Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal / Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published

by Maria Monk

8. Summary view of the evidence.—Let us sum up this contradictory evidence respecting the simple fact, whether Maria Monk was a resident of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery or not?

Her mother says—"I denied that my daughter had ever been in a Nunnery." Dr. Robertson informed us—"I have ascertained where she has been residing a great part of the time she states having been an inmate of the Nunnery." That is all which can be adduced to contradict Maria Monk's statement.

This is a most extraordinary affair, that a young woman's place of abode cannot be accurately discovered during several years, when all the controversy depends upon the fact of that residence. Why did not Dr. Robertson specify minutely with whom Maria Monk lived at service at William Henry, in the summer of 1832?—Why did not Dr. Robertson exactly designate where, and with whom, she resided at St. Denis and St. Ours, in the winters of 1832 and 1833? The only answer to these questions is this—Dr. Robertson cannot. He obtained his contradictory information most probably from her mother, or from the Priest Kelly, and then embodied it in his affidavit to regain that favour and popularity with the Montreal Papists which he has so long lost. We are convinced that neither the evidence of Mrs. Monk, nor Dr. Robertson, would be of a feather's weight in a court of justice against the other witnesses, Mrs. ——, and Mr. William Miller.

Maria Monk asserts, that she was a resident of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery during the period designated by Dr. Robertson, which is familiarly denominated the Cholera summer. In her narrative she develops a variety of minute and characteristic details of proceedings in that Institution, connected with things which all persons in Montreal know to have actually occurred, and of events which it is equally certain did happen, and which did not transpire anywhere else; and which is impossible could have taken place at Sorel or William Henry; because there is no Nunnery there; and consequently her descriptions would be purely fabricated and fictitious.

But the things asserted are not inventions of imagination. No person could thus delineate scenes which he had not beheld; and therefore Maria Monk witnessed them; consequently, she was a member of that family community; for the circumstances which she narrates nowhere else occurred. At all events, it seems more reasonable to suppose that an individual can more certainly tell what had been his own course of life, than persons who, by their own admission, know nothing of the subject; and especially when her statements are confirmed by such unexceptionable witnesses. There are, however, two collateral points of evidence which strongly confirm Maria Monk's direct statements. One is derived from the very character of the acknowledgments which she made, and the period when they were first disclosed. "A death-bed," says the Poet, "is a detector of the heart." Now it is certain, that the appalling facts which she states, were not primarily made in a season of hilarity, or with any design to "make money" by them, or with any expectation that they would be known to any other person than Mr. Hilliker, Mr. Tappan, and a few others at Bellevue; but when there was no anticipation that her life would be prolonged, and when agonized with the most dreadful retrospection and prospects.

It is not possible to believe, that any woman would confess those facts which are divulged by Maria Monk, unless from dread of death and the judgment to come, or from the effect of profound Christian penitence. Feminine repugnance would be invincible. Thus, the alarm of eternity, her entrance upon which appeared to be so immediate, was the only cause of those communications; which incontestably prove, that Nunneries are the very nurseries of the most nefarious crimes, and the most abandoned transgressors.

The other consideration is this—that admitting the statements to be true, Maria Monk could not be unconscious of the malignity of Roman Priests, and of her own danger; and if her statements were fictitious, she was doubly involving herself in irreparable disgrace and ruin. In either case, as long as she was in New York she was personally safe; and as her disclosures had been restricted to very few persons, she might have withdrawn from the public institution, and in privacy have passed away her life, "alike unknowing and unknown." Lunacy itself could only have instigated a woman situated as she was, to visit Montreal, and there defy the power, and malice, and fury of the Roman Priests, and their myrmidons; by accumulating upon them charges of rape, infanticide, the affliction of the tortures of the Inquisition, and murders of cold-blooded ferocity in the highest degree, with all the atrocious concomitant iniquities which those prolific sins include.

Now it is certain, that she was not deranged; and she was not forced. She went deliberately, and of her own accord, to meet the Popish Priests upon the spot where their crimes are perpetrated, and the stronghold of their power. Whether that measure was the most prudent and politic for herself, and the most wise and efficient for the acquisition of the avowed object, may be disputed; but the exemplary openness and the magnanimous daring of that act cannot be controverted.

The narrative, pages 116 to l27, respecting the cholera and the election riots at Montreal, both which scenes happened at the period when Dr. Robertson says Maria Monk was at William Henry, or St. Denis, or St. Ours; could not have been described, at least that part of it respecting the wax candles, and the preparation for defence, except by a resident of the Nunnery.

It is a public, notorious fact, that "blessed candles" were made, and sold by the Nuns, and used at Montreal under the pretext to preserve the houses from the Cholera, and to drive it away; that those candles were directed so to be kept burning by the pretended injunction of the Pope; and that large quantities of the Nunnery candles were dispersed about Montreal and its vicinity, which were fixed at a high price; and whoever suffered by the Cholera, the Nuns and their Masters, the Priests, could truly say—"By this craft we have our wealth." Acts 19:25. It is obvious, that a young Papist woman at service at William Henry, could know no more of those matters, than if she had been at Labrador; for the incidental remark with which that part of the narrative commences, is one of those apparently superfluous intimations, which it is evident a person who was writing a fiction would not introduce; and yet it is so profoundly characteristic of a Canadian Convent, that its very simple artlessness at once obliterates Dr. Robertson's affidavit. "There were a few instances, and only a few, in which we knew any thing that was happening in the world; and even then our knowledge did not extend out of the city." We cannot be infallibly certain of Maria Monk's description of the interior of the Nunnery; but that unpremeditated remark, so minutely descriptive of the predominating ignorance among the Nuns of all terrestrial concerns exterior of the Convent, is satisfactory proof that the narrator was not sketching from fancy, but depicting from actual life.