“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.”
CHAPTER VIII
LATER DAYS IN ROME
Crime very prevalent in Rome under later popes—Repressive edicts—Gambling carried to great excess—Atrocious murders committed by persons of high rank—Presentation of the Chinea—Decrees published by the governor of Rome against law-breakers—Discipline of nunneries—Guiseppe Balsamo, called Count Cagliostro, the famous adventurer—His travels and marriage—He professes to have discovered the “Philosopher’s stone”—He foretells the advent of the French Revolution—His last visit to Rome—Arrest and imprisonment—Pope Pius VI commutes the sentence of death to perpetual imprisonment—Balsamo dies in prison and his wife in a convent.
Under the later popes and in spite of many repressive edicts, crime prevailed largely in Rome. Immorality of life was a prominent vice in all classes, especially the highest. Gambling was indulged to such an extent that entire fortunes were staked upon a turn of the cards and a throw of dice. Indeed, several members of the aristocracy only saved themselves from utter ruin by obtaining a kind of lettre de cachet from the pope which kept their creditors at bay, or by the strictness of the laws of primogeniture, or by deeds of trust which enabled them to save something from the general wreck. To such a height was the passion for gambling carried, that special edicts were issued in 1757, 1790 and 1799, forbidding all games of “Azzardo, Invito and Resto” under the penalty of a fine of five hundred scudi, five years at the galleys and the forfeiture of all the winnings. Nor was this severity unnecessary. Every one from the highest to the lowest played the favourite games, “Bassetta,” “Faraone,” “Zecchinetta,” “Caffo,” “Trentuquaranta,” “Bancofallito,” “Macao” and “Ventuno,” and it was no uncommon thing to see a table covered with heaps of gold and notes, much of which could ill be spared.
The most stringent regulations, rigidly enforced, could not check crime. When a papal conclave was sitting, much time was wasted before the new election could be made, and it was then that anarchy and confusion reigned and the gravest crimes were committed with impunity by all classes. Thus the Abbé Ceracchi murdered his brother and was afterwards hanged; the Abbé Anguilla, a high official of the papal court, committed an atrocious murder and the prince, Sigismund Chigi, administered slow poison to Cardinal Carandini who escaped almost by a miracle. As the centuries passed, misdeeds multiplied and with them the infliction of the extreme penalty of the law. Immediately before the Napoleonic era, the scaffold was constantly in use and many culprits were hanged, drawn and quartered. While the French were supreme, milder methods prevailed, but when the papal authorities again came into power, a reactionary movement set in and capital punishment was again the rule.
Pope Leo XII was a ferocious ruler who loved the sight of blood and who approved of cruel punishments, such as the flogging of Guiseppe Franconi, who was convicted of having assassinated Monsignor Traietto, and was beheaded while stoutly protesting his innocence. During this pontificate “no less than 339 persons, many of them condemned for what we should now term trivial offences, were executed.” In these days the carnival produced the greatest disorders. The police were utterly powerless to restrain the excesses of the people. Their lawlessness was, of course, stimulated by the example of the nobles who defied all regulations, although these were often of a severe and summary kind.
The ceremony of the presentation of the Chinea, when the white palfrey, richly caparisoned, carrying the tribute of the king of Naples to the pope, proceeded in state from the Colonna Palace to the Vatican, was always the occasion of disturbance. The streets were crowded to see it pass and the people gave themselves up to wild roistering. They passed the time in quarrelling, drinking, gambling, fighting, and were in open conflict with the bargello and his myrmidons of the police. The following morning all these disturbers of the public peace, who had been taken red handed, were flogged by the public executioner, or exposed in the pillory.
Some extracts from the decrees published by the governor of Rome will show that the clerical authorities were anxious that the people should be virtuous and well-behaved. The whole question of public demeanour was dealt with in a section of the criminal code prescribing the penalties for “trying to stir up sedition and disorder,” as follows:
“His Eminence ordains that any one of whatsoever station, who shall break the peace, or cause it to be broken, or who shall endeavour to stir up strife, by word or deed, shall be liable to morte naturale, the ruin and demolition of his house, and the confiscation of all his goods; and if he will not submit himself to the jurisdiction of the Court, he shall be condemned, as contumacious, to all the aforesaid penalties, and a picture shall be hung up of him in his ordinary dress in some public place, representing him as suspended heels uppermost, and with his name, surname, residence and the nature of his crime written underneath.”