I obtained permission to visit the nunnery called "Tor di Specchio,"
one of the richest and most respectable of Rome, having twenty-one
nuns, great rents, and requiring one thousand eight hundred dollars
of expenses for the ceremony of vestire. I was received in a room
just beyond the grate in which the confessor of the convent, a red
faced, good natured looking man, was warming himself; a 'converse'
spinning flax, and the sister whose duty it was to wait in the
room for the week. In the garden, great numbers of roses and other
flowers were cultivated. I was led through several corridors, at
the end of each of which was placed an image of the Saviour or the
Virgin, with a lamp burning before it. In the corridor of the second
story, the cells of the sisters were situated, each covered towards
the passage by a large green curtain. These cells looked into the
garden, and opposite each door in the corridor was placed a large
stand of ashes, at which the nuns cooked their morning chocolate and
warmed themselves. The dining room was large, and the tables were
well covered with green baize. In the middle of the room there was
a pulpit, from which a sister read in turn religious works during
the meals, a practice which prevails in nearly all Roman convents;
the word "Silentium," in large letters, was cut deep in a stone
over the principal door. The kitchen was large, but dirty. In this
nunnery there were three chapels, one church for summer and another
for winter. I was suffered to enter the cell of the superior, who
received me with great courtesy. She was sitting upon a bed, that
she had not left for three years, spinning flax, and holding a large
rosary in one hand. She was at that time eighty-three years of age,
and had entered the convent at twelve for her education, which she
had never left since that hour, having been suffered to remain
during the French time. She spoke much, and with great vivacity.
There were six or seven straw bottomed chairs in her little cell,
a handsome, but old fashioned clock, a small wardrobe and a few
religious prints. In several cells, which happened to be open as
I passed, I saw books, flowers in the windows--a harpsichord, a
harp and some other musical instruments. In this convent, meat is
eaten four times a week, and the order of the day is as follows,
much resembling that of all convents. In summer they get up at
five. Prayers last an hour and a half; breakfast at seven--prayer
till eight--prayers again at ten--dine at eleven--after dinner
sleep--evening office at four--supper at six, and bed at eight. In
the intervals of meals and offices, the sisters read pious books,
talk, walk, embroider, tear lint for hospitals, or do coarse work.
They confess themselves and take the sacrament every eight days;
they confess themselves to a priest named by the head of the order;
he is changed several times a year. The person, who conducted me,
was a princess of a Roma family. She had taken the veil twenty-one
years ago, but possessed perfect ease, simplicity and courtesy. She
spoke of those matters, which are always subjects of conversation
in drawing rooms of antiquities, carnivals, deaths of queens, &c.
Her dress was coarse black, and by no means neat. She was perfectly
affable, and answered with great complaisance numerous troublesome
questions. Indeed, there was not the slightest tinge of gloom, or
solitude, or austerity about this convent, or in the appearance and
manners of the few nuns, whom I happened to see. I recollect hearing
an aged Roman lady, who possessed a vast experience in courts,
convents, drawing-rooms, boudoirs, and of every thing else which
relates to the world, remark some time after that of all creatures
she had ever seen, the most amiable in their manners, and good
natured, were nuns.
_Vive Seppolte._--As its name denotes, the nuns of this convent
never see the face of any human being but of the inmates of it. They
confess themselves to a confessor through a brass plate, pierced
with small holes; they are allowed to hold converse with their
friends only once a year, through a similar plate. No window or
any kind of opening looks upon a street or any sort of building;
all the light comes from their own courtyard. They wear woollen
next their skin, which is changed only once a month, sleep in their
clothes upon straw, and wear pieces of leather tied about their
feet. At the restoration of the pope all returned, excepting one,
who went to a similar convent at Albano. They have now fifty-four
nuns, and one of them unluckily possesses a large fortune. No
convent in Rome receives such abundant charity. At the head of the
staircase, leading to this nunnery, a large solid barrel, girt
with iron, and divided into eight parts, is fixed into the thick
wall of the building, and made to turn, so that articles may be
conveyed from and into the convent. We knocked upon this wall and
immediately a voice answered from within, "Praise be to our Lord
Jesus Christ," and said, "what come ye to seek?" We desired to speak
with the abbess. Whereupon the invisible rung a bell, and turning
the barrel, a key was brought to our view, that was taken by a man,
who had appeared at the ringing, and who unlocked the "parlatoire,"
a small room, in one corner of which was a plate of copper, twelve
or fourteen inches square, fixed in the wall, and pierced with the
finest holes imaginable.
The abbess now spoke to us from the other side of the plate, "I
salute you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." This person had a
lively voice and cheerful manner, and she spoke with perfect freedom
and willingness about her own concerns and those of the convent. She
told us that she had taken the veil thirty-eight years ago, and had
been made abbess at the restoration. She said moreover, that the
sisters were happy, enjoyed good health, and that she had never seen
a dissatisfied look, or heard a repentant wish. This was no doubt
true; people are contented in many conditions worse than that of
the Vive Seppolte, and conditions, too, which they never regard as
probations or martyrdoms, to be rewarded in another world. In 1815
the Pope had permitted this convent to be re-established, and since
that time not a human face, beyond those of the sisterhood, had
been seen by any inhabitants of it. Judging from the sound of this
woman's voice, and her rapid, pleasant, and animated conversation,
it is evident that she had neither regretted nor suffered much
from this deprivation. She appeared to have vast vivacity, and
much playfulness of mind, and was a great talker. Still it did
not often befal her to speak to foreigners through the grate, and
much allowance ought to be made for the excitement which a similar
situation doubtless awakened. When a small tribute was turned upon
the barrel into the convent, she said "God has sent us this gift."
"Those, who sent it, will be remembered in our prayers."
Having seen and heard much of the convents of Rome, I am satisfied
that the inhabitants of them do not condemn themselves to many
deprivations and mortifications, which they would not have suffered
in the ordinary chances of a different life; that the passions,
which exist there, are less active, violent and frequent, and that
the carelessness of mind, health of body, and absence from all gloom
and severity, utterly contradict and put to shame the theories
and creeds of the world. One cannot discourse too long upon the
impossibility of ascertaining the relative amount of happiness
in the different courses of life to which habit, inclination, or
chance, may call. A foreign gentleman, who had lived twenty years in
Rome, told me that he had never heard of any scandalous conduct in
any nunnery during all that time.
From the Journal of Science.