SPIELBERG. — Castle of the city of Bruna (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 Lombardo-Veneto, among whom the principal ones were 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 Mie Prigioni.
It is especially important to recall that Emperor Francesco 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, in his view, not only the deserved punishment for those who had attacked the institutions, but also and above all an effective means of spiritual redemption, an incentive to «conversion». That this was then supposed to manifest itself, on the practical level, in new revelations concerning the conspiracies in which the prisoners had participated, confirms the dangerous and arbitrary—or rather one-sided—intermingling of the sacred and the profane, which was the deteriorating common characteristic of all the ancient dynasties so-called of «divine right», and therefore also of the Habsburg regime. The fact remains, however, that the Emperor constantly took care that the prisoners should be able to fulfill their religious duties (Holy Mass was regularly celebrated in the prison chapel by Capuchin friars), had devotional books supplied to them, and appointed priests to care for their souls. At first there was the Augustinian Fr. Battista Vorthey (1823), then Fr. Stefano Paulowich-Lucich ([v.]; 1823–27), Fr. Giorgio Wrba (1827–28), and finally Fr. Vincenzo Zinck. With the exception of Paulowich—who did not bring sufficient integrity to the delicate office, being more devoted to the throne than to the altar—all were excellent spiritual directors of the prisoners, as is unanimously affirmed by those among them who left autobiographical accounts of their detention.
The Italian political prisoners who died at S., five in number, all passed away with the consolations of religion, including Silvio Moretti, who in his youth had abandoned the priestly state, and Giovanni Vincenti, who in the course of his wandering life had embraced Calvinism. Alessandro Andryane was baptized sub conditione, since he had been born in France at the height of the Revolution.
Paulowich often reported to the Emperor that most of the prisoners had not converted «enough». And although, in another—and more substantial—sense, one may agree with him, inasmuch as not all, once restored to freedom, persevered in the observance of those religious practices to which they had drawn closer in prison, it nevertheless remains equally true that Pellico, Confalonieri, Pallavicino, Solera, Villa, Oroboni, and many others left S., or died there, reconciled with the faith of their youth, rejecting the atheistic principles by which they had allowed themselves to be led astray during the period of revolutionary activity. Certainly, not all attained Pellico’s spiritual heights; but for most of them the period spent at S., amid the material and moral afflictions of the harshest prison regime, effectively marked a return to the faith and the beginning of a sincerely Christian life.