Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 13, 1867

Historical Department.

Prophecy is History in Advance.

BOWER'S ESCAPE FROM THE INQUISITION.

In the first three numbers of this volume of the Review, was given an interesting account of the downfall of the papacy in 1798, from Bower's History of the Popes. Our readers will be interested in learning something of the personal history of this author. Archibald Bower was formerly professor of Rhetoric, History and Philosophy in the Universities of Rome, Fermo, and Macerata, in Italy, and in the latter place counsellor of the Inquisition. The following sketch, from the Methodist Magazine, of the proceedings of that infernal tribunal, and the escape of Mr. Bower therefrom, while it is a true narrative, will at the same time possess for the reader all the interest of the most thrilling romance. Truly a church which originated and sustained the diabolical proceedings of the Inquisition, is worthy to be called the “mystery of iniquity,” and a harlot drunken with crime and blood. The events here narrated occurred in the year 1726.

I never, (says Mr. Bower,) pretended that it was for the sake of religion alone, that I left Italy; but on the contrary, have often declared, as all my friends can attest, that, had I never belonged to the Inquisition, I should have gone on, as most Roman Catholics do, without ever questioning the truth of the religion I was brought up in, or thinking of any other. But the unheard of cruelties of that hellish tribunal shocked me beyond all expression, and rendered me, as I was obliged, by my office of Counsellor, to be accessory to them, one of the most unhappy men upon earth. I therefore began to think of resigning my office; but as I had on several occasions, betrayed some weakness, as they termed it, that is, some compassion and humanity, and had upon that account been reprimanded by the Inquisition, I was well apprized, that my resignation would be ascribed by him to my disapproving the proceedings of the holy tribunal. And indeed to nothing else could he have ascribed it, as a place at that board was a sure way to preferment, and attended with great privileges, and a considerable salary. Being, therefore, sensible how dangerous a thing it would be to give the least ground to any suspicion of that nature, and no longer able to bear the sight of the many barbarities practised almost daily within those walls, nor the reproaches of my conscience in being accessory to them, I determined, after many restless nights, and much deliberation with myself, to withdraw at the same time from the Inquisition, and from Italy. In this mind, and in the most unhappy and tormenting situation that can possibly be imagined, I continued nearly a twelvemonth, not able to prevail upon myself to execute the resolution I had taken on account of the many dangers which I foresaw would inevitably attend it, and the dreadful consequences of my failing in the attempt. But, being in the meantime, ordered by the Inquisitor to apprehend a person, with whom I lived in the greatest intimacy and friendship, the part I was obliged to act on that occasion, left so deep an impression in my mind as soon prevailed over all my fears, and made me determine to put into execution, at all events, and without further delay, the design I had formed. Of that remarkable transaction, therefore, I shall give here a particular account, the rather as it will shew in a very strong light, the nature of the proceedings in that horrid court.

The person whom the Inquisitor appointed me to apprehend, was Count Vincenzo 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 Signor 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 being grown shy of me, and giving 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 were passed, “What fools,” said he, “are these to think they shall gain Heaven by wearing sackcloth and going bare-foot! 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 knew not; for the Inquisitors never tell the names of the 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 doctrine of the holy mother church, is bound to reveal it to the Inquisitor, and likewise 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 to accuse 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 deemed and treated as accomplices, if they do not denounce in a certain time; and no confessor can absolve a person who has heard any thing 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 said.

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 agreeably to that determination. 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, viz., 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.

That part of the proposition, “Fools, if they think that 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, who “chastised his body,” that is, whipped himself, as the Inquisitor understood it, adding, that the practice of whipping one's self, so much recommended by all 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 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 to 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., of 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 any ways concerned in the execution of that order; an order, I said, which I entirely approved of, and only wished it might be put in execution by some other person; for your lordship knows, I said, the connexion. But the Inquisitor shocked at the word, “What?” said he, with a stern look and angry tone of voice, “talk of connexions 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 with the rest of the counsellors, and as he passed me, “Thus,” he said, “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 any way 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 this reprimand had upon me, 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 inquiring who knocked, was answered, the Holy Inquisition, and at the same time, ordered to awake nobody, but to come down directly and open the door, on pain of excommunication. At those words, the servant hastened down, half naked as she was, and having with much ado, in her great fright, at last opened the door, she conducted us, as she was ordered, pale and trembling, to her master's bed-chamber. She often looked very earnestly at me, as she knew me, and shewed a great desire of speaking to 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 run down her face, and she swooned away. I rebuked the fellow very severely, and ordered him to be whipped as soon as I returned to the Inquisition.

In the meantime the husband awakening, and seeing me with my attendants, cried out in the utmost surprise, “Mr. Bower!” He said then no more; nor could I for some time, utter a single word; and it was with much ado that, in the end, I mastered my grief so far 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! 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 there. The notary stood by him while he dressed, and as I observed, quite unaffected. Indeed, to be void of all humanity, to be able to behold one's fellow-creatures groaning and ready to expire in 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 an unhappy, and probably an 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 that inhuman 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 shown by the Inquisition to men of the first rank, when charged with heresy, than to the meanest artificers. 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 a 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 whom she had vowed never to part with. 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 eye. However, I gave signal to the notary to part them, which he did accordingly, quite unconcerned; but the countess fell into a swoon, and the count was, in the meantime, carried down stairs, and out of the house, amidst 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 about him.

Being arrived at the Inquisition, I consigned my prisoner into the hands of the gaoler, a lay brother of St. Dominic, who shut him up in the dungeon mentioned above, and delivered the key to me. I lay that night in 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 whole conduct by the notary; and therefore, upon my delivering the key to him, “You have acted,” said he, “like one who is desirous at least to overcome with the assistance of grace, the inclinations of nature;” that is, like one who is desirous, with 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 that is allowed him. This is done, they say, to tame him, and render him, thus weakened, more sensible of the torture, and less able to bear 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 any thing 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. Being asked, according to custom, whether he had any enemies, and desired to name them; he answered, that he bore enmity to no man, and hoped no man bore enmity to him. For as, in the Inquisition, the person accused is not told of the charge brought against him, nor of the person by whom it is brought; the Inquisitor asks him whether he has any enemies, and desires him to name them. If he names the informer, all further proceedings are stopped till the informer is examined anew; and if the information is found to proceed from ill-will, and no collateral proof can be produced, the prisoner is discharged.

Of this piece of justice they frequently boast, at the same time that they admit, both as informers and witnesses, persons of the most infamous characters, and such as are excluded by all other courts. In the next place, the prisoner is ordered to swear that he will declare the truth, and conceal nothing from the holy tribunal, concerning himself or others, that he knows, and the holy tribunal is desirous to know. He is then interrogated for what crime he has been apprehended and imprisoned by the Holy Court of the Inquisition, of all courts the most equitable, the most cautious, the most merciful. To that interrogatory the count answered, with a faint and trembling voice, that he was not conscious to himself of any crime, cognizable by that Holy Court, nor indeed by any other; that he believed, and ever had believed whatever holy mother church believed, or required him to believe. He had, it seems, quite forgot what he had unthinkingly said at the sight of the two friars. The Inquisitor, therefore, finding he did not remember, or would not own his crime, after many deceitful interrogatories, and promises which he never intended to fulfill, ordered him back to his dungeon, and allowing him another week, as is customary in such cases, to recollect himself, told him that if he could not in that time prevail upon himself to declare the truth, agreeable to his oath, means would be found of forcing it from him; and he must expect no mercy.

At the end of the week he was brought again before the infernal tribunal, and being asked the same questions, returned the same answers, adding, that if he had done or said any thing amiss, unwittingly or ignorantly, he was ready to own it, provided the least hint of it were given him by any there present, which he entreated them most earnestly to do. He often looked at me, and seemed to expect, which gave me such concern as no words can express, that I should say something in his favor. But I was not allowed to speak on this occasion, nor was any of the counsellors; and had I been allowed to speak, I durst not have said any thing in his favor; the advocate appointed by the Inquisition, and commonly styled, “The Devil's Advocate,” being the only person that is suffered to speak for the prisoner. This advocate belongs to the Inquisition, receives a salary of the Inquisition, and is bound by an oath to abandon the defence of the prisoner if he undertakes it, or not to undertake it, if he finds it cannot be defended agreeably to the laws of the Holy Inquisition; so that the whole is mere sham and imposition. I have heard this advocate, on other occasions, allege something in favor of the person accused; but on this occasion he declared that he had nothing to offer in defence of the criminal.

In the Inquisition, the person accused is always supposed guilty, unless he has named the accuser among his enemies and he is put to the torture if he does not plead guilty, and own the crime that is laid to his charge, without being so much as told what it is; whereas, in all other courts, where tortures are used, the charge is declared to the party accused before he is tortured; nor are they ever inflicted without a credible evidence brought of his guilt. But in the Inquisition, a man is frequently tortured upon the deposition of a person whose evidence would be admitted in no other court, and in all cases without hearing his charge. As my unfortunate friend continued to maintain his innocence, not recollecting what he had said, he was, agreeably to the laws of the Inquisition, put to the torture. He had scarce borne it twenty minutes, crying out the whole time, “Jesus Maria,” when his voice failed him at once, and he fainted away. He was then supported, as he hung by his arms, by two of the Sbirri, whose province it is to manage the torture, till he returned to himself. He still continued to declare that he could not recollect his having said or done any thing contrary to the Catholic faith, and earnestly begged they would let him know with what he was charged, being ready to own it if it was true. The Inquisitor was then so gracious as to put him in mind of what he had said on seeing the two Capuchins. The reason why they so long conceal from the party accused, the crime he is charged with, is, that if he should be conscious to himself of having ever said or done any thing contrary to the faith, which he is not charged with, he may discover that too, imagining it to be the very crime he is accused of.

After a short pause, the poor gentleman owned that he had said something to that purpose; but as he had said it with no evil intention, he had never more thought of it from that time to the present. He added, but with so faint a voice as scarce could be heard, that for his business, he was willing to undergo what punishment soever the holy tribunal should think fit to impose on him; and he again fainted away. Being eased for a while of his torment, and returned to himself, he was interrogated by the promoter fiscal (whose business it is to accuse and to prosecute, as neither the informer nor the witnesses are ever to appear) concerning his intention. For, in the Inquisition, it is not enough for the party accused to confess the fact, he must likewise declare whether his intention was heretical or not; and many, to redeem themselves from the torments they can no longer endure, own their intention was heretical, though it really was not. My poor friend often told us he was ready to say whatever we pleased; but, as he never directly acknowledged his intention to have been heretical, as is required by the rules of that court, he was kept on the torture till, quite overcome with the violence of the anguish, he was ready to expire; and being then taken down, he was carried quite senseless, back to his dungeon; and there, on the third day, death put an end to his sufferings. The Inquisitor wrote a note to his widow, to desire her to pray for the soul of her late husband, and warn her not to complain of the holy Inquisition, as capable of any injustice or cruelty. The estate was confiscated to the Inquisition, and a small jointure allowed out of it to the widow. As they had only been married six months, and some part of the fortune was not yet paid, the Inquisitor sent an order to the Constantini family, at Fermo, to pay to the holy office, and without delay, what they owed to the late Count della Torre. For the effects of heretics are all ipso facto confiscated to the Inquisition, and confiscated from the very day, not of their conviction, but of their crime; so that all donations made after that time are void; and whatever they have given, is claimed by the Inquisition, into whatsoever hands it may have passed; even the fortunes they have given to their daughters in marriage, have been declared to belong to, and are claimed by the Inquisition; nor can it be doubted, that the desire of those confiscations is one great cause of the injustice and cruelty of that court.

The death of the unhappy Count della Torre was soon publicly known; but no man dared to speak of it, not even his nearest relations, nor so much as to mention his name, lest any thing should inadvertently escape them that might be construed into a disapprobation of the proceedings of the most holy tribunal; so great is the awe all men live in of that jealous and merciless court.”

(Concluded next week.)