SPIELBERG. - Castle of the city of Brno (Brünn, Brno) in Moravia (Czechoslovakia), famous in the history of the Risorgimento for having served as a prison for those condemned in the political trials of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, among whom are chiefly numbered Silvio Pellico, Pietro Maroncelli, Federico Confalonieri, Pietro Borsieri, Giorgio Pallavicino, Gabriele Rosa and the Frenchman Alessandro Andryane. Its fame is due in particular — as is well known — to Pellico's Le mie prigioni.
It must especially be remembered that Emperor Francis I was convinced that the Italian patriots, by conspiring against him, had at the same time violated the laws of Christian morality, and he was sincerely concerned for their eternal salvation: imprisonment was therefore to be, in his opinion, not only the punishment deserved by those who had plotted against the institutions, but also and above all an effective means of spiritual redemption, an incentive to "conversion." That this conversion was then to manifest itself, on the practical plane, in new revelations concerning the conspiracies in which the condemned had taken part serves to confirm the dangerous and arbitrary, indeed one-sided, mingling of the sacred and the profane that was the pernicious common characteristic of all the old so-called "divine right" dynasties and therefore also of the Habsburg regime. The fact remains, however, that the Emperor constantly saw to it that the prisoners could fulfill their religious duties (Holy Mass was celebrated regularly in the prison chapel by Capuchin fathers), had devotional books provided for them, and appointed priests to have care of their souls. First there was the Augustinian Father Battista Vorthey (1823), then d. Stefano Paulowich-Lucich ([v.]; 1823-27), d. Giorgio Wrba (1827-28) and finally d. Vincenzo Zinck. Except for Paulowich — who did not bring to the delicate task sufficient of everything, because he was more loyal to the throne than to the altar — all were excellent spiritual directors of the prisoners, as is unanimously affirmed by those among them who have left autobiographical memoirs of their detention.
The Italian political detainees who died at the Spielberg, five in number, all breathed their last with the comforts of religion, including Silvio Moretti, who in his youth had abandoned the priestly state, and Giovanni Vincenti, who in the course of a wandering life had adhered to Calvinism. Alessandro Andryane was given Baptism sub conditione because he had been born in France at the height of the Revolution.
Paulowich often reported to the Emperor that the majority of the detainees had not converted "enough." And if in another — and more substantial — sense one can agree with him, inasmuch as not all, once restored to liberty, persevered in the observance of those religious practices to which they had drawn near again in prison, it remains nonetheless equally true that Pellico, Confalonieri, Pallavicino, Solera, Villa, Oroboni and many others came out of the Spielberg, or died there, reconciled with the faith of their youth, renouncing the atheistic maxims by which they had allowed themselves to be led astray in the time of their revolutionary activity. Not all, certainly, reached the spiritual heights of Pellico: but for the majority of them the period spent at the Spielberg, amid the material and moral afflictions of the extremely harsh prison regime, effectively marked a return to the faith and the beginning of a sincerely Christian life.
Bibliography
Renzo U. Montini