Curiosities of Christian History Prior to the Reformation

by James Paterson

THE POPE TURNING PAGAN INTO CHRISTIAN MONUMENTS (A.D. 1585).

Pope Sixtus V., elected in 1585, had a genius for architectural projects, and seemed anxious to make the Rome of his time rival the ancient city. He had a rage for destroying as well as for rebuilding. He was bent on turning Pagan into Christian monuments. He allowed a statue of Minerva to stand, but took away the spear of the goddess, and put a huge cross in her hand. He dedicated the column of Trajan to St. Peter, and the column of Antoninus to St. Paul. He set his heart also on erecting the obelisk before St. Peter’s, the more because he wished to see the monuments of infidelity subjected to the cross on the very spot where the Christians once suffered crucifixion. The architect, Fontana, thought it impossible; but the Pope would not listen to objections. It was an extremely difficult task to upheave the obelisk from its basis by the sacristy of the old church of St. Peter, to let it down again, transport it to another site, and there finally set it up again. It was an attempt to earn renown throughout all ages. The workmen, nine hundred in number, began by hearing Mass, confessing, and receiving the Communion. The obelisk was sheathed in straw mats and planks riveted with iron rings. There were thirty-five windlasses, each worked by two horses and ten men. The signal was given by sound of trumpet. The obelisk was raised from the site on which it had stood fifteen hundred years. A salvo was fired from the castle of St. Angelo; all the bells of the city pealed; and the workmen carried their architect in triumph round the barrier with never-ending hurrahs. Seven days afterwards the obelisk was let down with no less dexterity, and then it was conveyed on rollers to its new site, and some months elapsed before its re-erection. A force of one hundred and forty horses was used to elevate it. At three great efforts the obelisk was moved, and it sank on the backs of the four bronze lions that served to support it. The people exulted. The Pope was immensely satisfied, and set it down in his diary that he had achieved the most difficult work which the human mind could conceive. He erected a cross upon the obelisk, in which was enclosed a piece of the supposed real cross. Sixtus V. also wanted to complete the cupola of St. Peter’s, which, it was estimated, would take ten years to do; and his eyes were never wearied in watching its progress. He set six hundred men to work at once night and day, and in twenty-two months the cupola was completed. He did not, it was true, live to see the leaden casing placed on the roof. This Pope kept a memorandum book in which every detail of his daily life was recorded; and on succeeding to the Papal throne it was noticed that his skill in finance was displayed in a profusion of complexities. He amassed great sums, and also spent great sums. One of the great sources of his profit was the sale of offices. He created offices, and then sold the nominations at a great price. He also imposed new taxes on the most laborious callings, such as those on the men who towed vessels on the river; and he taxed heavily the necessaries of life, such as wine and firewood.

THE INQUISITION AS AN INSTITUTION (A.D. 1232).

Pope Gregory IX., on the plea that the bishops were overtasked, transferred in 1232 the duty of inquiring into heretics to officers specially appointed by himself. In the rules by which these inquisitors should be guided every principle of natural equity was outraged. The accused were not to be confronted with the accusers—were not even to know their names. Persons of infamous character might be received as witnesses against them. Elaborate schemes for the treacherous entrapping of victims were part of the instructions with which an inquisitor was furnished. A large share of the goods of the condemned went to the judges who condemned them; the remainder, if sometimes to the Papal Exchequer, very often went to the temporal princes who should carry out the Church’s sentence, whose cupidity it was thus sought to stimulate, and whose co-operation was thus rewarded. The guiltless children of the condemned were beggared. They could hold no office; the brand of lifelong dishonour clung to them. Even the very bones of the dead were burnt to dust and dispersed to the winds or the waves. In the latter half of the fifteenth century the Inquisition found its main occupation in the burning of Jews. Torquemada, in Spain, alone sent to the stake some eight or nine thousand.

SENTENCE OF EXECUTION BY THE INQUISITION.

Owing to the mode of execution under a sentence of the Inquisition, the populace were gratified with a view of the last agonies of the martyrs for heresy. The culprit was not, as in the later Spanish Inquisition, strangled before the lighting of the fagots, nor had the invention of gunpowder suggested the expedient of hanging a bag of that explosive around his neck to shorten his torture. An eyewitness thus describes the execution of John Huss at Constance in 1415: “He was made to stand upon a couple of fagots, and tightly bound to a thick post with ropes around the ankles, below the knee, above the knee, at the groin, the waist, and under the arms. A chain was also secured around the neck. Then it was observed that he faced the east, which was not fitting for a heretic, and he was shifted to the west. Fagots mixed with straw were piled around him to the chin. Then the Count Palatine Louis, who superintended the execution, approached with the Marshal of Constance, and asked him for the last time to recant. On his refusal they withdrew and clapped their hands, which was the signal for the executioners to light the pile. After it had burned away there followed the revolting process of utterly destroying the half-burned body, separating it in pieces, breaking up the bones, and throwing the fragments and the viscera on a fresh fire of logs.” When, as in the case of Arnold of Brescia, some of the spiritual Franciscans, Huss, Savonarola, and others, it was feared that relics of the martyr would be preserved, especial care was taken after the fire to gather the ashes and cast them into a running stream.

THE PLEASURE OF BURNING HERETICS (A.D. 1239).

When the Inquisition was becoming popular, it was commonly taught that compassion for the sufferings of a heretic was not only a weakness but a sin. As well might one sympathise with Satan and his demons writhing in the endless torment of hell. The stern moralists of the age held it to be a Christian duty to find pleasure in contemplating the anguish of the sinner. Gregory the Great, five centuries before, had argued that the bliss of the elect in heaven would not be perfect unless they were able to look across the abyss and enjoy the agonies of their brethren in eternal fire. Peter Lombard, the Master of Sentences, quotes St. Gregory with approbation, and enlarges upon the satisfaction which the just will feel in the ineffable misery of the damned. Even the mystic tenderness of Bonaventura does not prevent him from echoing the same terrible exultation. The schoolmen easily proved to their own satisfaction that persecution was a work of charity for the benefit of the persecuted. By a series of edicts from 1220 to 1239 a complete code of persecution was enacted. Heretics and favourers of heretics were outlawed; their property was confiscated, their heirs disinherited. Their houses were to be destroyed, never to be rebuilt. All rulers and magistrates were required to swear that they would exterminate all whom the Church might designate as heretics, under pain of forfeiture of office. All this fiendish legislation was hailed by the Church with acclamation. The Inquisition has sometimes been said to have been founded in 1233.

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AT WORK (A.D. 1481).

In 1481 two Dominican monks were appointed to proceed to Seville and carry on the work of the Inquisition, and the Jews were hunted up with vigour and burnt in the autos-da-fé of that city. In 1483 the brutal Inquisitor-General Thomas de Torquemada added further horrors. The details of these brutalities are now of no interest; but Prescott, the historian, thus sums up the situation. The proceedings of the tribunal were plainly characterised throughout by the most flagrant injustice and inhumanity to the accused. Instead of presuming his innocence until his guilt had been established, it acted on exactly the opposite principle. Instead of affording him the protection accorded by every other judicature, and especially demanded in his forlorn situation, it used the most insidious arts to circumvent and crush him. He had no remedy against malice or misapprehension on the part of his accusers or the witnesses against him, who might be his bitterest enemies, since they were never revealed to nor confronted with the prisoner, nor subjected to a cross-examination which can best expose error or wilful collusion in the evidence. Even the poor forms of justice recognised in this court might be readily dispensed with, as its proceedings were impenetrably shrouded from the public eye by the appalling oath of secrecy imposed on all, whether functionaries, witnesses, or prisoners, who entered within its precincts. The last and not the least odious feature of the whole was the connection established between the condemnation of the accused and the interests of his judges, since the confiscations which were the uniform penalties of heresy were not permitted to flow into the royal exchequer until they had first discharged the expenses, whether in the shape of salaries or otherwise, incident to the Holy Office.