Then he fell sick and suddenly died. No one could well believe it was a
natural death. Four sworn physicians to the pope examined the corpse,
however, and deposed that no signs of violence were to be seen upon it.
The suggestion of poison was not met because it was not put forward.
But the Holy Office desired to show that it would have been justified in
taking his life. At an imposing ceremony in the church of St. Mary, and
in the presence of the greatest personages, ecclesiastical and civil,
the effigy of De Dominis was arraigned and condemned to peculiar pains
and penalties. “Marc Anthony” was declared to have relapsed and was
sentenced to be degraded and cast out. All his writings were to be
burned and his goods confiscated to the Inquisition. His body, now far
advanced toward putrefaction, was torn from the coffin, thrown upon a
pile in the Campo di Fiori and consumed before a vast crowd.
The Inquisition in Rome was active to the last and died hard. Napoleon
would have none of it and threw wide open its prison, but Leo XII, when
the popes regained mastery, revived the old tyranny; the congregation of
cardinals was reëstablished with the pope as prefect, and persecution
was resumed on the old lines. In the revolution of 1849, when Pope Pius
IX fled to Gaeta, it was again done away with. At that time the
Inquisition prison was still found to contain two inmates, an aged
bishop and a nun. The first was no doubt the person mentioned by
Whiteside in his travels in Italy, dated 1848, and the incident may be
fitly quoted here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account