Many noble men fell in Rome; Fannio Aonio Paleario and the Venitian Algieri. The church was saved by sword and fire; and the ecclesiastical writers agree with us in this:—It was the Inquisition that extirpated the new doctrines in Italy; without this intervention of force, the intellectual character of the Italians, the well-known licentiousness of the Popes, the habit of our poets to sport at friars and nuns, and the denial by our republics of infallibility to the Apostolic See, must have combined to promote the complete triumph of the religious reform.
The church always had great power in Genoa. As early as 1253, the friars of San Domenico executed a Master Luco as a heresiarch and confiscated his goods. The church grew so arrogant that three years later, Fra Anselmo, chief inquisitor, demanded that certain rules of his should be incorporated among the statutes of the Republic. The consuls refused to gratify him and the inquisitor excommunicated the city and its district. The government sent ambassadors to the Pope without success; it was forced to humble itself and register on its statute books laws dictated by a priest. In 1459, a decree of the Republic granted every facility and privilege to the father inquisitors.
The bull of Paul III. inflamed our inquisitors with extraordinary zeal. The partisans of the new creed were increasing rapidly, and the fathers resolved to convert or exterminate them. Among the heretics, to say nothing of laics, was Cardinal Federico Fregoso whose books on the psalms had been entered in the index. The prior of San Matteo was accused of heresy in Bonfadio’s time and cited to appear before the inquisition in Rome, in spite of the friendship and protection of Doria and the government. It has never been clearly proved that Bonfadio shared the views of the reformers, but everything conspires to the support of that theory. However that may be, his opinions were certainly such as to afford his enemies a pretext for the accusation. He hated the priests and spoke and wrote bitterly against them. His letters, which give him the first place in that branch of Italian literature, show that he was opposed to all religious orders and particularly the regular clergy called Theatine, who reciprocated the sentiment and spoke of his death as a judgment of God. His annals and the freedom of his speech made him many other enemies in Genoa, but though they were powerful he despised them. Carnesecchi warned him that one of them had established himself near his person and exhorted him to be cautious. Bonfadio replied:—“The man of whom you write to me from the Roman court always disliked me.... His eyebrows are shorn, and he never laughs; wherefore I doubt that He who can do all things is able to make the man good. He has done an evil work, but it was his own proper work, and if he has poisoned the fruits of my labours that was inevitable, because he bears a serpent in his bosom.” The serpent uncoiled himself and Bonfadio was undone. It was not difficult for his enemies to fasten upon him the charge of heresy, adducing as proofs his intimacy with wicked or heretical men whom Rome had already doomed. Among the first-class was Nicolò Franco, of Benevento, who perished on the scaffold in Rome, prophesying the same fate for Pietro Aretina whom that age, after loading him with honours and riches, blasphemously called divine. Among the second class, that is those whom the church accused of heresy, were the Martinengo, who all belonged to the party of reform. We may mention Ortensia Martinengo, countess of Barco; Celso Martinengo, whose letters to Angelo Castiglione carmelite of Genoa (written for the purpose of converting Angelo to the new party) are extant; Count Ulisse Martinengo who went to Antwerp as the minister of the Italian church there when Gerolamo Zanchi declined the appointment. Bonfadio was even more intimate with Lord Bishop Carnesecchi who embraced the views of Luther in the school of Vermiglio and Ochino in Italy and of Melancthon in France. Carnesecchi was executed in Rome in precisely the same mode as Bonfadio in Genoa.
Bonfadio writing to Carnesecchi praises his divine talents and adds:—“As the Romans preserve the statue which fell from heaven, so may God preserve you for the edification of many and put off to a distant day the fading of one of the first lights of Tuscan virtue. May God enable you to be happy and live with that cheerfulness which characterized you when we were together in Naples.”
He was also very intimate with Giovanni Valdes a Catalan, who was among the first advocates of Luther’s opinions. After the death of Valdes, he wrote:—“Whither shall we turn, now that Valdes is no more? This is a great loss for us and for Europe; for Valdes was one of the rarest men in Europe. His writings on the epistles of St. Paul and the psalms of David are abundant proof of his ability. He was without controversy a complete man in deed, word and counsel. His little spark of soul kept alive his weak and emaciated body; his great part, that pure intellect, as if outside of his frame, was continually uplifted to the contemplation of truth and divine things.”
These words make it highly probable that Bonfadio held the doctrines of the man he so highly esteemed, and show us that this friendship for the enemies of Rome afforded sufficient ground for a charge of heresy. This will seem very credible, when we remember that a canon of the inquisition declared that the smallest evidences were sufficient for conviction of heresy; a nod, suspicion or common report, especially in the case of a man of letters, of whom Paleario wrote that the inquisition was sicam districtam in literatos (a dagger drawn against literary men.)
We conclude then that the religious views of Bonfadio and his friendship with the reformers gave his enemies the arms with which they slew him. The court of Rome had its hands in the business, and by the same act avenged its political friends, the Fieschi, and punished a friend of the reformation. The records of Bonfadio’s trial were never seen, and there is no proof that the criminal Ruota of Genoa condemned him. This is a new proof that the whole transaction was the secret work of the agents of the inquisition. The records of such a trial were not required to be filed in the archives of the state. Nor is this all; the agents of Rome had the right to conduct the trial without the participation of the civil power, whose duty was to render a blind obedience to the orders of the religious tribunal. This explains why the Dorias who had unlimited power over the government, were powerless to save Bonfadio, when he was charged with holding the opinions of the reformers, among whom we are disposed to number him, accepting the authority of Gerdesio a contemporary whose statement to that effect was not contradicted in his time.
Whatever views our readers may entertain of the merits of the contest between the Fieschi and Doria, it is certain that the cruelties of the latter provoked reprisals by the friends of the former, and Bonfadio the illustrious but partial historian of the conspiracy, was one of the most conspicuous victims. As Bonfadio succeeded Partenopeo in the office of public instruction, Giammatteo followed Bonfadio. The Jesuits enticed him, two years after his election, into their fraternity and they intrigued with such success that the instructors of our youth were chosen from their number, and men of genius were no longer employed by the Republic.
It is true that Tasso was invited to Genoa with the offer of a liberal salary; but it was the work of private citizens not of the government. Torquato received the call with pleasure but he did not accept the office. In 1614, Lucilio Vanini, the Italian Spinosa, opened public schools among us. He pursued the system of Bonfadio with such success that many young men were affected with heretical views and the teacher was forced to seek his personal safety in exile. He took refuge in France; but he was discovered and perished in the flames. Unfortunately his doctrines had taken root among us. To omit many, the painter Cesare Conte, the friend of Cambiaso, Chiabrera and Paolo Foglietta, was arrested in 1632, by the sacred office and ended his days in the dungeon of the ducal palace.