Such conquistador-like practices by those in power and the Church provoke rebellion. The street is speaking about it; posts on internet forums are downright aggressive. Yet we are celebrating the second anniversary of Maria de Mattias being established as the patron saint of Bolesławiec, whether we want to or not, in the way deemed best—with great fanfare.
This serves those in power; it does not serve the saint. No one cares what Maria de Mattias was like. Of course, during the ceremony, Grand Words characterizing the saint were spoken: loving Jesus Christ, catechizing in accordance with the will and consent of the Church, and other such formulas that stopped having any effect on anyone long ago. They go in one ear and out the other.
No one will say that Maria de Mattias was a preacher, that she wanted to study and was able to fulfill her dream at a time when women were not admitted to schools. And when she had finally founded her own schools, whom did she teach there? Girls. She wanted to protect women eager to learn from the life to which the society of that time condemned them—without education and contact with the outside world.
It was the first decade of the nineteenth century. Maria, confined to the house simply because she was a woman, read Holy Scripture, the only book available to her, and waited for a possible marriage. She was intelligent, came from a wealthy family, and the accounts suggest that her father was open to her aspirations. Her economic position and her parent meant that she did not become a wife named Mary with ten children, whom the Church would never have mentioned. Religious life or marriage—that was the only choice Maria could make two hundred years ago.
In the nineteenth century, religious life was the only path that gave women longing for knowledge an opportunity for intellectual development. Maria could have become a mother and wife, but she chose to be a teacher. She was different. And she opposed everything around her. She changed reality. She opened more than seventy communities, and in each of them she taught women. She spoke in church. In one of her letters, she described an occasion when a canon ordered her to be silent because women should not speak in church. So she fell silent, although the priest’s words amused her. She did not accept the idea that it was forbidden. She believed that both sexes were equal and that only what she said mattered, not the fact that she was not a man. She fell silent and waited. People asked her to continue the sermon, so the canon granted the request of the faithful.
Maria de Mattias spoke in churches and founded schools for women. This was how a revolution was awakening in the heart of the Church. When I learned her story, I came to like this feminist devoted to knowledge, mysticism, and Jesus Christ. I would like the words now written on her grave—“Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord”—to be addressed to the Church in Poland, increasingly devoid of life and withering from its hunger for power.
Grażyna Hanaf