Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal / An Authentic Narrative of the Horrors, Mysteries, and Cruelties of Convent Life

by Sarah J. Richardson

"ALESSANDRA GAVAZZI."

"The Roman parliament decreed the erection of a pillar opposite the palace of the Inquisition, to perpetuate the memory of the destruction of that nest of abominations; but before that or any other monument could be raised, the French army besieged and took the city, restored the Pope, and with him the tribunal of the faith. Not only was Dr. Achilli thrown into one of its old prisons, on the 29th of July 1849, but the violence of the people having made the building less adequate to the purpose of safe keeping, he was transferred to the castle of St. Angelo, which had often been employed for the custody of similar delinquents, and there he lay in close confinement until the 9th of January, 1850, when the French authorities, yielding to influential representations from this country assisted him to escape in disguise as a soldier, thus removing an occasion of scandal, but carefully leaving the authority of the congregation of cardinals undisputed. Indeed they first obtained the verbal sanction of the commissary, who saw it expedient to let his victim go, and hush an outcry.

"Yet some have the hardihood to affirm that there is no longer any Inquisition; and as the Inquisitors were instructed to suppress the truth, to deny their knowledge of cases actually passing through their hands, and to fabricate falsehoods for the sake of preserving the SECRET, because the secret was absolutely necessary to the preservation of their office, so do the Inquisitors in partibus falsify and illude without the least scruple of conscience, in order to put the people of this country off their guard.

"That the Inquisition really exists, is placed beyond a doubt by its daily action as a visible institution at Rome. But if any one should fancy that it was abolished after the release of Dr. Achilli, let him hear a sentence contradictory, from a bull of the Pope himself, Pius IX, a document that was dated at Rome, August 22, 1851, where the pontiff, condemning the works of Professor Nuytz, of Turin, says, "after having taken the advice of the doctors in theology and canon law, AFTER HAVING COLLECTED THE SUFFRAGES OF OUR VENERABLE BROTHERS THE CARDINALS OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE SUPREME AND UNIVERSAL INQUISITION." And so recently as March, 1852, by letters of the Secretariate of State, he appointed four cardinals to be "members of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition;" giving incontrovertible evidence that provision is made for attending to communications of Inquisitors in partibus from all parts of the world. As the old cardinals die off, their vacant seats are filled by others. The 'immortal legion' is punctually recruited.

"After all, have we in Great Britain, Ireland and the colonies, and our brethren of the foreign mission stations, any reason to apprehend harm to, ourselves from the Inquisition as it is? In reply to this question, let it be observed;

"1. That there are Inquisitors in partibus is not to be denied. That letters of these Inquisitors are laid before the Roman Inquisition is equally certain. Even in the time of Leo XII, when the church of Rome was far less active in the British empire than it is now, some particular case was always decided on Thursday, when the Pope, in his character of universal Inquisitor, presided in the congregation. It cannot be thought that now, in the height of its exultation, daring and aggression, this congregation has fewer emissaries, or that they are less active, or less communicative than they were at that time. We also see that the number is constantly replenished. The cardinals Della Genga-Sermattei; De Azevedo; Fornari; and Lucciardi have just been added to it.

"2. Besides a cardinal in England, and a delegate in Ireland, there is both in England and Ireland, a body of bishops, 'natural Inquisitors,' as they are always acknowledged, and have often claimed to be; and these natural Inquisitors are all sworn to keep the secret—the soul of the Inquisition. Since, then, there are Inquisitors in partibus, appointed to supply the lack of an avowed and stationary Inquisition, and since the bishops are the very persons whom the court of Rome can best command, as pledged for such a service, it is reasonable to suppose they act in that capacity.

"3. Some of the proceedings of these bishops confirm the assurance that there is now an Inquisition in activity in England. * * * The vigilance exercised over families, also the intermeddling of priests with education, both in families and schools, and with the innumerable relations of civil society, can only be traced back to the Inquisitors in partibus, whose peculiar duty, whether by help of confessors or familiars, is to worm out every secret of affairs, private or public, and to organize and conduct measures of repression or of punishment. Where the secular arm cannot be borrowed, and where offenders lie beyond the reach of excommunication, irregular methods must be resorted to, not rejecting any as too crafty or too violent. Discontented mobs, or individual zealots are to be found or bought. What part the Inquisitors in partibus play in Irish assassinations, or in the general mass of murderous assaults that is perpetrated in the lower haunts of crime, it is impossible to say. Under cover of confessional and Inquisitorial secrets, spreads a broad field of action—a region of mystery—only visible to the eye of God, and to those 'most reverend and most eminent' guardians of the papacy, who sit thrice every week, in the Minerva and Vatican, and there manage the hidden springs of Inquisition on the heretics, schismatics, and rebels, no less than on 'the faithful' of realms. Who can calculate the extent of their power over those 'religious houses,' where so many of the inmates are but neophytes, unfitted by British education for the intellectual and moral abnegation, the surrender of mind and conscience, which monastic discipline exacts? Yet they must be coerced into submission, and kept under penal discipline. Who can tell how many of their own clergy are withdrawn to Rome, and there delated, imprisoned, and left to perish, if not 'relaxed' to death, in punishment of heretical opinions or liberal practices? We have heard of laymen, too, taken to Rome by force, or decoyed thither under false pretences there to be punished by the universal Inquisition; and whatever of incredibility may appear in some tales of Inquisitorial abduction, the general fact that such abductions have taken place, seems to be incontrovertible. And now that the Inquisitors in partibus are distributed over Christendom, and that they provide the Roman Inquisition with daily work from year's end to year's end, is among the things most certain,—even the most careless of Englishmen must acknowledge that we have all reason to apprehend much evil from the Inquisition as it is. And no Christian can be aware of this fact, without feeling himself more than ever bound to uphold the cause of christianity, both at home and abroad, as the only counteractive of so dire a curse, and the only remedy of so vast an evil." Rev. Wm. Rule, London.

The Rev. E. A. Lawrence, writing of "Romanism at Rome," gives us the following vivid description of the present state of the Roman Church.

"Next is seen at Rome the PROPAGANDA, the great missionary heart of the whole masterly system. Noiselessly, by the multiform orders of monks and nuns, as through so many veins and arteries, it sends out and receives back its vital fluid. In its halls, the whole world is distinctly mapped out, and the chief points of influence minutely marked. A kind of telegraphic communication is established with the remotest stations in South Africa and Siberia, and with almost every nook in our own land, to which the myrmidons of Papal power look with the most of fear. It is through means of this moral galvanic battery, set up in the Vatican, that the Church of Rome has gained its power of UBIQUITY—has so well nigh made itself OMNIPOTENT, as well as omnipresent.