CHAPTER VI

THE STORY OF THE CENCI

Francesco Cenci in the year 1562 succeeded to the very considerable fortune amassed by his father, Monsignor Cristoforo Cenci, who had been papal treasurer in the reign of Pius V. He was not in priest’s orders, although a canon of St. Peter’s, and he had married one Beatrice Arias, who had already borne him this only son. Francesco in early youth gave signs of a vicious disposition. When only eleven years of age he had been tried for murderous assault and had been guilty of many other crimes. He was a tall, stalwart, overbearing person, both hated and feared within his own house and beyond it. He constantly oppressed his servants, who sued him in the courts. He ill-used his wife abominably, and she died early after bearing twelve children, only seven of whom survived.

Five popes had come to the pontificate between Pius V and Clement VIII, in whose reign the celebrated case of the Cenci occurred. In 1593 Francesco Cenci took a second wife, by name Lucrezia Petroni, a woman of great piety, with whom he led a tempestuous life. He was a wicked and neglectful father whose family led a wretched existence, ever the prey of his unbridled passions. He pursued his eldest daughter with his ignoble attentions, but she successfully repulsed him and appealed for protection to the pope, who rescued her from her father’s violence and gave her in marriage to a gentleman of Gubbio, with a suitable dower extorted from her father. The atrocious Francesco showed ever increasing animosity toward his children, who, although full grown, he detained as close prisoners in the Cenci palace, while he transferred his attentions to Beatrice, his youngest daughter, now a maiden of eighteen, possessing many attractions, and whose beautiful face is familiar to all the world from the well known portrait by Guido still preserved in the Barberini Palace.

Poor Beatrice suffered many barbarities at her inhuman father’s hands. Fearing that she would appeal, like her sister, to the pope, he kept her constantly locked up and frequently beat her. With the connivance of her stepmother, she contrived to send a petition to the pope, but the holy father declined to be friendly. About this time a young priest, Guido Guerra, who had not as yet taken the vows, fell in love with Beatrice and she returned his affection, but Francesco Cenci altogether disapproved of the attachment and drove Guido Guerra away, furiously threatening to kill him if he dared to reopen communications with the family. Guerra after this tried to carry Beatrice off, but failed and further exasperated her father, who now abruptly left Rome, removing with his family to the castle of Petrella, a remote mountain stronghold near Aquila, on the frontier of the Neapolitan states, where he held Beatrice a close prisoner in a dark dungeon. But the measure of his iniquities was nearly full, and dire retribution was at hand.

Maddened by his ill-usage, his wretched victims plotted to compass his death. Giacomo Cenci, the eldest son, joined with Guido Guerra, Beatrice’s lover, and with two hired assistants found among Francesco’s vassals—all of whom loathed their inhuman master—the manner of the murder was quickly arranged. Francesco was first drugged with opium by his wife Lucrezia, and when sleeping soundly the assassins approached him, but hesitated to strike while he was thus unconscious. Beatrice had followed them into his room and upbraiding them for their cowardice, declared that she would do the deed herself. When at last they fell to their murderous work, they despatched Francesco by driving a nail through his temples. The corpse was then dressed, carried out to an open gallery and thrown down upon the branches of an elder tree growing in the garden below. It was thought that when the body was found next day it would be supposed that the dead man had fallen from the gallery in the dark. This was the charitable conclusion arrived at. No suspicion was expressed of foul play; the two women Lucrezia and Beatrice lamented loudly and after a brief period of mourning, the family returned to Rome.

Several months passed before justice intervened. The story of accidental death began to be doubted. The Neapolitan authorities communicated with the Roman, inquiries were set on foot and the theory of murder was first broached, being justified presently by the medical evidence forthcoming on the disinterment of the corpse. Guerra, the priest, becoming alarmed, tried to put the servants, who had actually committed the crime, beyond giving evidence by taking their lives. One indeed was killed, the other escaped but surrendered himself and made full confession. The case was now clear against the Cenci family as well as Guido Guerra, who fled across the frontier disguised as a charcoal burner. At this point the two brothers, Giacomo and Bernardo, were imprisoned in the Corte Savella, the common gaol, while Beatrice and Lucrezia were detained in the Cenci palace in Rome. The servant who had been arrested in Naples was brought to Rome for examination, but would not implicate Beatrice, who had been persistent in her denial, declaring that so beautiful a girl was incapable of a crime. This servant was put to torture and died upon the rack, after which all the accused were committed to St. Angelo and finally removed to the Corte Savella where the criminal court of justice then sat. The judge had such presumption of their guilt that, failing to extort confession, he ordered the “question” to be applied.

When subjected to the “cord” the brothers’ courage failed. This was torture by means of a rope attached to the arms and rove into a running knot with a pulley in the ceiling. When run up, the whole weight of the body was borne by the arms which were nearly drawn from their sockets. Then the squasso was tried, a sudden drop of the body, but not so far as to touch the floor. The brothers stood out at first but were told their sufferings would be increased by the addition of lead weights to their feet. Then they gave in and admitted the crime but laid the chief blame on Beatrice as the instigator. Lucrezia being aged and corpulent was not tried with the cord.

Beatrice, however, would not yield to either the persuasion or threats of the judge. She bore the torment of the “cord” with extraordinary firmness. Torture failed to extort a single word from her. The judge saw in this no obstinacy but a proof of innocence, which he duly reported to the pope. Clement VIII, believing the judge to be swayed by the prisoner’s great beauty, gave the case to another, made of sterner stuff, one Luciani, a man of cruel character. When Beatrice persisted in declaring her innocence, he ordered the torture of the vigilia to be continued with full severity for five hours.

The vigilia is a narrow stool with a high back having a seat cut into pointed diamonds. The sufferer sits crosswise and the legs are fastened together on either side without support. The body is closely attached to the back of the chair, which is also cut into angular points. The hands are bound behind the back with a cord and running knot attached to the ceiling. The process of the torture is to push the victim from side to side against the points, run the body up and drop it perpetually the whole of the time ordered. The first infliction failed of effect and it was repeated on the third day. Beatrice was almost exhausted, but she still declined to confess, and the next stage in the devilish business was that of the torture of the hair, capillorum.

In this the hair of the head is twisted into a knot and attached to a rope and pulley by which the body is raised until it hangs by the hair. At the same time the fingers are imprisoned in a mesh of thin cord which is tightened and twisted till they are out of joint. Beatrice continued to protest her innocence and the judge could only conclude that she was supported by witchcraft. The story is too painful to carry further, and I forbear to describe the taxillo, or application of a block of heated wood fastened to the soles of the bare feet. At last her brothers and stepmother were brought in to make piteous entreaty to the poor victim to yield, till she cried, “Let this martyrdom cease and I will confess anything.” She went on to declare: “That which I ought to confess; that I will confess; that to which I ought to assent, to that I will assent, and that which I ought to deny, that will I deny.” She was accordingly convicted without direct confession and she never really admitted her crime.

The pope, Clement VIII, now ordered that all four should be dragged through the streets, tied to the tails of horses, and then decapitated. But many great people interceded on their behalf, praying that they might first be heard in their defence, and the pope at last reluctantly consented to listen to their advocates, whom he roundly abused, telling them that he was surprised at their effrontery in daring to defend the unnatural crime of parricide. But one of the most eminent jurists of his time, Prospero Farinacci, whose portrait is still to be seen in the castle of St. Angelo painted on one of the doors of the great hall, expatiated so eloquently upon the cruel wrongs Francesco Cenci had inflicted upon his family that Clement was moved to pity and spent a whole night in pondering over the arguments put forward by the defence. Next day he granted a reprieve, and it appeared more than likely that he would extend a full pardon to all. But at this moment another murder, a matricide in a princely family of Rome, shocked all society, and the pope insisted that justice should take its course upon all the Cenci and that all should suffer death except the entirely innocent son, Bernardo, who was, however, condemned to witness the execution of the other three.

The sentence was carried out on the ridge of St. Angelo just in front of the castle, the convicts having spent their last hours at the Corte Savella. Only a short notice was given them; they were warned one morning at six o’clock that they were to be executed on the same day. Beatrice, on hearing her fate, burst into piteous lamentations, crying, “Is it possible, O, God! that I must die so suddenly?” Her stepmother was more resigned and strove to calm Beatrice. The priests came to confess them and administer the last sacrament, after which they were led forth to join the funeral procession, which had started from St. Angelo, traversing the city to the Cenci Palace, and, after stopping for the condemned at the Corte Savella, returning to the bridge. Giacomo was in the first cart, as he was to be the first to expiate his crime. The sentence imposed upon him included the additional torture of being torn with red hot pincers as he passed along the road to the bridge, where he was to be beaten to death. Bernardo was in the second cart and Lucrezia with Beatrice in the third. The ladies were dressed wholly in black and veiled to the girdle, to which was fastened a silken cord binding their wrists, instead of manacles. On reaching the scaffold, Bernardo mounted it and was left there alone while the ladies entered the chapel. The poor youth, ignorant of the favour shown him, believed he was to suffer death at once, and he fainted just opposite the block. Lucrezia came out first and was beheaded while repeating a psalm. Beatrice followed and bravely walked to the scaffold reciting her prayers, “with such fervour of spirit that all who heard her shed tears of compassion.” With her lovely fair hair she looked like a sad but beautiful angel. She would have lingered at her prayers but the executioner seized her, and struck ferociously at her neck, the head falling into her own blood. Bernardo meanwhile, awakening from his deadly swoon, again fainted when he saw these horrible sights and was thought to be dead until revived by powerful remedies which were applied. Last of all Giacomo was brought out, blindfolded; his legs were tied to the scaffold and the executioner struck him a fatal blow on the temples with a loaded hammer and then cut off his head. After the ceremony Bernardo was taken back to the castle of St. Angelo and kept there for a year and a half, then exiled to Tuscany, where he died.

The foregoing narrative follows the facts as stated in the archives of the Cenci family, but some authorities question whether Beatrice was ever imprisoned and tortured in St. Angelo. The evidence however seems perfectly clear. The cells she and her mother occupied are still shown, as mentioned above, and in her will Beatrice, who left the larger part of her possessions to the Church, also bequeathed money to four soldiers of the garrison who had probably been her guards in the castle. Doubts are to-day expressed as to the authenticity of the famous portrait which is attributed to the eminent painter Guido, who, according to the story, was introduced by her lawyer Farinacci into her cell for the purpose. The personal description of Beatrice given in the Cenci documents does not tally with the picture. She is recorded to have been “small and of a fair complexion with a round face, two dimples in her cheeks and golden, curling hair, which being extremely long she used to tie up; and when afterwards she loosened it the splendid ringlets dazzled the eyes of the spectators. Her eyes were of a deep blue, pleasing and full of fire, and her face was so smiling in character that even after her death she still seemed to smile.” On the other hand in the Guido canvas the eyes are hazel, the hair is not long or curling, the face is drawn with thin and haggard cheeks and no dimples. It is in the highest degree improbable that she would have worn such a head-dress or costume at the time the portrait is said to have been taken, and even the suggested solution that it was painted from recollection is not borne out by any sort of proof. The portrait is on view to-day in the Barberini Palace in Rome, having come into the possession of that noble family from another of Colonna.

The poetic traditions that have been woven around this marvellous painting have inspired much fine writing by famous hands. Some of the most interesting passages may be transcribed here.

“The portrait of Beatrice,” says Charles Dickens, “is a picture almost impossible to be forgotten. Through the transcendant sweetness and beauty of the face there is a something shining out that haunts me. I see it now as I see this paper or my pen. The head is loosely draped in white, the light hair falling down below the linen folds. She has turned suddenly toward you, and there is an expression in the eyes—although they are very tender and gentle—as if the wildness of a momentary terror or distraction had been struggled with and overcome that instant; and nothing but a celestial hope and a beautiful

sorrow and a desolate earthly helplessness remained.”

Again, Nathaniel Hawthorne has written:—“The picture of Beatrice Cenci is the very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involves an unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which comes to the observer by a sort of intuition. She knows that her sorrow is so strange and immense that she ought to be solitary for ever, both for the world’s sake and her own; and this is the reason we feel such a distance between Beatrice and ourselves, even when our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet her glance and to know that nothing can be done to help or comfort her; neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the hopelessness of her case better than we do. She is a fallen angel—fallen and yet sinless.”

Further additions were made to St. Angelo in the seventeenth century, in improving its interior and strengthening its defences. Urban VIII in 1623 built the bastions, still standing, and restricted the bed of the Tiber so as to put an end to the inundations that so often had done great damage to this part of the city. The pope also improved the armament of the castle and cast many pieces of cannon with the bronze he removed from the roof of the Pantheon. He was of the Barberini family, whose crest is a bee, and a contemporary writer, the Jesuit Donato, paid Urban the compliment of saying that “bees not only make honey but possess stings to be used in self-defence.” The expenditure on the new guns amounted to 67,260 scudi; there were 110 pieces in all, described as “Colubrini, cannoni, falconetti, petardi ed altri stromenti.” It was in carrying out these works and excavating a new ditch that the Barberini or so-called “Sleeping Faun” was unearthed from the spot where it had lain since the sixth century.

Pope Urban VIII also improved the long corridor or passage that connected the Vatican with the castle. Arches had been added by Pius IV in 1559, and then Urban roofed it in. This gallery had two stories, the lower enclosed and tunnel-like, lighted by loopholes and a perfectly secure passageway, and the upper a covered loggia of open arches, as it may be seen to this day. The keys of these vitally important passages have always been retained by the pope himself in his own keeping.

From this time forth the castle of St. Angelo ceased to be a courtly residence, but it was still valued as a strong place of arms, with fortifications to be jealously guarded, improved and kept in good repair. It was also applied to baser uses as a prison-house to receive the many law-breakers and criminals constantly committed to safe custody by the watchful guardians of good order and the merciless agents of a severe penal code. The popes, secure in their authority, their power no longer challenged, held the turbulent people in stern subjection and enforced the law with a strong hand. Good order was strictly maintained and offenders were promptly brought to punishment. Crime was extraordinarily prevalent and called for pitiless repressive and coercive measures.

It has been said that the determining factor in the execution of the Cenci was the occurrence of another murder of the same description. Paolo, a son of the Princess Santa Croce, had vainly sought to persuade his mother to make him her heir, but she had steadfastly refused, and in his rage and disappointment he resolved to kill her. He first wrote to a brother, Onofrio, accusing her of disgracing the family by her debauched life, obviously a false charge, for she was already more than sixty years of age. Onofrio replied that the honour of the family must be preserved at all costs. Whereupon Paolo stabbed his mother to the heart. Rome was convulsed, and Paolo fled for his life, but Onofrio was seized, put on his trial, convicted and executed on the bridge of St. Angelo in 1601.

A strange crime is recorded in the account of the beheading of a certain Giacinto Centini, who was a nephew of the most excellent and reverend Signor Cardinal d’Ascoli, and “who had caused a statue of wax to be made of Urban VIII, in order that its dissolution might insure that of the pope and so allow his uncle a chance of becoming pontiff at the next conclave.” Included with this is the story of the recantation and death of his accomplices in the Campo di Fiore. It was on Sunday, April 22, 1636, that the recantation took place in St. Peter’s in the presence of about twenty thousand persons. A platform ten spans high had been erected in the middle of the church, and the accused were made to mount upon it and listen to an account of the charges against them, which were read aloud from a neighbouring pulpit. Centini and one of his confederates, Fra Cherubino d’Ancona, heard in silence, but another, Fra Bernardino the Hermit protested so loudly that he was innocent and caused such scandal among the congregation that he was gagged to prevent further utterance. The two unhappy monks were then hurried to the Transpontina, where they were publicly stripped of their habit in the presence of a large crowd which attended them, hooting and shouting, and taken back to the Corte Savella where Centini had already arrived.

The execution was to take place in the Campo di Fiore and here the block and axes, and a stake firmly planted in the ground, and surrounded with straw and faggots, had been duly prepared. Long before dawn the square began to fill with people, and about eight in the morning the officers of justice left the prison with their victims, and after making a long tour through the city, reached the piazza. The pile was lighted immediately, and commenced to burn with such fury that the crowd drew back appalled from the consuming flames and the showers of sparks which darted from it. The ex-monks were in a state of abject terror and one of them fell to the ground in a dead faint. Centini was beheaded first, then the two monks were hanged, and the bodies of all three were flung into the flames. They died with satisfactory signs of penitence and Cherubino especially, remarks the old chronicler, “made a most edifying end and left behind a good hope of his salvation.”

No pains were spared to induce criminals about to die to seek reconciliation with Mother Church. An account is preserved of the last days of the “most illustrious and excellent Signor Protomedico Giovanno Tomasini,” during the pontificate of Alexander VII in 1666. Together with a certain Camillo Nicoli, he had committed murder, and they lay under sentence of death in the Carceri Nuovi of Florence. Certain members of the Compagnia della Misericordia, a religious confraternity vowed to good works, were despatched to minister to the condemned men and attend them to the scaffold. Nicoli showed satisfactory signs of repentance, but Tomasini’s heart was “as hard as the nether millstone” and he refused to prepare himself for death. He would not open his lips except to complain of the injustice of his sentence and nothing would move him, neither prayers, exhortations, litanies nor the telling of beads. Tomasini swore he would please himself and go to perdition his own way. The brethren in attendance wrestled with him, wept and kissed his feet, but failed utterly; others replaced them and were equally unsuccessful; the execution was postponed to allow two eloquent Capuchin fathers assisted by two Carmelite friars to effect his conversion. Being still obdurate he was taken to hear mass; the priest who officiated especially addressed himself to Tomasini, but the celebrated physician remained as hardened as ever; he refused to kneel but sat himself astride of the bench and would not even turn his eyes to the altar. At last, exasperated beyond measure, the priests and the monks and brethren of the confraternity, attacked him, hustled him, abused him and hit him with no more result than that of creating a scandal in the Church. The executioner’s assistants then gagged him and placed a rope round his neck, after which he heard another mass and was exorcised as though he had the devil inside him. All at once he heaved a deep sigh, tore the gag from his mouth and recanted his errors, to the immense relief of the members of the confraternity gathered around him. They took him back to the prison to confess and receive the last sacrament, after which he was again brought out, carefully dressed, and marched through the streets, singing a penitential psalm until he arrived at the scaffold.

These confraternities were corporate bodies with both religious and civil functions. Thus the Confraternita della Trinita lodged and fed gratuitously for three days all the pilgrims who came to Rome; the Confraternita della Morte attended to the sick in the vast Agro Romano; the Confraternita di St. Giovanni Decollato devoted itself to prisoners condemned to death; the Santissima Annunziata gave dowries to poor and deserving Roman maidens; the brethren of the Stigmata of St. Francis prostrated themselves to kiss the ground and were therefore called in Roman slang bacia mattoni;[2] those of St. Girolamo della Carita begged alms for the prisoners; the Agonizzanti affixed the placards or tavolozze on the walls which bore the names of malefactors sentenced to death; they besought the prayers of the pious and exposed the sacrament until the last penalty of the law was carried out.

Among the many privileges enjoyed by these confraternities till a much later date was one hardly in accordance with our modern idea of civil justice, “the right of liberating from the galleys, and even from sentence of death, any malefactors other than thieves.” When negotiations had been entered into with the governor of Rome, and the pope’s consent had been gained to the release of the offender, a day was fixed upon for the confraternity to march in solemn procession from its church to the prison, where the criminal was handed over and conducted in triumph round the city, dressed in the attire of the brotherhood and crowned with laurel, as in a Roman triumph. This custom was definitely abolished by Leo XII.

All these liberations, however, cost money, and in time there came to be an official tariff, varying according to the nature of the crime. Thus we read in a report of the Austrian legation that forty scudi sufficed to free a man who had been condemned to the galleys for ten years. The last criminal released by the Compagnia di S. Girolamo was a murderer named Checco sentenced to death in 1824. The company went in solemn procession to fetch him from the Carceri Nuove and conduct him to their church in the Via Monserrato. Here, after assisting at mass, he was arrayed in the habit of the confraternity, crowned with laurel and escorted in another triumphal procession round the church.

Terrible scenes were enacted at executions in those days. The story of the execution of Abbé Rivarola in 1668, found guilty of writing libellous satires, throws into strong relief the mad passions into which the Roman populace were constantly betrayed, and the terrible mental tortures inflicted upon the unhappy victims of the law. The abbé was so overcome by the terrors of the situation that in spite of all that could be done to keep up his courage and all the restoratives that were administered to him during the night preceding his execution, he had hardly strength enough left to be taken in a cart to the fatal place where he was to suffer. He was dragged up on the scaffold by the members of the confraternity in attendance on him, but so limp and powerless had he become that the executioner had the greatest difficulty in adjusting his head upon the block. Even then he must have moved almost unconsciously, for when the string was pulled and the axe fell, it hit the wretched man between the neck and the shoulder. The executioner, seeing what had happened, seized a huge knife and literally hacked off his head, whereupon the bystanders leaped in wild rage upon the scaffold and with shrieks that rent the air seized the clumsy executioner, and would have torn him limb from limb had not the sbirri (policemen) hastened to his rescue. A free fight ensued which was only put an end to by the arrival of soldiers from the castle of St. Angelo. The executioner was flogged round the streets of Rome the following morning, and then exiled from the papal states.

Another gruesome picture of a public execution, at a somewhat later date, is described by an eye-witness in the following words:

“There was a sudden noise of trumpets in an adjoining street which somewhat diverted the attention of the populace, and presently there emerged into the Via Papala, from the Governo Vecchio, a procession headed by the Bargello and his officers and conveying two rogues bound upon asses to the Campo di Fiori, where they were to be exposed in the pillory. An immense mob followed these unhappy wretches, scoffing and sneering at them and pelting them with all manner of horrible refuse. The first criminal looked like a facchino or porter, and was very scantily clothed. His feet were bare and he wore a pair of breeches that barely came below his thighs; on his head he had a cardboard mitre with devils and flames rudely painted upon it; his face was smeared all over with honey, and from his neck hung a card on which was written in large letters his name and these words: ‘Blasphemer of the Holy Name of God.’ A piece of wood was thrust into his mouth and tied behind at the nape of his neck in such a manner that he was obliged to keep his lips wide open and his tongue hanging out. This torture was called the mordacchia. Behind him walked the executioner’s assistant, who administered repeated blows with a heavy whip to the culprit’s back. The face of this latter was livid with pain and rage, and he glanced occasionally over his shoulders at his assailant, with an expression that plainly said: ‘Wait until I am free, and then see what I will do to you!’ ”

Another description comes from the same source:

“On one side of the piazza, between the fountain of Bernini and that of the Calderai there was a little table, on which a Jesuit missionary mounted at intervals and, crucifix in hand, harangued the bystanders, exhorting them to repent of their sins and amend their evil lives,—with very little apparent result, it must be confessed. On the opposite side of the piazza, a platform had been erected on which three criminals, who had been condemned to punishment, were exposed to the gibes and jeers of the public. Each one was bound to a bench and bore round his neck a huge placard upon which was written his name and the misdemeanour for which he suffered. Thus one had been convicted of using false weights and measures; the second of having bought up certain kinds of provisions so as to raise their price; the third of being a pickpocket. But this exhibition, which was intended to serve as a warning to evil-doers, was only an additional amusement for the populace.

“Suddenly the sound of a trumpet was heard and the crowd rushed in the direction whence it proceeded. It was the public crier, who announced that their time of punishment in the pillory being over, the three criminals would further be subjected to the lash. Immediately two inferior officials mounted the platform; laid the culprits face downwards on the bench and bound them to it, while the executioner administered twenty-five strokes to the backs of the two first with a scourge made of strips of skin. The victims screamed and writhed under the lash, but their shrieks were drowned in the applause of the crowd, who gloated over their sufferings in a truly horrible manner. The third, a young man, pale and emaciated-looking, was to receive fifty stripes, the maximum number allowed by law, and which was usually given only to thieves.”

“Again, in 1711, a man was beheaded in the Campo di Fiore and his body burned for having passed himself off as a priest. On June 26, 1717, Antonio Castellani, aged twenty-two, shared the same fate for having stolen a cloak, which he sold again for about a shilling; and in 1734, an old man of seventy-two, Marcantonio Troiani, was arrested for cattle-stealing. This latter was a noted thief but he hoped, by spontaneously confessing his guilt, to escape with perhaps a few years of the galleys. Instead of this, he was condemned to death. Furious at his sentence, he determined that he would not allow himself to be converted. He was, therefore, morally tortured by the members of the confraternity to begin with; and when this did not succeed, they applied, first, liquid wax, and then plates of red-hot iron to his person. This torture also failed, and then the executioner, after brutally ill-using him, put a halter round his neck and made as though he would strangle him; and the terrified old man, scarcely knowing whether his tormentor were man or devil, consented to recommend his soul to the tender mercies of Christ.”

In the lawless state of society prevailing, such scenes were frequent. It was not criminals only who suffered these punishments. “The State officials and officers of justice were also liable to suffer severe penalties unless they exercised a due discretion in the carrying out of their duties. There is an incident on record which shows this very plainly. One day two of the sbirri out on the Campagna Romana saw a travelling carriage coming from the direction of Frascati. They stopped it, according to custom, and demanded to see the passports of its occupants. Unfortunately for the zealous officers, the travellers chanced to be the Duke of Sermoneta and his family, and he was so affronted at the request that he instantly complained to the governor of Rome, Monsignor Potenziani. Proceedings were taken against the sbirri, and although they had evidently not exceeded their just powers, they were bound upon asses and flogged through the streets of the city with these words inscribed on cards round their necks:—’Per mancanza grave nell’ ufficio di esploratore.’ ” (For grave dereliction of duty in their office of scout.)

It required very little in those barbarous times to bring a man to the gallows. On the first Sunday of the Carnival of 1720, the Abbé Gaetano Volpini da Piperno, a young man of twenty-two, was executed for having written a libel against Pope Clement XI, whom he accused of improper intimacy with Queen Clementina Sobiescki, the wife of James III, the English Pretender. This document was never even printed but it was circulated in manuscript in Vienna, and unfortunately came under the observation of the papal nuncio, Monsignor Spinola, who denounced the author to the pope. Although the scandal was notorious, the wretched abbé was transferred to Rome, where he pined for some time in a loathsome dungeon, and was finally beheaded.

In another case the inditing and publication of the libel was not essential to constitute the crime. One Camillo Zaccagni, a well known literary man of his time, was beheaded near the bridge of St. Angelo, because, after vainly imploring the release of his nephew imprisoned at the instance of Monsignor Pallavicino, he was heard to say, in a barber’s shop, that “the inhuman prelate had used language that would not be employed even in Turkey” and that he, Camillo, would be revenged on him when the papal chair became vacant. The laws against libel were very severe and found a prominent place in the criminal code. One published by the secretary of state ran as follows:—“And whereas it is manifest to every one how grave are the evils which arise from public or injurious libels, His Eminence, anxious to prevent them, orders that no person shall dare to compose, write, affix, or cause to be affixed, distribute or give away any libels or pasquinades of any sort—even though they may expound or set forth the truth;—or copy, or preserve any such, under pain of death, confiscation of goods and perpetual infamy, according to the rank of the offender, or at least of the galleys, at the pleasure of His Eminence.” Such was the temper of the time which persisted long after the terrible period of the Inquisition in Rome, whose cruelties long exercised a powerful influence upon criminal procedure.

CHAPTER VII

THE ROMAN INQUISITION

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.