THE ROMAN INQUISITION
Popes having consolidated their spiritual dominion in Christendom
aim at complete temporal power--Inquisition originated by Pope
Innocent III--His character--Inquisition grows into engine of the
most cruel intolerance--Annals of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries full of conflicts between Inquisition and civil
authorities in various states of Europe--Spanish bishop imprisoned
in St. Angelo for life on charge of heretical belief in Mahometan
tenets--Advent of Protestant Reformation and the new Inquisition,
“The Supreme and Universal,” established at Rome in 1542--In
pontificate of Paul IV prisons of the Inquisition full to
overflowing--Dr. Wylson, an English Catholic, narrowly escapes--A
Franciscan friar barbarously punished for heretical
opinions--Carnesecchi put to death--Giordano Bruno, one of the most
celebrated philosophers of his day, burned alive--Arrest and trial
of Galileo, the eminent astronomer--His release--The remarkable
story of the Archbishop of Memphis--His imprisonment--Later
discoveries of the tortures perpetrated--The bath of slaked lime.
This account of Italian prisons must now revert to a much earlier date,
when the so-called crime of religious error moved the supreme authority
to establish a special tribunal to cope with it, having extensive penal
powers. In other words, the Inquisition was created. Toward the end of
the twelfth century the popes had consolidated their spiritual dominion
in Christendom and aimed at complete temporal sway; the papal authority
was recognised by kings, bishops, clergy and the laity of all degrees;
the holy father claimed the power to forgive sins and the right to
punish sinners. The popes had achieved by perseverance and astute
diplomacy a paramount position; they ruled wide territories in Italy and
enjoyed princely revenues gathered in from all sources. They aspired now
to impose orthodoxy of belief, feeling that dissent from established
forms might lead to resistance and rebellion against papal supremacy and
the authority of the Church. Heresy was the beginning of treason; it
must be sought out unceasingly and sternly repressed. The principles of
the Reformation were foreshadowed long before its birth, and already
brave men dared to worship in their own way and claimed independence of
religious belief. The extirpation of heresy among the Albigenses, the
Waldenses, and the Patarines[3] was the avowed object of the cruel
measures of the originator of the Inquisition, Pope Innocent III, and of
the religious persecutions which for centuries decimated and disgraced
Christendom.
Innocent III, who was of the family of the Conti, became pope in 1198.
Historians of his own way of thinking speak of him in terms of almost
fulsome eulogy. He is described as, “a man of clear understanding and
retentive memory; he excelled in divine and human learning, spoke well
in common Italian and in Latin, sang songs and psalms well, was of
middle stature and commanding aspect. He preserved the mean between
prodigality and avarice; but gave away alms and food liberally, although
sparing in other respects, except in cases of necessity. Severe toward
the rebellious and contumacious, but kind to the humble and devout;
brave and constant, magnanimous and astute; a defender of the faith and
an assailant of heresy; in justice rigid, and in mercy pious; humble in
prosperity, and patient in adversity; in temper somewhat irascible, yet
easily forgiving.”
As he was the earliest, so he was the chief and foremost of the
persecutors. On the day of his election he announced that he meant to
unsheath “the sword of Peter” and pursue all heretics unsparingly. One
of his first acts was to circulate letters apostolic among the bishops,
calling upon them to help and encourage the two travelling “inquisitors”
whom he was about to despatch from Rome, who were to investigate and
call all heretics to account in France, Spain and Portugal. If any,
after admonition, hesitated to repent them of their evil opinions, they
were to be excommunicated; the property of offending men of rank was to
be confiscated, sentence of banishment passed upon them, and if they
still remained in the country, graver penalties were to be imposed. No
one might hope to escape discovery; his emissaries were to penetrate all
districts, even the most remote, to hunt out and repress the slightest
heresies. How the Inquisition, once started, grew into an engine of the
most cruel intolerance, wreaking vengeance upon thousands of victims,
inflicting almost inconceivable tortures and death by the most barbarous
methods, was seen in its most extreme development in Spain.
We have to deal here with the doings of the Inquisition in Italy, and
more particularly in Rome, where Innocent III, consumed with perfervid
zeal, made all Romish bishops inquisitors by virtue of their office, to
execute justice upon all heretics they might find in their dioceses. The
summary action taken against heretics is seen in a decree which was
promulgated by the pope which ordered: “Every heretic, especially a
Patarino, found in the patrimony of St. Peter to be seized instantly and
summarily delivered to the secular court to be punished according to
law. All his property to be forfeited, and one-third given to the person
who caught him, another to the court that punished him, and a third to
be employed in public works; his house to be demolished and never built
again but made a dunghill; his friends to be fined, one-fourth of their
property to be given to the state for the first offence, and to be
banished for the second; such persons to have no power of appeal in any
cause nor any right to take proceedings, but to be prosecuted by
whomsoever chooses.”
The zeal and activity of the new Inquisition was greatly stimulated when
the order of the Dominican monks became generally charged with its
proceedings. A Spanish priest, Domingo de Guzman, commonly known as St.
Dominic, who came to Rome just as the new pope Honorius III was elected,
founded the fraternity of the Dominicans, and this order was specially
entrusted with the “affairs of faith against heretics.” The Dominican
inquisitors were appointed to further the cause in several great Italian
cities, in Florence, Genoa and Venice, but the rule of tyranny and
bloodshed they inaugurated was in many places strongly opposed. Pope
Alexander IV backed and supported them, and with many fierce bulls
strengthened their powers. Some historians believe that the inquisitors
did much to establish the papal power in Italian states, and it is said
that these guardians of the true faith frequently laid their hands upon
political opponents and proceeded against all kinds of wrong-doers. The
Inquisition, in any case, persecuted astrologers, necromancers,
alchemists and wizards. The higher science of astronomy had an evil name
and the greatest astronomers, as we shall presently see in the case of
Galileo, were arraigned and tried for their lives.
The annals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are full of the
conflicts that raged between the Inquisition, or its agents, and the
civil authorities in the various states of Europe, especially the
Italian states, all of which were constantly at enmity and in conflict
one against the other. The papacy was at war with the German Empire, to
which some reference has already been made. The Inquisitors were,
naturally, ranged on the papal side and materially contributed to the
ultimate triumph of the popes. It was their earnest desire to maintain
the ascendency of the papal see and to crush any hostile opposition to
the Church that might arise within its own borders; but they still
proceeded pitilessly against heretics and were especially severe upon
any who professed a form of faith different from the prescribed
Christian religion. The Inquisition did not spare the Spanish Jews, who,
flying from the mandate of expulsion issued by Ferdinand and Isabella,
came to Rome and were presently caught in the meshes of the Holy Office.
So with the Moors exiled from Spain, the “Marranos” who had refused to
profess Christianity and who came to Rome, where they were seized and to
save their lives made fresh recantation. At this very time a Spanish
bishop was accused of heretical belief in Mahometan tenets and arraigned
before the pope in person, as chief inquisitor, at a secret consistory.
He was convicted and sentenced to the loss of his episcopal dignity with
all his benefices and offices, and having been degraded from every
order, he was imprisoned in a chamber in St. Angelo for the term of his
natural life. His religious principles were, of course, at variance with
those of the Roman Church, but it was his practices that gave the
greatest offence to the pope, Alexander VI, and his licentious court.
They could not tolerate an ex-bishop who, according to his biographer,
“laughed at indulgences, ate flesh on Fridays and Saturdays, breakfasted
before saying mass and denied purgatory.” This was about 1498 when the
Holy Office was at the zenith of its power, and it is difficult to
understand why the offending bishop was not burned at the stake.
The advent of the Protestant Reformation undoubtedly inspired widespread
terror in Italy and stirred up the clerical hierarchy to fight for their
land. The pope of the hour, Paul III, decided to have recourse to a new
Inquisition almost simultaneously with the bull convening the Council of
Trent in 1542, and “The Supreme and Universal Inquisition,” as it was
styled, was established in Rome at that date. The papal court was fully
determined to crush the Reformation by the exhibition of all the forces
it had at command, and although it is on record that the new Inquisition
was most unpopular at the Council of Trent, and greatly disliked in many
great cities, where its proposed establishment produced insurrections,
it was nevertheless introduced and granted extensive powers. It was
governed by six cardinals who were given almost unlimited authority.
They could imprison all guilty or suspected persons, proceed against
them until final sentence, and punish the convicted with due penalties;
they were entitled to requisition and employ the secular arm to slay the
victims they condemned. These plenary powers, involving life and limb,
they claimed to exercise over the subjects of every sovereign in the
world. Only the Spanish Inquisition, which had deserved well of the
Church by its unflinching severity, was exempted from the direct control
of the Roman congregation. Nor was it necessary to exercise supervision
in Spanish territory, for the court of Spain was at one with the pope,
who appointed the Spanish inquisitor-general and had a warm ally against
the Reformation in Philip II.
The new cardinal-inquisitors were not slow to use their powers. They
were especially anxious to silence the printing press and laid a heavy
hand upon writers and their publishers. Books were suppressed or
destroyed, but numbers were circulated throughout Italy in spite of all
prohibitions and prosecutions. Severe penalties were inflicted in
Tuscany on the possessors as well as the printers of heretical books.
Twenty-two such persons were marched in procession in Florence, wearing
an ignominious garb of penance, and then publicly exposed in the
cathedral. At Modena an insurrection was provoked by the doings of the
inquisitors in regard to a writer, who was arbitrarily thrown into
prison while his books and papers were seized and forwarded to Rome.
The printing and issuing of a new work was hampered by many
restrictions; its appearance must be sanctioned after its perusal by
some high ecclesiastic; in Rome, by the pope’s vicar or master of the
sacred palace; in other cities, by the bishop of the diocese or some one
“having understanding.” The penalties of disobedience were forfeiture of
the books when published, which were burned publicly, with fines to be
added to the sums collected for the building of St. Peter’s.
Commerce did not prosper in Italian cities where the Inquisition
exercised sway. Foreign merchants, often of strange faith, who came to
Florence, were eyed with suspicion. They were spied upon and kept under
close surveillance; people declined to remain in the city and do
business under such restrictions. Streets were deserted, shops remained
empty and trading vessels no longer sailed up the Arno. A terrific
disturbance occurred in Naples when the Inquisition was brought there in
1547. The Neapolitans both hated and dreaded it. The Spanish Viceroy
appealed to force and marched three thousand troops into the city, so
that a desperate conflict ensued. The soldiers fought hard with the
exasperated populace, and before the church bells rang out for vespers
the streets ran with blood and were choked with corpses. In Sicily,
Philip II established it more easily by bribing the chief men and
heaping favours upon them.
In Rome the Inquisition pursued its course and speedily disposed of all
who clung to the new and hated opinions. Persecution was incessant under
succeeding popes, Paul III, Julius III, Paul IV and Pius IV. During
their rule many learned and pious men were sacrificed by the Inquisition
in Rome and beyond it. Fannio was hanged at Florence in 1550 and then
burned on the demand of Julius. The following year Galeazzo Treccio was
imprisoned, tortured and burned alive in a prison of the Milanese.
Giovanni de Monteleiro, professor of metaphysics in the University of
Bologna, was burned in Rome in 1551. Francesco Gambia, who had been
present at a Protestant service in Geneva, was seized when crossing Lake
Como, strangled, beheaded and his body burned; Pomponio Algieri of
Padua, was found to be a heretic, was carried prisoner to Venice, but
not being a Venetian was surrendered to the cardinal inquisitors,
removed to Rome and burned alive in the presence of Paul IV; Giovanni
Luigi Paschali, an eminent Protestant preacher in Calabria, was taken to
Rome, tried, condemned and burned just outside the castle of St. Angelo,
at which ceremony Pope Pius V presided. Paschali was a learned
theologian, and after he had been tortured and was on the brink of
execution, he maintained a long disputation with a great
controversialist in the presence of a galaxy of cardinals, bishops and
distinguished clerics assembled in his cell.
Venice was always ready to curry favour with the Inquisition. An
Italian, Altieri, attached to the British Legation, wrote from Venice
about 1550 to Martin Luther: “Many have been seized and are pining away
in perpetual imprisonment.... All conspire together to oppress the Lord
and his anointed, and nowhere is this calamity more cruel and prevalent
than in Venice itself.” The spies of the Inquisition were active in
denouncing the secret worshippers according to the new faith who still
lurked in the city, and they were forthwith tried and condemned. The
form of execution was usually by drowning in the lagoons.
Paul IV entertained the gravest fears regarding the end of the
Reformation, and was the most strenuous in urging the inquisitors to
root out the deadly heresy. The prisons of the Inquisition but just
erected were crowded to overflowing. Informers were ever busy in
denouncing people to the Holy Office. The slightest suspicion was enough
to bring about arrest and consignment to some foul dungeon. No one
ventured to breathe a word of protest against the severity of the
tribunal. To betray sympathy for the sufferers would have been held an
offence which would surely lead to punishment as an abettor of the
heresy. Even the college of cardinals trembled, for one of their august
body had been incarcerated by the pope in the castle of St. Angelo, from
which he was handed over to the inquisitors.
This was Cardinal Morone, who owed his hard fate very much to the
personal enmity of Paul IV. He had distinguished himself greatly at the
Council of Trent and such was his repute that the tribunal was unable or
unwilling to find him guilty. The pope then desired to release him, but
the cardinal refused to leave his prison without a public acknowledgment
by the holy father of his innocence. While still a prisoner Paul IV
died, and Morone was summoned to attend a conclave for the appointment
of a successor. The bishop of Modena was imprisoned about the same time
as Morone, but with even greater injustice. An eminent English Catholic
cleric, Dr. Wylson, narrowly escaped from the clutches of the
Inquisition. He had come to Rome seeking a refuge from Queen Mary, whom
he had displeased, and while there wrote a couple of books, one on
rhetoric and the other on logic. These were deemed heretical, and he was
arrested by the Holy Office.
It would have gone hard with him had not the turbulent Roman people been
moved to rise up just then against the tyranny of the Inquisition and
break out in deeds of violence. At the death of Pope Paul IV, the common
prisons had been thrown open, according to custom, and numbers of
criminals released. But the prison of the Holy Office remained strictly
closed, and the people resenting this attacked it, forced the gates,
emptied it and set the building on fire. In the tumult Dr. Wylson got
away, fled from Rome and returned to England, where he came into great
favour with Queen Elizabeth when she ascended the throne, and was
advanced to be one of her principal secretaries of State.
This first prison of the Inquisition thus destroyed was rebuilt by Pius
V in 1509 and is the same as that now standing in Rome, the vast edifice
behind St. Peter’s, near the Porta Cavalleggeri, and fallen to other
uses. During the French occupation of Rome to bolster up the papal
power, it became a barrack, and the tribunal of the Inquisition was held
there until suppressed, to be revived by Pius IX after 1849 in an
apartment in the Vatican. The three tiers of cells it contained are
still on view, but the interesting archives have been removed to some
place of safety where they await the curious investigator.
The Holy Office much needed its new prison. The cardinal-inquisitors
were indefatigable and a letter dated 1568 referring to their labours
reports that “people are every day burned, strangled or beheaded; all
jails and places of confinement are full and there is constant toil in
building new prisons.” Pius V was an uncompromising supporter of the
Holy Office. He was the first to bear the title of Supreme Inquisitor,
adopted by all his successors. Later Gregory XIII became prefect of the
congregation of the Inquisition, an office also held by all succeeding
pontiffs.
A Franciscan friar, Fra Tommaso di Mileto, was very barbarously punished
in 1564 by the inquisitors, on a charge of heretical opinions and
practices. Among his offences was a belief that it was not sinful to eat
meat on certain days, that images and relics should not be reverenced,
that there was no virtue in papal indulgences, that priests could not
bind and loose from sin. For this he was sentenced to be walled up alive
within four walls which were built up around him, with no more space to
spare than just enough for him to kneel down before a crucifix, and “out
of that place he was not to stir but there suffer anguish of heart and
shed many tears.” A small aperture was left above through which food
might be dropped down to him. This kind of sepulchre was used in Spain
where many skeletons of persons walled up, _emparedados_, have been
found in places of the character described.
Another notable victim of the Inquisition about this period was Pietro
Carnesecchi, a man of high estate and great learning who had been
protonotary to Clement VII, but had enjoyed the friendship of many of
the reformed faith. He had on one occasion been taken into custody by
the Holy Office. Duke Cosimo of Florence had obtained his release and he
left Rome for France, where he became still more closely attached to the
Protestants. Pope Paul IV, bitterly incensed against him, summoned him
back to Rome, but he replied by a contumacious letter which was
construed into a direct attack upon the pope. In spite of this, he
impudently paid a visit to his friend, the grand-duke at Florence, who
immediately gave him up to Pius V, now pope, saying he would surrender
his own child to the holy father under similar circumstances, and he
went so far as to allow his guest to be arrested at his dinner table.
Carnesecchi met with no mercy. He was speedily tried upon thirty-four
charges and sentenced to be handed over to the secular arm, which
clothed him in the _sanbenito_, the yellow frock of the condemned
heretic, and prepared to burn him at the stake. Duke Cosimo, full of
remorse, vainly strove to move the pope to compassion, but only gained a
respite of ten days, during which Carnesecchi might recant and return to
the bosom of the Church. Several ingenious priests were sent to reclaim
him from the error of his ways, but all argument and exhortation failed
and he went to his fiery death with singular courage and constancy. He
preferred to go on foot to the scaffold, but with a certain pomp,
wearing fine linen under the _sanbenito_ and elegant gloves. Extreme
terror was felt all through Italy at this tragedy. Every one feared for
himself, his relatives and his friends. Pleasant confidential
intercourse ceased and no one dared speak, even in the privacy of the
family circle. No nationality was safe, not even the English. A Mr.
Thomas Reynolds, resident in Naples, was informed against and sent to
Rome a prisoner, where he was laid upon the rack and died under torture.
Giordano Bruno was one of the most celebrated philosophers of his day.
He travelled far and wide from Italy and Switzerland, to France,
Germany and England, making open profession of the reformed religion.
But he was rash enough to venture back to Italy, going first to Padua,
where he fancied himself safe from the Inquisition. He was sadly
mistaken for the Venetian authorities were no friends to heresy, and he
was arrested and removed to the prison of the Piombi, under the “Leads”
of the doge’s palace in Venice, and detained there for six years, after
which he was taken to Rome. Here he underwent numerous examinations and
constantly disputed with the best theologians, among the rest with
Cardinal Bellarmine, the chief inquisitor. This trial was prolonged for
two years until, wearied out by his unchanging firmness, he was taken
into the great hall of the palace of the Inquisition and his sentence
read to him as he knelt before the cardinals. After reciting in full his
many offences, it was ordered that he should be degraded, for he had
received priest’s orders, excommunicated and delivered to the secular
arm for punishment, which was to be “inflicted as tenderly as possible
and without effusion of blood.” Bruno heard the sentence without
emotion, remarking: “I dare say you feel greater pain in pronouncing
these penalties than I do in receiving them.” The governor of Rome now
took charge of him and he was locked up for a week in one of the common
gaols of the city where he was closely watched, in the vain hope that he
might yield; but he was firm to the last, when he was taken to the
stake, still obstinately refusing to make recantation. The fire was
lighted under him and he was burned alive, without even raising his eyes
to the crucifix thrust into his face. Thus perished one of the first
scholars in Europe.
A still more disgraceful case, except that it did not terminate fatally,
was that of the renowned astrologer Galileo. It belongs to a later date
and occurred in the pontificate of Urban VIII, the pope who first armed
the castle of St. Angelo with artillery. Urban VIII was also a champion
persecutor, an energetic patron of the Holy Office, of whose merciless
activity he thoroughly approved. Widespread alarm prevailed in Italy
when it was seen that the Inquisition not only dealt summarily with
religious opinions but also, yielding to the most prejudiced ignorance,
was fiercely opposed to the advancement of natural science. Galileo, who
had reached his seventieth year at the time of his troubles, had long
resided in Florence, his native city, as a professor of mathematics
under the protection of Ferdinand. He was far in advance of his age and
had made many important discoveries. He had gauged the exact
oscillations of the pendulum and had invented an astronomical clock; he
brought out the first microscope, and with a long range telescope he
established many remarkable astronomical facts, such as the explanation
of the Milky Way as a collection of small stars, and that the moon was
a burned out planet whose light was due to reflection. He dared,
moreover, to adopt the theory of Copernicus, that the earth revolved
round the sun and not the sun round the earth. When he published his own
observations in support of this novel and startling theory, he fell at
once under the censure of the Inquisition. The extravagant views
entertained by Galileo were pronounced to be absurd, false and
heretical. The cardinal-inquisitors referred the writings of Galileo to
their literary advisers who, of course, passed a strongly condemnatory
verdict upon them. Galileo was warned to abandon the incriminating
doctrine and carefully to abstain from teaching it. The astronomer
promised to do this, but did not keep his word and ventured to write a
dialogue between three persons; one of them still in doubt, the second a
believer in the Ptolemaic system--that held by the priests--and the
third a disciple of Copernicus and Galileo. When this dialogue was
circulated, Pope Urban VIII fancied that he had been caricatured in one
of the characters and became greatly enraged against Galileo, who was
again summoned before the Holy Office. The grand-duke, Ferdinand, was
reluctant to surrender him but his priest-ridden grand-duchess implored
him to yield obedience to the Church; and poor Galileo, now in failing
health and a prey to great fear, was sent back to Rome to be again
arraigned before the tribunal. We have an account of his adventures in
his own hand.
“At last, as a true Catholic, I was obliged to retract my opinion and by
way of penalty my Dialogue was prohibited; and after five months I was
dismissed from Rome. As the pestilence was then raging in Florence, with
generous pity the house of the dearest friend I had in Sienna, Mgr.
Archbishop Piccolomini, was appointed to be my prison; and in his most
gentlemanly conversation I experienced so great delight and satisfaction
that here I resumed my studies, arrived at and demonstrated most of my
mechanical conclusions concerning the resistance of solids and some
other speculations.
“After about five months when the pestilence had ceased in my native
place, in the beginning of December in the present year 1633, His
Holiness permitted me to dwell within the narrow limits of that house I
love so well, in the freedom of the open country. I therefore returned
to the village of Bellosguardo and thence to Arcetri; where I still am
breathing salubrious air, not far from my own dear Florence.”
Galileo died in Florence, to which he was at last permitted to return,
at the age of seventy-eight years. It is an interesting subject for
speculation to conjecture what this great genius might have achieved if
he had been born later and could have utilized all the appliances
supplied by modern science. His personal character was that of a most
delightful companion, a man of learning and deeply read, but no pedant.
On the contrary, his humour was genial, his wit pungent, and he
sometimes made enemies by his banter, as in the case of Urban VIII. The
well known story of his whispered protest in private denial of the open
admission wrung from him as to this movement of the earth is said to be
apocryphal. But it was very likely that a man of his cheerful
disposition would say _sotto voce_ “but it does move all the same.”
Galileo was a devoted lover of art, passionately attached to music and
poetry, and he was said to have known the works of Ariosto by heart.
Gabriello Fiamma was bishop of Chioggia, near Venice, and a popular
preacher throughout Italy. He narrowly escaped the Inquisition. When in
Naples all his manuscripts and note books were seized, even to the last
scrap in his possession, but nothing compromising was found to convict
him, and it appeared that he had been betrayed by some envious and
malevolent foe.
Fra Paolo Sarpi, the historian of the Council of Trent, was nearly
undone by an invitation to appear in Rome, which he prudently evaded,
but an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate him secretly, and he
was dangerously wounded. His Latin pun is remembered when he said,
“agnosco stylum Romanum,” a phrase with a double meaning, “I recognize
the Roman way” or “I know the Roman dagger.” His friend and brother
priest, Fulgencio Manpedi, was less fortunate. Manpedi rashly accepted
the invitation to Rome, and left Venice under a safe conduct which was
tantamount to an arrest. On arrival, he was treated at once as a
prisoner for trial and sentence was in due course passed upon him. He
was to remain in Rome for five years, during which he was to visit
weekly the seven “privileged” churches within the city and recite in
them the seven penitential psalms with certain litanies, orisons and
prayers, and he was to fast rigorously every Friday. This fiat was
pronounced by the commissary of the Inquisition seated in state in the
palace of the Holy Office, and Manpedi heard it kneeling. His offence
was a suspicion of heresy in his preaching in Venice, and too great
friendliness with Sir Henry Wotton, the British ambassador there. He was
not, however, to be let off thus lightly, and being persuaded to make
abjuration, signed his own death warrant. He was thrown into the Tor di
Nona and thence removed to a dungeon of the Inquisition, and fresh
charges were brought against him, based on the papers seized at his
arrest. Examination under torture followed, then conviction and
sentence. He was then handed over to the governor of Rome and whipped
with a lash of bulls’ hide but without drawing blood. Last of all, he
was taken to the Campo di Fiori, that Smithfield of Rome, and there
strangled and burned.
The Holy Office boldly proceeded against foreign subjects when it caught
them, and much scandal was caused by the arrest and ill-treatment of a
certain Abbé de Bois, a Frenchman. This was held to be a violation of
the law of nations, as the abbé was an agent of the Crown of France with
authorised letters of credit, but he was forced to do penance in Rome
for sermons he had preached in Paris against the Jesuits. The story of
De Dominis, ex-archbishop of Spalato in Dalmatia, shows that the long
arm of the Inquisition might be extended to interfere with a former
dignitary of the Church, even in England, where he had taken refuge. De
Dominis had come over in the character of a convert to Protestantism and
was cordially welcomed. Numbers flocked to see and hear him. Great
personages relieved his poverty with rich gifts. The King, James I, gave
him valuable preferment; the deanery of Windsor, one of the most genteel
and complete dignities in the land, the mastership of the Savoy and a
fat living in Berkshire. He is described as ostentatious, vain and eaten
up with conceit. He was certainly impudent, for he exasperated his
former masters by publishing many controversial writings, and his
vigorous attacks produced great discomfiture in Rome. A deep plot was
designed to ruin him. His rapid rise in the English Church had made him
the subject of much envy and many detractors were at work to undermine
his standing with the King. De Dominis, stung to the quick, said some
foolish things and let it be supposed that he might be won back to Rome
if handled properly. Gundomar, the famous Spanish ambassador at the
court of St. James, sent word to the pope that De Dominis would accept
pardon if it were offered to him. Gregory XV, an old friend, expressed
his willingness to forgive and forget and promised De Dominis the
archbishopric of Salerno if he would come back, and the still greater
gift of a cardinal’s hat. On receiving these overtures, De Dominis wrote
to James I, asking leave to depart as he was bent on securing “the
reunion of all the churches in Christendom.” He went first to Brussels,
where he waited six months for a safe conduct; and as none came,
ventured to proceed to Rome, relying upon the friendship of the pope. At
this juncture Gregory died and was succeeded by Urban VIII, who did not
know De Dominis and had a special hatred for heretics. The confiding
priest had been given no archbishopric, the cardinal’s hat was not in
sight, but he had been living till now upon a comfortable pension and in
a certain state. All this ceased suddenly and he found lodgings in the
castle of St. Angelo just as he was on the point of seeking safety in
flight. There was much to incriminate him found in the papers seized at
his arrest, and even in the castle he adhered to his detestable
opinions. His heart, they said, was still with the heretics although his
body was in Rome.
Then he fell sick and suddenly died. No one could well believe it was a
natural death. Four sworn physicians to the pope examined the corpse,
however, and deposed that no signs of violence were to be seen upon it.
The suggestion of poison was not met because it was not put forward.
But the Holy Office desired to show that it would have been justified in
taking his life. At an imposing ceremony in the church of St. Mary, and
in the presence of the greatest personages, ecclesiastical and civil,
the effigy of De Dominis was arraigned and condemned to peculiar pains
and penalties. “Marc Anthony” was declared to have relapsed and was
sentenced to be degraded and cast out. All his writings were to be
burned and his goods confiscated to the Inquisition. His body, now far
advanced toward putrefaction, was torn from the coffin, thrown upon a
pile in the Campo di Fiori and consumed before a vast crowd.
The Inquisition in Rome was active to the last and died hard. Napoleon
would have none of it and threw wide open its prison, but Leo XII, when
the popes regained mastery, revived the old tyranny; the congregation of
cardinals was reëstablished with the pope as prefect, and persecution
was resumed on the old lines. In the revolution of 1849, when Pope Pius
IX fled to Gaeta, it was again done away with. At that time the
Inquisition prison was still found to contain two inmates, an aged
bishop and a nun. The first was no doubt the person mentioned by
Whiteside in his travels in Italy, dated 1848, and the incident may be
fitly quoted here.
“We returned from our delightful walk by the prison of the Inquisition,
close to the Vatican. Within these gloomy walls has been confined for
many years a very extraordinary person, the archbishop of Memphis.
Passing on foot in this quarter of Rome, we were conversing with a
student for the priesthood, who said mysteriously, ‘There has been a
bishop in prison there for many years,’ pointing to the Inquisition
building. Curiosity impelled me afterward to inquire into the history of
the ecclesiastic so long confined, when the following singular narrative
was given me by a clergyman, who appeared to be well informed on the
subject: In the reign of Leo XII, some twenty-five years ago, that pope
received a letter from the Pasha of Egypt, informing His Holiness that
he and a large portion of his subjects desired to embrace Christianity
and to be received into the bosom of the Church of Rome; and announcing
that he and they were willing to conform to everything, providing the
pope sent out an archbishop, with a suitable train of ecclesiastics, and
requesting His Holiness to do him the favour of appointing a certain
young student, whom he named, the first archbishop of Memphis and
despatch him to Egypt. No doubt whatever was entertained of the truth of
this communication, but an objection presented itself in the youth of
the ecclesiastical student whom the Pasha wished to have consecrated
archbishop. The pope consulted the cardinals, who advised him not to
make so dangerous a precedent as that of raising a novice to so high a
rank in the Church, but His Holiness, tempted by the desire of extending
the empire of the Church and converting a kingdom to Christianity,
resolved to conform to the wishes of the Pasha, and consecrated the
youth as Archbishop of Memphis.
“The new archbishop was sent out, attended by a train of priests, to
Egypt. When the ship arrived, a communication was made to the
authorities in Egypt, who repudiated the archbishop and declared the
affair was an imposition. His Grace then confessing the fraud, was
instantly arrested and reconducted to Rome. He had been the author of
the letter which imposed on the pope; his original intention having been
to confess to the pope as a priest, after his consecration, the
imposition he had practised; and as the pope could not betray a secret
imparted to him in the confessional, the offender might have obtained
absolution in time and so escaped punishment. Whether this would have
been practicable, I know not; but as it was not accomplished, and as the
youth had the rank of archbishop indelibly imprinted on him, nothing
remained but to confine His Grace for the remainder of his life; and
accordingly he was at once consigned to this prison near the Vatican,
where he has now spent twenty-five summers; and occasionally the
Archbishop of Memphis may be seen putting his head out of the windows to
breathe the fresh air of heaven and gaze upon the Vatican from a prison
whence he never can escape.”[4]
The latest account of the old Inquisition is from an eye witness the
Father Gavazzi who made some noise in his time as a fugitive priest and
who visited the place in 1852. He wrote the following description:
“I found no instruments of torture, for they were destroyed at the first
French invasion and because such instruments were not used afterwards by
the modern Inquisition. I did, however, find in one of the prisons of
the second court a furnace and the remains of a woman’s dress. I shall
never be able to believe that that furnace was used for the living, it
not being in such a place, or of such a kind as to be of service to
them. Everything, on the contrary, combines to persuade me that it was
made use of for horrible deaths and to consume the remains of victims of
inquisitorial executions. Another object of horror I found between the
great hall of judgment and the luxurious apartment of the chief jailer,
or _primo custode_, the Dominican friar who presided over this
diabolical establishment. This was a deep trap, a shaft opening into the
vaults under the Inquisition. As soon as the so-called criminal had
confessed his offence, the second keeper, who is always a Dominican
friar, sent him to the father commissary to receive a relaxation of his
punishment. In the hope of pardon, the confessed culprit would go toward
the apartment of the Holy Inquisitor; but in the act of setting foot at
its entrance, the trap opened and the world of the living heard no more
of him. I examined some of the earth found in the pit below this trap;
it was a compost of common earth, rottenness, ashes and human hair,
fetid to the smell and horrible to the sight and thought of the
beholder.
“Next you descend into the vaults by very narrow stairs. A narrow
corridor leads you to the several cells which for smallness and for
stench are a hundred times more horrible than the dens of lions and
tigers in the Colosseum. Wandering in this labyrinth of most fearful
prisons, which may be called ‘graves for the living,’ I came to a cell
full of skeletons without skulls, buried in lime. The skulls detached
from the bodies had been collected in a hamper by the first visitors.
Whose were those skeletons? And why were they buried in that place and
in that manner? I have heard some zealous ecclesiastics, trying to
defend the Inquisition from the charge of having condemned its victims
to a secret death, say that the palace of the Inquisition was built on a
burial ground belonging anciently to a hospital for pilgrims, and that
the skeletons found were none other than those of pilgrims who had died
in that hospital. But everything contradicts this specious defence.
Suppose that there had been a cemetery there; it could not have had
subterranean galleries and cells laid out with so great regularity; and
even if there had been such--against all probability--the remains of
bodies would have been removed on laying the foundations of the palace,
to leave the space free for the subterranean part of the Inquisition.
Besides, it is contrary to the use of common tombs to bury the dead by
carrying them through a door at the side; for the mouth of the sepulchre
is always at the top. And again it has never been the custom in Italy to
bury the dead, singly, in quicklime; but in time of plague, the dead
bodies have been usually laid in a grave until it was sufficiently full,
and then quicklime has been laid over them to prevent pestilential
exhalations, by hastening the decomposition of the infected corpses.
This custom was continued some years ago in the cemeteries of Naples and
especially in the daily burial of the poor. Therefore the skeletons
found in the Inquisition of Rome could not belong to persons who had
died a natural death in a hospital; nor could any one under such a
supposition explain the mystery of all the bodies being buried in lime,
with exception of the head. It remains then beyond doubt that the
subterranean vault contained the victims of one of the many secret
martyrdoms of the tribunal. The following is a most probable opinion, if
it be not rather the history of a fact:
“The condemned were immersed in a bath of slaked lime gradually filled
up to their necks. The lime, by little and little, enclosed the
sufferers, or walled them up alive. The torment was thus extreme but
slow. As the lime rose higher and higher the respiration of the victims
became more and more painful, because more difficult; so that what with
the suffocation of the smoke and the anguish of a compressed breathing,
they died in a manner most horrible and desperate. Some time after their
death, the heads would naturally separate from the bodies and roll away
into the hollows left by the shrinking of the lime. Any other
explanation of the fact that may be attempted will be found improbable
and unnatural.”