Dealings with the Inquisition; Or, Papal Rome, Her Priests, and Her JesuitsAchilli, Giacinto
History
Dealings with the Inquisition; Or, Papal Rome, Her Priests, and Her Jesuits
Achilli, Giacinto
Catholic Church -- Controversial literature; Inquisition
At the end of each visit, however, I had always requested him to report
faithfully everything I had said to him; adding that every day I felt
more and more firm and fixed in my purpose; and that if it should
please God that I should be released from prison, I should, with the
aid of His Holy Spirit, continue my mission with all the more vigour,
from perceiving by His having conferred on me the grace of being
allowed to suffer six months' incarceration for His name's sake, that
it could not be otherwise than acceptable in His sight.
At the same time, I bade him, and the pope and cardinals likewise, to
remember, that the persecution to which I had been subjected could not
be approved or justified even by Roman Catholics themselves; and that
if it had no other effect, it would at least have the most desirable
one of ultimately working the abolition of the Roman Inquisition, never
more to be restored.
Padre Theiner and I were, on this third visit, in the full fervour of
our controversial arguments, when the captain of the castle came to
inform me that two _chasseurs de Vincennes_ were arrived to take me
to the French Council of War, to give evidence in the trial of Signor
Cernuschi, Deputy of the people, under the Republic.
How I, separated as I was, and had been for six months, from the rest
of the world, by a decree emanating from the Inquisition, could be
summoned by a foreign authority to appear before a military tribunal,
was what I could not comprehend; and my theologian was still more
astonished at it than I was. The captain added that he had the
permission of the Cardinal-Vicar. "Let us go, in the name of the
Lord," was my thought.
Padre Theiner accompanied me to the carriage, I got in, and two
soldiers, armed with carbines, took their places by me, one on each
side. The tribunal was held at the Ecclesiastical Academy in the
Piazza Minerva, the great institution of the Dominicans, who were, as
I have already stated, the founders of the Inquisition; and I have
often reflected since upon the retributive justice of Providence, in
appointing that very place for the sitting of the tribunal which was to
break down the power of that villanous establishment, by setting one of
its victims free, to disclose its iniquities to the world.
The _Capitaine Rapporteur_ was alone; he put a few questions to me
concerning Cernuschi; and said certain things to me, which I forbear
to mention; as well as some other things of little import to any one
but myself; for fear of causing trouble to parties still remaining in
Rome, and consequently subjected to the treacheries and basenesses of
a government at this present moment one of the most tyrannical, and at
the same time the most degraded, in Europe. I was then remanded to the
castle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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