Disappointed in their expectation of putting Dominis to death by the hand of the executioner, the Inquisitors determined to inflict the punishment proposed on his dead body. On the 21st of December, 1624, accordingly, in the church of St. Mary, and amidst a large concourse of spectators, his sentence was read as follows:—"That Marc Antonio de Dominis, having been convicted of heresy, was found to have incurred all the censures and penalties appointed to heretics by the sacred canons and papal constitutions; they accordingly declared him to be deprived of honours, prerogatives, and ecclesiastical dignities, condemned his memory, excommunicated him from the ecclesiastical court, and delivered over his dead body and effigy into the power of the governor of the city, that he might inflict on it the punishment due, according to the rule and practice of the Church. And finally, they commanded his impious and heretical writings to be publicly burnt, and declared all his effects to be forfeited to the exchequer of the Holy Inquisition." This sentence was carried into effect the same day, amidst a vast concourse of spectators, with all the mock solemnity which characterizes the proceedings of that infamous tribunal.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] It ought to be noticed here, that Melchior was of Jewish extraction, though himself a Christian, and his enemies pretended that he was secretly attached to the religion of his forefathers.
[23] The homely and ludicrous remark of Salgado, who relates this story, is far from being inapplicable: "Though this action," says he, "was voluntary, and deserved forgiveness, yet, as in the English proverb, it is, confess and be hanged."
CHAPTER VII
Hostility of the Inquisition to the progress of literature and science—examples—freemasonry a peculiar object of persecution by the holy tribunal—interesting trial of M. Tournon—cruelty of the Inquisition in the nineteenth century—affecting account of the sufferings of Don Miguel Juan Antonio Solano—remarks by Puigblanch on the iniquitous procedure of the holy office.
We have already seen, in the case of the famous Galileo, the determined opposition of the Inquisition to the progress of science. Many other examples of a similar kind might be added. Not content with exerting a rigid censorship over the press, the Inquisitors intruded into private houses, ransacked the libraries of the learned and curious, and carried off and retained at their pleasure, such books as they in their ignorance suspected to be of a dangerous character, besides inflicting punishment on their owners. So late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find Manuel Martini, dean of Alicant, and one of the most enlightened of his countrymen in that age, complaining bitterly in his confidential correspondence of what he suffered from such proceedings.
Under the reign of the fanatical Philip V., Don Melchior de Macanez, one of the most learned statesmen in Spain, having drawn up a report by order of the king, at a time when it was in agitation to suspend the remittances of money with which Spain then supplied Rome, was compelled to take refuge in France, in order to avoid being immured in the dungeons of the Inquisition. His property was in the meantime seized, and himself excommunicated. After an exile of ten years, during which he made numerous supplications to his faithless sovereign, he was at length recalled with the promise of pardon. But on his arrival in Spain he was arrested and confined in the Inquisition of Segovia, till the reign of Charles III.