Mother Makryna – Jacek Dehnel | #language & literature

Jacek Denhel dusts off one of the major mysteries of the 19th century – the story of an alleged Uniate abbess who even managed to deceive two Popes.

In the 1840s, Paris and Rome were stirred by stories about Makryna Mieczysławska, a refugee from Russia and a Uniate abbess of the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great from Minsk, who were violently persecuted by the Russian Orthodox clergy. Pope Gregory XVI listened to her story, while Pius IX visited her in person. It wasn't until years later that her real name, Irina Wińczowa, was discovered. Moreover, she wasn't a nun, but the widow of a constantly drunk, abusive Tsarist officer.

The dramatic fate of the persecuted Uniate sisters and their leader resonated with the imagination of contemporary and future generations, especially the Polish emigrants who, oppressed by the tsardom, associated with the tyrannized Uniates. Juliusz Słowacki paid tribute to the martyr abbess in his poem Rozmowa z Matką Makryną Mieczysławską (Conversation with Mother Makryna Mieczysławska, 1846), while Stanisław Wyspiański introduced her figure in several scenes of the play Legion (1900). In 1929, six years after the Jesuit Jan Urban unmasked the fraud in a thoroughly documented piece, Antoni Waśkowski published his play Makryna.

Jacek Dehnel's book draws on all of the above sources, including the original historical records, especially the published “confessions” of his protagonist which are astonishingly inconsistent when it comes to details: geographical, historical, personal, and so on. The author presents parallel narratives, dedicating equal amount of space to the official version proclaimed by “Mother Makryna” and to his own attempt at reconstructing her actual story. At the same time, he declares that his work is not a biography, but a novel.

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The Wińcz widow managed to find a housekeeping job in a convent's kitchen, where she also heard stories from the nuns about their enclosed life. Having been fired as a result of slander, she started looking for a place for herself, even as a beggar, and she noticed that people were easily touched by stories about the burdensome convent life. Their versions, destined for Polish ears, became gradually enhanced with descriptions of inhumane harassment inflicted on her and her subordinates in Tsarist Russia – from Orthodox dignitaries as well as clerks and police.

Mother Makryna matched the imagery of Romanticism: an innocent victim, suffering for her faith, and a symbol of resistance towards the Tsarist unlawfulness. Her story became notorious in Western Europe thanks to the involvement of some of the notable minds of the era. She travelled to Paris and Rome with letters of recommendation from General Dezydery Chłapowski, Leon Przyłuski – the Archibishop of Poznań and Gniezno, and Father Jan Koźmian.

Acting as her patron and guardian was the priest Aleksander Jełowicki, referred to as “ojczyńka,” who skilfully translated the alleged abbess' crass Polish into sophisticated French or elegant Italian. He sometimes added his own victorious words: “This is the Polish triumph through martyrdom!”. The uneducated, down-to-earth and hardened woman was immune to such phrases.

The fake nun's credibility was cemented by a “miraculous” recovery: the French missionary Father Blanpin regained his voice, lost due to illness, after a mutual prayer with Mother Makryna. She tried to wean Adam Mickiewicz away from the spiritual miasma of Tovianism, but to no avail, but she nevertheless managed to force him to confess to Father Jełowicki, whom the poet in fact disliked (and vice versa). Mother Makryna – still without her religious vows – succeeded at becoming a superior at a new convent in Rome, which was of the St. Basil the Great Order, however with services conducted according to the Catholic rites, in Latin.

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Jacek Dehnel unveils subsequent mysteries in front of the reader with the skill of a true detective. And so it turns out that the one who claimed to be the Polish noblewoman Wińczowa, née Mieczysławska, was initially a girl called Jutka from a large Jewish family. As a child, she was brought up and taught to be a maid by nuns, and became known as Julka. The Tsarist officer Wińcz picked Julka out to be his wife when she was working as a servant in a manor. During the wedding ceremony in a Russian Orthodox church, she took the name Irina. The final name, Mother Makryna Mieczysławska, was her own personal invention.

Dehnel masterfully assumed the language of the era, making his own story indistinguishable from the historical testimonies. Even though he avoids judgement, he evidently admires his protagonist to some extent. A simple woman who was able to make up for years of humiliation – not of the kind that she described, though equally painful – deserved a novel that reads well.

Jacek Dehnel

Matka Makryna

W.A.B., Warsaw 2014

series: Archipelagi

dimensions: 123 x 195 mm

hardcover

no. of pages: 400

ISBN: 978-83-280-0928-8

Author: Janusz R. Kowalczyk, November 2014, transl. Ania Micińska, September 2015

contemporary literature

history of Poland

markyna mieczysławska

irina wińczowa