Part 17 (1/2)
”MY DEAR SIR,--In answering your questions concerning the palace of Inquisition at Roive only a few superficial and imperfect notes So short was the tireat the crowd of persons that pressed to catch a sight of it, and so intense the horror inspired by that accursed place, that I could not obtain a more exact and particular impression
”I found no instru, the thumb-screw, and many other instruments of severe torture could be easily destroyed and others as easily procured The non-appearance of instruh to sustain the current belief that the use of the as there is a secret prison, and while all the existing standards of inquisitorial practiceinfor torture, would be sufficient to convince the world that it has been discontinued The practice of falsehood is enjoined on inquisitors How, then, could we believe a bull, or decree, if it were put forth to-morrow, to release them from suspicion, or to screen them from obloquy? It would not be entitled to belief”--Rev Wm H Rule]
for they were destroyed at the time of the first French invasion, and because such instruments were not used afterwards by the modern Inquisition I did, however, find, in one of the prisons of the second court, a furnace, and the remains of a woman's dress I shall never be able to believe that that furnace was placed there for the use of the living, it not being in such a place, or of such a kind, as to be of service to the, on the contrary, combines to persuade me that it was made use of for horrible deaths, and to consume the remains of the victims of inquisitorial executions Another object of horror I found between the great hall of judgment and the luxurious apartment of the chief jailer (primo custode), the Dominican friar who presides over this diabolical establish into the vaults under the Inquisition As soon as the so-called criminal had confessed his offence; the second keeper, who is always a Dominican friar, sent him to the father commissary to receive a relaxation [Footnote: ”In Spain, RELAXATION is delivery to death In the established style of the Inquisition it has the sae of Rome it means RELEASE In the lips of the inquisitor, therefore, if he used the word, it has one , and another to the ear of the prisoner”--Rev Wm H Rule] of his punisho towards the apart foot at its entrance, the trap opened, and the world of the living heard no more of him I examined some of the earth found in the pit below this trap; it was a compost of common earth, rottenness, ashes, and huht and to the thought of the beholder
”But where popular fury reached its highest pitch was in the vaults of St Pius V I am anxious that you should note well that this pope was canonized by the Roainst heretics
I will now describe to you the manner how, and the place where, those vicars of Jesus Christ handled the living members of Jesus Christ, and show you how they proceeded for their healing You descend into the vaults by very narrow stairs A narrow corridor leads you to the several cells, which, for smallness and stench, are a hundred tiers in the Colosseu in this labyrinth of raves for the living,' I came to a cell full of skeletons without skulls, buried in lime, and the skulls, detached from the bodies, had been collected in a hamper by the first visitors Whose were those skeletons?
and ere they buried in that place and in thatto defend the Inquisition fro condemned its victims to a secret death, say that the palace of the Inquisition was built on a burial-ground, belonging anciently to a hospital for pilgrims, and that the skeletons found were none other than those of pilgri contradicts this papistical defence Suppose that there had been a cealleries and cells, laid out with so great regularity; and even if there had been such--against all probability--the re the foundation of the palace, to leave the space free for the subterranean part of the Inquisition Besides, it is contrary to the use of coh a door at the side; for the ain, it has never been the custoly in quick liue, the dead bodies have been usually laid in a grave until it was sufficiently full, and then quick lime has been laid over the the decomposition of the infected corpses This custoo, in the cemeteries of Naples, and especially in the daily burial of the poor Therefore, the skeletons found in the Inquisition of Ro to persons who had died a natural death in a hospital; nor could any one, under such a supposition, explain theburied in lime except the head It remains, then, beyond a doubt, that that subterranean vault contained the victims of one of the many secretis the most probable opinion, if it be not rather the history of a fact:
”The conderadually filled up to their necks The lime by little and little enclosed the sufferers, or walled them up alive The torher, the respiration became more and more painful, because more difficult So that ith the suffocation of the s, they died in a manner most horrible and desperate Some time after their death the heads would naturally separate from the bodies, and roll away into the hollowsof the lime Any other explanation of the feet that may be attempted will be found improbable and unnatural You may make what use you please of these notes of mine, since I can warrant their truth I wish that writers, speaking of this infamous tribunal of the Inquisition, would derive their inforreat and so many the historical atrocities of the Inquisition, that they would more than suffice to arouse the detestation of a thousand worlds I know that the popish i that the Inquisition was never an ecclesiastical tribunal, but a laic But you will have shown the contrary in your work, andpreachers, that the palace of the Inquisition at Rome is under the shadow of the palace of the Vatican; that the keepers are to this day, Dominican friars; and that the prefect of the Inquisition at Rome is the Pope in person
”I have the honor to be your affectionate Servant,
”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 ed 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 , 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 frouise as a soldier, thus re the authority of the congregation of cardinals undisputed Indeed they first obtained the verbal sanction of the coo, and hush an outcry
”Yet soer 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 hiust 22, 1851, where the pontiff, conde 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 ”ation of the Holy Ro incontrovertible evidence that provision isto 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 'iion' 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 nua-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 whoed for such a service, it is reasonable to suppose they act in that capacity
”3 Sos of these bishops confirm the assurance that there is now an Inquisition in activity in EnglandThe vigilance exercised over fa 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 woranize and conduct measures of repression or of punishment
Where the secular arm cannot be borrowed, and where offenders lie beyond the reach of excoularany as too crafty or too violent Discontented ht 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 'uardians of the papacy, who sit thrice every week, in the Minerva and Vatican, and there s 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 ation, 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 y 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 eneral 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 fros lishe 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 W of ”Ro vivid description of the present state of the Roreat missionary heart of the whole masterly system Noiselessly, by the h 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 raphic communication is established with the remotest stations in South Africa and Siberia, and with almost every nook in our own land, to which the myrh alvanic battery, set up in the Vatican, that the Church of Roh made itself OMNIPOTENT, as well as oonist that strides across the path of a free, spiritual and advancing Protestantis, and the sive it the victory
”Oncein its dark, nant efficiency, the INQUISITION Men are still rand defensive expedient of the Papacy, and is the chief tribunal of the States Its processes are all as secret as the grave Its cells are full of dead men's bones They call it the Asylurims, where they may have experience of the parental kindness of their father the Pope, and their mother the church
”Dr Achilli had a trial of this beneficient discipline, when thrown into the deep dungeon of St Angelo And how many other poor victi in agony, heaven knows
”In A ceased to persecute IT IS A MISTAKE She holds to the principle as tenaciously as ever She cannot dispense with it Of the evil spirit of Protestantisn, is a reign of terror