In 1845–1846, the fabricated testimony of Makryna Mieczysławska, an alleged Uniate nun from the Russian Empire, generated a sensation across Europe that many believed capable of derailing a diplomatic rapprochement between the Vatican and the Romanov regime. Drawing on Russian, Vatican, Habsburg, and Polish archives, this article argues that the affair elucidates struggles over authority and credibility as mechanisms of power on the European stage and the role of confessional matters in international politics. Excluded from traditional diplomatic channels, Polish émigrés mobilized a transnational network of clerics and journalists to present Makryna’s purported martyrdom as a form of testimony that challenged official diplomatic practices. Although fabricated, her account was treated as politically consequential, forcing governments and church authorities to respond. By examining the clash between imperial logics and popular sentiment, this article demonstrates how religious sensation could be harnessed to claim a voice in international affairs, even as this political appropriation distorted the ecclesiastical cause it purported to champion. Ultimately, this propaganda campaign failed to prevent the Vatican-Russian agreement of 1847. The Makryna Mieczysławska affair thus reveals both the power of religious sensation to shape political discourse in mid-nineteenth century Europe and the limits of non-state actors’ influence on high politics.
Katherine L. Younger (Sun,) studied this question.