Dealings with the Inquisition; Or, Papal Rome, Her Priests, and Her Jesuits

by Giacinto Achilli

It is possible, then, to be good Christians, and to form a visible national Church on such a model without the aid of bishops. At any rate, you cannot deny that a Church can change its bishop for a sufficient cause. Do you think it then absurd or contrary to the precepts of the gospel that the people of Rome, who may be termed the whole Romish Church, should repudiate you as an apostate-bishop, a traitor, a bombarder, and that they should elect another, faithful, true, and beneficent?

Those who were asleep have now awakened, and they no longer trust your words. When you went out from Rome, the Bible entered in; the Bible, persecuted by the popes! and the gospel of Christ and the holy writings of the Apostles, faithfully translated into the Italian language, are now in the hands of the people, who read them, and find there neither popery nor the pope.

Take care that it does not happen to yourself in Italy, as it happened to your predecessors out of it, who, desirous to obtain more, lost all. They who last February took from you the temporal power, intended by so doing to guarantee and ameliorate your spiritual authority. From the 30th April to the present period, you have rejected every friendly advance, and violated every law in presenting yourself before the walls of Rome, surrounded by bayonets and cannon; and you announced to this city your return and your solemn entry with bomb-shells and incendiary acts among the wounded and the dying. Is this the entry of a bishop? Is it in such a manner that the pretended Vicar of Jesus Christ returns to his people?...

Let us suppose, by way of argument, that you, environed by thousands of bayonets, should effect your return to a city overpowered by foreign violence, what would you find at Rome?—a people capable of loving you and serving you as formerly? No, indeed; you would find a desert. The city which has abhorred you as a prince, and through you has learned to despise the whole race from which the popes have descended, is no longer disposed to receive your laws, to pay you tribute. Over whom do you expect to reign? Over the few who followed you to Gaëta? or those who here and there have remained favourable to the old system? Even of these there are none that really love you; it is to the system, and not to yourself personally, that they are attached....

It is in vain you exaggerate the disorders of our government, and in disgraceful language descend to the lowest scurrilities, calling Rome "a den of furious beasts" and those who dwell there "apostates, heretics, communists, and socialists—bent on disseminating their pestiferous doctrines, and corrupting every heart, and possessed with a daring and sacrilegious desire of seizing upon the property and revenues of the Church." If this property and these revenues belong, as you say, to the Church, then we have done no other than restore them to their rightful owner, rescuing them from the hands of lawless spoilers. The people constitute the Church; the property of the Church then is the property of the people. And the priests and bishops, considered as servants to the Church, are to be maintained by the people. By divine command the tribe of Levi was supported by the other tribes. Christ also directs that the ministers of his Gospel are to be maintained by the faithful, when he says, "for the labourer is worthy of his hire." This was the practice in the early times of Christianity, and to them we must return. If our former ministers are content to return to the Church under this new arrangement, we are willing once more to receive them; otherwise, we must look out for servants who will be more zealous for heavenly riches, and less greedy after the wealth of this world.

Is it because these doctrines have been established for more than eighteen centuries, and are based on the Gospel and the writings of the Apostles, that you call those who profess them apostates and heretics?

We have "despoiled the temples of their ornaments!" That is, we have taken their superfluous silver to coin into money, to supply the place of that which you and yours have concealed or carried away. We have "turned religious houses to profane uses!" Yes; some of the haunts of the lazy and the worthless we have given as habitations for the industrious poor, who live as God has commanded them to do, by the sweat of their brow. In the eyes of those to whom idleness is sacred and labour profane, we have certainly committed a crime, but for us heretics and apostates, we imagine we have done a holy work.

We have ill treated "the sacred virgins!" The chronicle does not say so. They have never been more safe and more respected than by ourselves and our government. Who it was that ill treated the sacred virgins under your own government, is well known to you, without our taking the trouble to repeat it. Pay a little more regard to truth, and be silent on these matters, unless you wish us to reveal what for the sake of charity we do not mention.

We have "most cruelly persecuted, imprisoned, and put to death the most worthy and excellent ecclesiastics and holy monks; venerable and esteemed bishops, even such as were elevated to the degree of Cardinal, we have barbarously driven from their flocks, and thrust into prison!" You accuse us of what, for reasons of state, we ought to have done, but which, through too great consideration, we abstained from doing. All wicked and insidious traitors, spies and conspirators, whether priests, monks, bishops, or cardinals, who sought to bring ruin upon the people, we ought undoubtedly to have hanged, in reward for their infamy. That we did not do so was, perhaps, through an overweening regard for their persons. Pope Gregory, and his cardinal, Lambruschini, on the slightest suspicion of liberalism, tore from the bosom of their families citizens far more useful and respectable than these priests and monks, consigned them to horrible dungeons, or after a mock trial, handed them over to the public executioner. All the vengeance we took, was, on the commencement of our revolution, to pardon all those accursed wretches who did not die with Pope Gregory; and our government calmed the fury of the populace, who, on account of their crimes, were eager for their destruction. It was a grief to us when some of those who had received pardon at our hands again sought to irritate the people, who then knew themselves to be masters. Certain death would have been their fate had not our government shut them up in confinement.

Certainly, when any one was taken with arms in his hands, and firing upon our people, as the curate of Monte Mario, the priest Racchetti, and another or two were, the people conceived they had a perfect right to take the law into their own hands, and get rid of their enemies, without writing to you to ask leave to do so. You may thank Providence that our people are so mild and so obedient to their governors as they are, or you would have had some of your monasteries visited, and the ribald monks turned out to pay you a visit at Gäeta. In the provinces likewise, every here and there, a band of factious insurgents roamed about, headed by a priest or a monk, and protected by a bishop or a cardinal. Was it not an unheard-of act of mercy to spare the lives of such wretches? And is it on account of such acts that you complain of the Republican government?