“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

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.”