83 Apostolate or Contemplation: 1677-1723 burghers who, seeing the Marians doing manual labor, mocked them in verse: “Stanislaus garbed in white sackcloth founded the community of worthy farmhands.”84 When analyzing the available documents, it is surprising to see so many attacks on the Order, threats, slander, and accusations from external sources and within the Order itself. Bishop Wierzbowski, who felt deeply responsible for the congregation, had serious concerns about its fate and survival, and he defended it by all means possible. Episcopal Committee and Its Decrees: June 14, 1685 There was no peace in the small congregation. João Teixeira even claimed that: “Satan […] began to inflame the minds of many outsiders and even of some cloistered [Marian] brethren devoid of [a] real calling, pushing them to initiate persecution and destroy this holy Congregation. The destroyer of peace has succeeded in achieving his evil intentions because all the confrères have abandoned their former calling, left the cloister, and returned into the world.”85 Undoubtedly, this information from the devout Portuguese, who had no means of verifying it, relates to the years 1674-1676. These were the years of testing the fidelity to the strict rigors of the eremitic-penitential vocation imposed by Bishop Święcicki, which some confrères couldn’t endure. During the period when the Marians already had two monasteries, the Order had at least a dozen members and several clerics and novices.86 There were also some significant misunderstandings during that time, especially in the Cenacle, although minimal information is available about them. One of the documents tells about some differences of opinion (differentiae), which arose between Fr. Papczyński — who left the monastery in the Forest and took up a long-term residence at the Cenacle to have more opportunities for apostolic work — and his confrères. The document 84 That’s how the witnesses testified in the beatification process of Father Stanislaus. See: S. Sydry, O. Stanisław, p. 192. 85 Teixeira, n. 56. Leporini made the same note, n. 39. 86 Navikevicius, pp. 182-183. Based on the available documents, he provided the number of Marians in the Cenacle in 1690, excluding Fr. Stanislaus, who was then going to Rome: there were 4 fathers, 3 subdeacons, and several clerics. In the Forest, there were at least 5 fathers and some novices.
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