Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886Various
History
Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886
Various
Periodicals
Order of the Buried Alive.
The order of the Buried Alive in Rome, the Convent of the Sepolte Vivo,
is a remnant of the Middle Ages in the life of to-day. _The London
Queen's_ correspondent had the privilege of an entrance within, one
after another, of the five iron doors, and talking with the Mother
Superior through the thick swathing of a woollen veil, but ordinary
communication with the convent is carried on through the "barrel," which
fills an opening in the wall. Over the barrel is written: "Who will live
contented within these walls, let her leave at the gate every earthly
care." You knock at the barrel, which turns slowly around till it shows
a section like that of an orange from which one of the quarters has been
cut.
You speak to the invisible sister, who asks your will; and she answers
you in good Italian and cultivated intonation. You hear the voice quite
distinctly, but as if it was far, far away. She is really separated from
you by a slender slice of wood, but she is absolutely invisible. Not the
smallest ray of light, nor the smallest chink is visible between you and
her. Sound travels through the barrel, but sight is absolutely excluded.
These nuns live on charity, keeping two Lents in the year--one from
November to Christmas, the other the ordinary Lent of Catholic
Christendom. Living, therefore, on charity, they may eat whatever is
given to them, saving always "flesh meat" during the fasting time.
If you take them a cake or a loaf of bread, a roll of chocolate bonbons,
a basket of eggs, it is all good for them. They must be absolutely
without food for twenty-four hours before they may ask help from the
outside world; and when they have looked starvation in the face, then
they may ring a bell, which means: "Help us! we are famishing!" Perhaps
you take them nothing eatable, but you place on the edge of the cut
orange, by which you sit, some money, demanding in return their
"cartolini," or little papers.
The barrel turns slowly round, then back again, and you find on the
ledge, where you had laid your lire, a paper of "cartolini." These are
very small, thin, light-printed slips, neatly folded in tiny packets,
three to each packet, which, if you swallow in faith, will cure you of
all disease. After your talk is ended, the barrel turns around once more
and presents its face as of an immovable and impenetrable-looking
barrier. One of the pretty traditions of Rome is, that each sister has
her day, when she throws a flower over the convent wall as a sign to her
watching friends that she is still alive. When she has been gathered to
the majority, the flower is not thrown, and the veil has fallen forever.
Harvard College and the Catholic Theory of Education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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