisters’ chosen as the dwelling-place of their should-be companion; there had they imprisoned her, year after year, since 1848. For 21 years did these dreadful Sisters pass that cell, and to none of them had it ever entered to take compassion on their poor victim. And now, half-human, half-beast, with her body covered with dirt, with her legs shrunk and withered, with her head squalid, diseased, year-upon-year-long unwashed, a terrible being revealed herself, such as Dante himself, with all his powers, could not have depicted or imagined. So kneeled there that awful victim in the convent of the Carmelites.”

Upon investigation it appeared that this Barbara entered the cloister of barefooted Carmelites in 1841, at the age of twenty-four years, and that, for breaking her vows, in what particular is not fully known, she was placed in her cell in the year 1848, as mentioned above. As was to have been expected, she was at once set at liberty by the officers of the law, the Bishop of the Diocese loudly denouncing the crime, and threatening to break up the convent. The poor woman, while being led away from the gloomy walls which had imprisoned her for so many years, inquired with trembling anxiety, “Won’t they take me back again to my grave?” indicating some horrid sepulture to which she had been subjected, and when asked why she had been shut up, answered, “I have broken my vows; but these, these,” looking furiously upon the Sisters, “are no angels;” and she sprang upon the confessor, exclaiming, “You beast.”

This victim of ecclesiastical cruelty was then taken to an asylum for the insane. Reason had deserted its throne, under these horrible cruelties, but it is said the physicians have hopes of her recovery under proper care.

But a most important fact in connection with this event, is the effect which this revelation seems to have produced upon the popular mind in Austria. The press expresses its indignation. A Vienna paper asks, in view of it, “Is this the nineteenth century?” and the power of Rome has evidently received a most staggering blow. At Cracow, the excitement was intense. A mob of 4,000 people broke into the Carmelite convent, smashing the windows, and committing other mischief, and the Lady Superior and her assistants were obliged to place themselves under a military escort for protection. Even the Jesuit, and also the Franciscan convents, were threatened with destruction, and a petition numerously signed has been sent to the civil authorities to remove the Jesuits and Carmelites from the place.

These things indicate that Romanism is rapidly losing dominion in Austria under the rising intelligence and the growing power of the people. Terrible as is the revelation made at Cracow, of the bigotry and cruelty of the church, it also proves that the day for the exercise of such bigotry and cruelty is nearly over, even in the Empire which the Pope has hitherto regarded to be the very strongest bulwark of his authority.

The facts of history have frequently disclosed the truth that no ecclesiastical communion can be safely entrusted with the prerogative which properly belongs to the State, and we trust that Austria will now put an end to the Concordat which gives irresponsible authority to those who, in the sacred name of Christ, have so often shown themselves ready to inflict barbarities upon their fellow-mortals, which it would almost be slanderous to charge upon Satan himself. When the civil power asserts its full mastery, and becomes entirely emancipated from priestly thralldom, there will be a rapid advancement of freedom, and a speedy growth of free institutions in the Austrian Empire, as well as in Italy and Spain, where the decline of Romish influence has been clearly and steadily marked by the advance of liberal political sentiments among all classes of the people. We believe in the full toleration of Romanism as a religious creed, but when, according to its wont, it attempts political domination, it seeks to gain a thing the very possession of which calls for the universal denunciation of mankind.