Inquisition (Howitt, tr., The religion of Rome described by a Roman, 1873)

Text: "I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;" "And he [the little horn] ... shall wear out the saints of the most High, ... and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." Daniel 7:21,25

Quote:


[...] But the times changed, and being no longer able to burn the heretics and the excommunicated publicly, the holy office found means of putting them to death without the shedding of blood and for the glory of God, by means of walling-up and ovens.

   The walling-up was of two kinds, the propria, and impropria, or complete and incomplete. By the first they punished dogmatists, by the second, the professors of witchcraft and sorcery. To punish the former, they made a niche in a wall, where standing upright on his feet, they placed the condemned, binding him well to the wall with cords and chains, so that he could not move in the least. They then began to build from the feet to the knees, and every day they raised the wall a course, at the same time giving the prisoner to eat and to drink. When he died, and God knows with what agonies, the wall was built up. But dead or alive, it was closed in such a manner that no one could see where the niche had been and that a body remained there.

   The incomplete walling-up, or enclosure, was made by setting the condemned in a pit bound hand and foot, so that his head only was above ground. The pit was then filled up with quicklime, and moisture from the body soon acting on it, converted it into fire, and the miserable wretch was burnt alive with the most frightful torture.

   As knowledge and civilization increased, and the people began to see through the impostures of the priests, they feared lest, spite of their secrecy, such atrocities might creep abroad amongst the corrupt sons of the age, and in order to retain the knowledge of these holy proceedings amongst a few, they dismissed the building up, and adopted a plan more anticipative of the pains of hell, and this was by burning the condemned without flame, and without shedding of blood. They invented ovens, or furnaces, which being made red-hot, they lowered the condemned into them, bound hand and foot, and immediately closed over them the mouth of the furnace. This barbarous punishment was substituted for the burning pile, and in 1849, these furnaces at Rome were laid open to public view in the dungeons of the holy Roman Inquisition, near the great church of the Vatican, still containing the calcined bones.

Howitt, William, tr., The religion of Rome described by a Roman: authorised translation, London: Bailliere, Tindall, and Cox, 1873, pp. 195-196.

Online Source: http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb11164050-4

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