Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they might have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates unto the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. Revelation 22:14-15

The Beautiful Nun

To many nineteenth-century Americans, the world described by the urban exposé and crime fiction was not merely a description of moral failure, but evidence of the workings of the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon in America. However much murderers terrorized the countryside or immigrants filled the cities, much of American literature and popular culture still portrayed the Roman Catholic Church as the Mother of Harlots, as this prophetic chart of the Millerites Apollos Hale and Charles Fitch shows. It should not be surprising, then, that urban exposés and crime novels were fueled by revelations of a far more insidious sort, namely the "awful disclosures" of life inside Roman Catholic convents. George Bourne, an abolitionist and Presbyterian minister, was one of the first to publish an exposé of the hidden lives of Catholics. His Lorette supposedly depicted the true crimes of Canadian nuns, although the interior of female convents yielded little more than a few prurient priests and breathy nuns. Nevertheless, infidelity and popery would prove a potent combination in the years to come, especially in terms of book sales. Following Bourne's lead, Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a Convent reportedly sold 200,000 copies in a single month, although it exposed little inside convent walls that would be thought titillating today. The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, however, emerged from God knows where to satisfy the darkest needs of antebellum Americans, who were so excited by its tales of flagellation and infanticide that they bought 300,000 copies before the Civil War. The prejudices that entertained Americans in such a work are even evident in humorous literature of the day. Although Six Months in a House of Correction appears to be a Catholic counter to Rebecca Reed's exposé, it is actually a vicious parody that spares neither Catholics nor Protestants. Such Anti-Catholic pornography continued to be such big business that even Ned Buntline, the inventor of Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickock, got into the action. His The Beautiful Nun is a work of tabloid brilliance, involving black-robed inquisitors, thumbscrews, water torture, wicked caresses, and a full-on brawl between Protestant firemen and an Irish police force. Buntline's cross-over successes apparently imbued American millennialists with a Wild-West attitude. Will the Old Book Stand?--one of the many volumes in the "Anti-Infidel Library"--makes it quite clear that Christians of the late-nineteenth century were willing to take up six-shooters for the defense of the American values encapsulated in the Book of Revelation, even if the essay inside has no relation to the stake-out depicted on the cover.

81. Apollos Hale and Charles Fitch. Prophetic Chart of the End of the World. 1843.

82. George Bourne. Lorette. The History of Louise, daughter of a Canadian nun, exhibiting the interior of female convents. New York: Printed and published by Wm. A. Mercein, 1833.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

83. Rebecca Reed. Six Months in a Convent. Or, The Narrative of Rebecca Theresa Reed, who was under the influence of the Roman Catholics about two years, and an inmate of the Ursuline Convent on Mount Benedict, Charlestown, Mass., nearly six months, in the years 1831-2. With some preliminary suggestions by the Committee of Publication. Boston: Russell, Odiore & Metcalf, 1835.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

84. Maria Monk. Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, as exhibited in a narrative of her sufferings during a residence of five years as a novice, and two years as a black nun, in the Hotel Dieu nunnery at Montreal. New York: Howe & Bates, 1836.

Gift of Mrs.Henry T. Louthan.

85. Dorah Mahony. Six Months in a House of Correction. Or, The narrative of Dorah Mahony, who was under the influence of the Protestants about a year, and an inmate of the house of correction, in Leverett St., Boston, Massachusetts, nearly six months in the years 18--. With some preliminary suggestions by the Committee of Publication. Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey, 1835.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

86. Ned Buntline. The Beautiful Nun. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, 1866.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

87. H. L. Hastings. Will the Old Book Stand? Boston: H. L. Hastings, 1891.