The History of Persecution, from the Patriarchal Age, to the Reign of George IIChandler, Samuel
History
The History of Persecution, from the Patriarchal Age, to the Reign of George II
Chandler, Samuel
Persecution -- Great Britain; Persecution -- History
Things being thus disposed, a certain parson mounted the pulpit, and
with a shrill voice, which rung through all the parts of the spacious
church, and in the vulgar language, that the common people might
understand him, read over a summary of the process, and the sentence by
which the cardinals inquisitors general, specially deputed for the
affair by the pope, pronounced Mark Anthony, as a relapse into heresy,
to have incurred all the censures and penalties appointed to relapsed
heretics by the sacred canons, and papal constitutions; and declared him
to be deprived of all honours, prerogatives, and ecclesiastical
dignities, condemned his memory, and cast him out of the ecclesiastical
court, delivered over his dead body and effigies 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. After this sentence was read, the governor of the city and
his officers threw the corpse, effigies, and aforesaid writings into a
cart, and carried them into the Campo Fiore, a great multitude of people
following after. When they came there, the dead body, which as yet in
all its members was whole and entire, was raised out of the chest as far
as the bottom of the breast, and shewn from on high to the vast
concourse of people that stood round about; and was afterwards, with the
effigies and bundle of his books, thrown into the pile prepared for the
purpose, and there burnt.
And finally, in order to beget in the common people a greater abhorrence
of the crime of heresy, they usually pull down and level with the ground
the houses or dwellings in which heretics hold their conventicles, the
ground on which they stood being sprinkled over with salt, and certain
curses and imprecations uttered over it. And that there may be a
perpetual monument of its infamy, a pillar or stone, four or five feet
high, is erected in the said ground, with large characters on it,
containing the name and owner of the house, shewing the reason of its
demolition, and the reign of what pope, emperor or king, the matter was
transacted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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