The person whom the Inquisitor appointed me to apprehend was Count Vicenzo della Torre, descended from an illustrious family in Germany, and possessed of a very considerable estate in the territory of Macerata. He was one of my very particular friends, and had lately married the daughter of Signior Constantini, of Fermo, a lady no less famous for her good sense than her beauty. With her family too, I had contracted an intimate acquaintance, while Professor of Rhetoric in Fermo, and had often attended the Count during his courtship, from Macerata to Fermo, but fifteen miles distant. I therefore lived with both in the greatest friendship and intimacy; and the Count was the only person that lived with me, after I was made Counsellor of the Inquisition, upon the same free footing as he had done till that time. My other friends had grown shy of me, and gave me plainly to understand that they no longer cared for my company.
As this unhappy young gentleman was one day walking with another, he met two Capuchin friars, and turning to his companion, when they had passed, "what fools," said he, "are these, to think they shall gain heaven by wearing sackcloth and going barefoot! Fools indeed, if they think so, or that there is any merit in tormenting one's self; they might as well live as we do, and they would get to heaven quite as soon." Who informed against him, whether the friars, his companion, or somebody else, I know not; for the inquisitors never tell the names of informers to the Counsellors, nor the names of the witnesses, lest they should except against them. It is to be observed, that all who hear any proposition that appears to them repugnant to, or inconsistent with the doctrines of holy mother church, are bound to reveal it to the Inquisitor, and also to discover the person by whom it was uttered; and, in this affair no regard is to be had to any ties, however sacred. The brother being bound to accuse the brother, the father the son, the son the father, the wife her husband, and the husband his wife; and all bound on pain of eternal damnation, and of being treated as accomplices if they do not denounce in a certain time; and no confessor can absolve a person who has heard anything said in jest or in earnest, against the belief or practice of the church, till that person has informed the Inquisitor of it, and given him all the intelligence he can concerning the person by whom it was spoken.
Whoever it was that informed against my unhappy friend, whether the friars, his companion, or somebody else who might have overheard him, the Inquisitor acquainted the board one night, (for to be less observed, they commonly meet, out of Rome, in the night) that the above mentioned propositions had been advanced, and advanced gravely, at the sight of two poor Capuchins; that the evidence was unexceptionable; and that they were therefore met to determine the quality of the proposition, and proceed against the delinquent.
There are in each Inquisition twelve Counsellors, viz: four Divines, four Canonists, and four Civilians. It is chiefly the province of the divines to determine the quality of the proposition, whether it is heretical, or only savors of heresy; whether it is blasphemous and injurious to God and His saints or only erroneous, rash, schismatical, or offensive to pious ears. The part of the proposition, "Fools! if they think there is any merit in tormenting one's self," was judged and declared heretical, as openly contradicting the doctrine and practice of holy mother church recommending austerities as highly meritorious. The Inquisitor observed, on this occasion, that by the proposition, "Fools indeed" &c., were taxing with folly, not only the holy fathers, who had all to a man practised great austerities, but St. Paul himself as the Inquisitor understood it, adding that the practice of whipping one's self, so much recommended by all the founders of religious orders, was borrowed of the great apostle of the gentiles.
The proposition being declared heretical, it was unanimously agreed by the board that the person who had uttered it should be apprehended, and proceeded against agreeably to the laws of the Inquisition. And now the person was named; for, till it is determined whether the accused person should or should not be apprehended, his name is kept concealed from the counsellors, lest they should be biased, says the directory, in his favor, or against him. For, in many instances, they keep up an appearance of justice and equity, at the same time that, in truth, they act in direct opposition to all the known laws of justice and equity. No words can express the concern and astonishment it gave me to hear, on such an occasion, the name of a friend for whom I had the greatest esteem and regard. The Inquisitor was apprised of it; and to give me an opportunity of practising what he had so often recommended to me, viz. conquering nature with the assistance of grace, he appointed me to apprehend the criminal, as he styled him, and to lodge him safe, before daylight, in the prison of the holy inquisition. I offered to excuse myself, but with the greatest submission, from being in any way concerned in the execution of that order; an order, I said, which I entirely approved of, but only wished it might be put in execution by some other person; for your lordship knows, I said, the connection. But the Inquisitor shocked at the word, said with a stern look and angry tone of voice, "What! talk of connections where the faith is concerned? There is your guard," (pointing to the Sbirri or bailiffs in waiting) "let the criminal be secured in St. Luke's cell," (one of the worst,) "before three in the morning." He then withdrew, and as he passed me said, "Thus, nature is conquered." I had betrayed some weakness or sense of humanity, not long before, in fainting away while I attended the torture of one who was racked with the utmost barbarity, and I had on that occasion been reprimanded by the Inquisitor for suffering nature to get the better of grace; it being an inexcusable weakness, as he observed, to be in any degree affected with the suffering of the body, however great, when afflicted, as they ever are in the Holy Inquisition, for the good of the soul. And it was, I presume, to make trial of the effect of that reprimand, that the execution of this cruel order was committed to me. As I could by no possible means decline it, I summoned all my resolution, after passing an hour by myself, I may say in the agonies of death, and set out a little after two in the morning for my unhappy friend's house, attended by a notary of the Inquisition, and six armed Sbirri. We arrived at the house by different ways and knocking at the door, a maid-servant looked out of the window, and asked who knocked. "The Holy Inquisition," was the answer, and at the same time she was ordered to awake nobody, but to come down directly and open the door, on pain of excommunication. At these words, the servant hastened down, half naked as she was, and having with much ado, in her great fright, opened the door, she conducted us as she was ordered to her master's chamber. She often looked very earnestly at me, as she knew me, and showed a great desire to speak with me; but of her I durst take no kind of notice. I entered the bed-chamber with the notary, followed by the Sbirri, when the lady awakening at the noise, and seeing the bed surrounded by armed men, screamed out aloud and continued screaming as out of her senses, till one of the Sbirri, provoked at the noise gave her a blow on the forehead that made the blood flow, and she swooned away. I rebuked the fellow severely, and ordered him to be whipped as soon as I returned to the Inquisition.
In the mean time, the husband awakening, and seeing me with my attendants, cried out, in the utmost surprise, "MR. BOWER!" He said no more, nor could I for some time utter a single word; and it was with much ado that, in the end I so far mastered my grief as to be able to let my unfortunate friend know that he was a prisoner of the Holy Inquisition. "Of the Holy Inquisition!" he replied. "Alas I what have I done? My dear friend, be my friend now." He said many affecting things; but as I knew it was not in my power to befriend him, I had not the courage to look him in the face, but turning my back to him, withdrew, while he dressed, to a corner of the room, to give vent to my grief. The notary stood by, quite unaffected. Indeed, to be void of all humanity, to be able to behold one's fellow-creatures groaning under the most exquisite torments cruelty can invent, without being in the least affected with their sufferings, is one of the chief qualifications of an inquisitor, and what all who belong to the Inquisition must strive to attain to. It often happens, at that infernal tribunal, that while the unhappy, and probably innocent, person is crying out in their presence on the rack, and begging by all that is sacred for one moment's relief, in a manner one would think no human heart could withstand, it often happens, I say, that the inquisitor and the rest of his infamous crew, quite unaffected with his complaints, and deaf to his groans, to his tears and entreaties, are entertaining one another with the news of the town; nay, sometimes they even insult, with unheard of barbarity, the unhappy wretches in the height of their torment.
To return to my unhappy prisoner. He was no sooner dressed than I ordered the Bargello, or head of the Sbirri, to tie his hands with a cord behind his back, as is practised on such occasions without distinction of persons; no more regard being paid to men of the first rank, when charged with heresy, than to the meanest offender. Heresy dissolves all friendship; so that I durst no longer look upon the man with whom I had lived in the greatest friendship and intimacy as my friend, or show him, on that account, the least regard or indulgence.
As we left the chamber, the countess, who had been conveyed out of the room, met us, and screaming out in the most pitiful manner upon seeing her husband with his hands tied behind his back like a thief or robber, flew to embrace him, and hanging on his neck, begged, with a flood of tears, we would be so merciful as to put an end to her life, that she might have the satisfaction—the only satisfaction she wished for in this world, of dying in the bosom of the man from whom she had vowed never to part. The count, overwhelmed with grief, did not utter a single word. I could not find it in my heart, nor was I in a condition to interpose; and indeed a scene of greater distress was never beheld by human eyes. However, I gave a signal to the notary to part them, which he did accordingly, quite unconcerned; but the countess fell into a swoon, and the count was meantime carried down stairs, and out of the house, amid the loud lamentations and sighs of his servants, on all sides, for he was a man remarkable for the sweetness of his temper, and his kindness to all around him.
Being arrived at the Inquisition, I consigned my prisoner into the hands of a gaoler, a lay brother of St. Dominic, who shut him up in the dungeon above-mentioned, and delivered the key to me. I lay that night at the palace of the Inquisition, where every counsellor has a room, and returned next morning the key to the inquisitor, telling him that his order had been punctually complied with. The inquisitor had been already informed of my conduct by the notary, and therefore, upon my delivering the key to him, he said, "You have acted like one who is at least desirous to overcome, with the assistance of grace, the inclinations of nature;" that is, like one who is desirous, by the assistance of grace, to metamorphose himself from a human creature into a brute or a devil.
In the Inquisition, every prisoner is kept the first week of his imprisonment in a dark narrow dungeon, so low that he cannot stand upright in it, without seeing anybody but the gaoler, who brings him, EVERY OTHER DAY, his portion of bread and water, the only food allowed him. This is done, they say, to tame him, and render him, thus weakened, more sensible of the torture, and less able to endure it. At the end of the week, he is brought in the night before the board to be examined; and on that occasion my poor friend appeared so altered, in a week's time, that, had it not been for his dress, I should not have known him. And indeed no wonder; a change of condition so sudden and unexpected; the unworthy and barbarous treatment he had already met with; the apprehension of what he might and probably should suffer; and perhaps, more than anything else, the distressed and forlorn condition of his once happy wife, whom he tenderly loved, whose company he had enjoyed only six months, could be attended with no other effect.