A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

This was not the sort of man for a persecutor. But the progress of the Inquisition during his reign is a remarkable instance of the degree in which the policy of the Church overrides the individual tendencies of the man who may be the temporary occupant of St. Peter's chair, whenever either the imbecility or the scruples of the latter may seem to endanger the interests of the corporation over which he presides. Whether the moderate, politic, and worldly–minded statesman, Paul III., the poco–curante voluptuary Julius III., or the pure and saintly sage Marcellus II., were pontiff, the crusade against free thought knew no relaxation. Caraffa and his Inquisitors pursued their work at least with zeal and unflagging perseverance. Duke Hercules took his cue readily enough as to the duties of an orthodox prince; and as he had the misfortune of labouring under the ill–repute that attached to a wife of notoriously heretical inclinations, it was all the more necessary that he should prove his attachment to the Holy See by the most unmistakeable zeal for the purity of the faith.

FANNIO THE MARTYR.

Under these circumstances the arrest of a young man named Fannio, at Faenza, for holding and disseminating heterodox opinions, was a lucky chance to be made the most of.

At first, however, it seemed that he would turn craven, and show no sport. The unhappy man had a wife tenderly attached to him, and her tears and entreaties induced him to recant, and accept his liberty as the price of declaring that he believed what his persecutors and judges knew perfectly well he did not believe. But his life became intolerable to him under such conditions. Though he had forced his tongue to utter the lying words that were the price demanded for his life, he could not live up to his lie; so he "relapsed," was again arrested, and this time thrown into the dungeons of Ferrara.

Some time elapsed, while his "trial" for heresy was going through the regular edifying forms before the tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome. Condemnation was of course perfectly certain; and the terror among the numerous band of more or less suspected Protestants at Ferrara was great. Yet, hazardous as it must have been to attract attention by any such manifestation of sympathy, we are assured,[82] that many visited him in his prison, and "were consoled by his exhortations." It seems strange that such visits should have been permitted. The Inquisition which had thrown him into prison for preaching, could hardly intend that he should have the means of continuing the offence with all the extra prestige of martyrdom. And the fact would seem to indicate, that the "secular arm," or at least those subordinate executive officers of its will who had not the same reasons for being in love with orthodoxy that moved the prince, had little sympathy with the new persecuting tribunal recently established among them, and seconded its intentions as little as might be.

But it is still more surprising to find, that among these clandestine visitors to this poor Fannio in his prison were the lady Lavinia della Rovere and her friend Olympia. Lavinia then dared to remain on terms of intimacy with the disgraced favourite, when all, as she complains deserted her. Lavinia ventured to seek her friend out in her humble home, and risk subjecting herself to the same suspicions which weighed so heavily on Olympia. But surely this dangerous expedition indicates a notable change of mind and feeling in both these young women, since but a year or so ago. It is but a very little time since those conversations, in which the difficulties of the doctrine of predestination prevented the young friends from accepting the religion of the reformers; and since Olympia's state of mind on religious matters was such as to lead her subsequently to think that "it would have been all over with her and her salvation," if she had remained longer at court. And now, after the lapse of a few months, we find the youthful pair sufficiently interested in the faith for which a martyr is about to suffer, to visit him in his dungeon, and "find consolation" from his exhortations!

MARTYRDOM.

Or should we rather suppose, that deeper thought, a more serious interest, and ultimate complete adoption of the persecuted faith on the part of Olympia and her friend, were the consequences, rather than the cause of their visit to Fannio in his dungeon; and that mere female compassion and sympathy with a fellow–unbeliever at least, if not as yet a fellow–believer, led them to the prison. It is probable enough, that the first heart–deep seeds of conviction fell into Olympia's mind during that solemn and affecting prison conference. It is a property of persecution to operate thus on generous and noble hearts. The desolate, disheartening, and precarious situation of Olympia's own fortunes, and the severe lesson she had so recently received on the vanity and instability of worldly prosperity, were well calculated to prepare her heart for the martyr's teaching, and open it to the emotional reception of a faith, which, according to the avowal of its adherents, cannot approve itself to the reasoning faculties.

With a strange and solemn authority,—almost as of one speaking from beyond the awful boundary line, he was so soon to cross—the words of that noble heroic man must have sunk deep into the hearts of the young women. For noble and heroic,—let more ignoble natures chatter what trash they may of gratified vanity, obstinacy, and such futilities in the vain attempt to bring down the heroic to their own level,—noble and heroic, with a heroism inferior to none other practicable by man, and wholly unmodified by the intellectual value of the conviction for which a martyr dies—is the soul, that true to its own indefeasible independence refuses, in the face of all the worst the body and the heart lacerated in its affections can suffer, to abdicate its right of self–sovereignty.