# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 09 13_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10

church and the monastery. They were turned away for this time, since the matter did not belong before the commission. The city, as the defendant, was summoned to acknowledge the commission by appearing in person. After some dispute three persons from each of the three orders, the council, the aldermen and the third order, were chosen to express this acknowledgment in writing. Not until the 18th of September were the witnesses heard. Matters went tolerably so long as the bishop of Plock, the voivode of Culm and some others conducted the hearing. But as soon as the bishop of Kujawien and the crown chamberlain Lubomirski, sworn enemies of the Thorners, got a freer hand, the proceeding looked more like an execution than an investigation. The witnesses brought forward by the council were rejected as accomplices; but whoever wanted to testify anything against a Thorner, spiteful old women, hired vagrants, discontented maids, all were accepted. When they swore to their statements, the persons named were arrested. On the 26th of September there were already some 80 persons sitting in prison, among them several who could prove that on the day of the tumult they had not been in Thorn at all. When the guilty declared that they wished to accept the Catholic religion, they found protection with the bishop. The officials of the court were threatened with torture if they would not testify that the president had given orders for the tumult. Everything that is evil was practised by this commission. Only with difficulty could council and clergy escape their acts of violence.

Yet let us pick out a few more things from this history. The witnesses of the accused were commonly rejected by the assertion that they had been present at the disorder, and because they had not prevented it were to be regarded as accomplices. The statements of the witnesses put forward by the plaintiffs often contradicted one another. They had not yet been properly instructed. The Jesuits then brought others who were better practised. Whoever was named as a participant had to go into custody; and many were left there who brought proofs of their innocence. The plaintiffs' witnesses did not come together with the accused. What they testified on oath was accepted as certain. Against the Lutheran student Nagorni, whom we have already mentioned several times, a Polish soldier brought the charge that after his release from custody in the Jesuit school he had fetched pistols and a sword and wounded him with them. Against this twenty persons testified, even Catholics among them, that Nagorni had gone to his lodging and kept quietly there. The gingerbread baker Hofft was accused of having stolen a chalice in the college. But the church wardens themselves declared that after the end of the riot they had found all the chalices. A woman of ill repute accused the shoemaker Wunsch of having been in the Jesuit house; but he proved by the statements of all his neighbors that on the 17th of July he had lain sick with the gout and had not left his dwelling. The woman witness confessed that she had mistaken the person. And yet a very severe sentence fell upon this shoemaker, as also upon the shoemaker Mertz, who proved by seven witnesses that he had not stepped out of his house until about 11 o'clock at night, when the riot had nearly reached its end, and had looked at the scene of the tumult only from a distance. A clerk was accused by a Jesuit of having set a sword to his breast, and a Polish soldier confirmed the statement. The accused proved, however, that on the 17th of July he had been not in Thorn but in Danzig.

Such was the course of the investigation. Whoever paid ducats handsomely soon got off. The commission itself had lived in the most sumptuous style during its four weeks' stay in Thorn. It now ended its sittings. Apprentices and young people were set free, most of the adults had to remain in prison, and an ordinance appeared that 16 persons should be brought before the Assessorial court. All protests of the council of Thorn went unheeded. At last these bloodsuckers departed. They reckoned 50,000 Polish gulden as costs of subsistence and 2,950 ducats as fees. They declared that they would continue their sittings until the money was paid. In order not to have still greater costs extorted from them, it was decided to pay the money. The Jesuits themselves were not satisfied with this course of the investigation; for they condemned some of their fellow believers who had testified in the spirit of truth and of right to church penance, and excluded them from the Lord's Supper. Every Sunday and on all festival days they prayed in public prayers for a happy outcome of the trial. The Father Rector traveled with another Jesuit to Warsaw, in order to procure a favorable turn for the affair in their sense.

During that time the Diet was just being held at Warsaw. The debate over the Thorn trial opens to us a view into such Polish Diets. The deputy of Podlachia, Rothworowski, urged that this matter be taken up before all things. If insults to a crowned head were not to be left unavenged, how much more severely must such an outrage against the King of all kings be punished. That was his and others' maxim. Another land-envoy urged a committee that should pronounce judgment on the basis of the investigation already made. The under-chamberlain of the realm, Prince Lubomirski, also supported such a motion with others in the interest of the Jesuits. The imperial chancellor Szembeck, on the other hand, resisted this motion, declaring that it ran against the authority of the king and against the rights granted to the land of Prussia. The trial belonged before the Assessorial court and not before the Diet. The Polish magnates finally yielded on the condition that the trial must be concluded before the close of the sessions. But they besieged the marshal Potocki with the threat of going their separate ways, in order thereby to move the king to appoint a day of court. King Augustus actually gave way. On the 26th of October 1724 the ruinous trial began. It was arranged that extraordinary assessors from the number of the senators and land-envoys of the Diet were added to the court. The enemies were already exulting. The imperial chancellor presided. Just as the deliberation was about to begin, the half-blind Lubomirski was led in. He seated himself among the senators and said with joyful fury: "Welcome, my lords, to the trial of God!" The chancellor addressed a short speech to the assembled court, in which he exhorted them in this vexatious affair, which concerned the honor of God, not to proceed by caprice and passion, so that the world might perceive that there is a God in Israel.

The plaintiff for the Jesuits was Nagrodski, ordinarius of the Assessorial court. He began with the narration of a dream which a Jesuit had had long ago in Thorn. In it he saw the city of Thorn, on account of grievous offense against the college, fall into a wretched condition and finally go to ruin. The plaintiff then portrayed the riot in the most exaggerated manner and threw some fragments of pierced and burnt images of saints upon the table. No more needed to be done to stir up among this arch-Roman and Jesuitical crowd a truly Polish uproar. They cursed the heretics. The chancellor had all the trouble in the world to restore quiet after a long time.

The accuser then continued his complaint. In particular he disputed the magistrate's jurisdiction over the Jesuit pupils, and declared it an abuse of the power granted to it that it had arrested the two Catholic pupils. He wished that the most obstinate of them be brought in person before the court, especially the secretary Wedemeyer, and be brought to the confession that Rösner had instigated the riot and commanded it. In any case Rösner and Zernecke had forfeited their lives, because they had done nothing to quell the riot. To the just judgment of the assembled judges he left the punishment of the participants in the riot, and demanded as compensation for the Jesuits 34 thousand Polish gulden. As punishment for the hatred of religion and the negligence of the magistrate he demanded that the places of the magistrate, the court and the third order be filled half with Catholics. In order that the honor of the Mother of God be atoned for, he demanded the blood of the participants, and at the same time the restoration of the Marienkirche to the Catholics.