Wnętrze średniowiecznego klasztoru jako przestrzeń mrocznych tajemnic.
The interior of the mediaeval monastery as a space of dark secrets.

Summary/Abstract: In case of the monastery, the metaphor of the “interior” as a world is particularly justified. If the exterior and interior form a “dialectic of rupture” (as put by Gaston Bachelard), then the microcosm of the monastery – the interior practically free of the exterior – may in some cases become a trap, and a stage of transgression. Three sets of examples of monasteries are examined in order to support this claim. The first set is a series of films devoted to the person of St. Francis of Assisi and the history of the imprisonment of St. John of the Cross in a convent in Toledo. These men are connected by the fact, that both, though in different periods, initiated reforms in the Church or religious order, and by the fact, that for them the monastery become a negative point of reference. The second set comprises of films that introduce the microcosm of the Dominican monastery, and the theme of the holy inquisition, that exposes the combination of religious fanaticism and cruelty carried out in the name of the faith. In those films the monastic rooms are turned into torture chambers. The third example is the Benedictine Abbey – the ideal XIV century abbey (as portrayed in The Name of the Rose), a model of mediaeval universe, that reflects all the religious controversies of the era.

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