Roman Inquisition (Cambridge Chronicle, Volume IV, Number 22, 31 May 1849)

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:

THE PALACE OF THE INQUISITION.

   The London Daily News of April 18th, has a letter from its correspondent at Rome, bearing date March 31, in which is a description of the improvements and excavations that are going on in that city, under the new republican government.—One work is the restoration of the ancient Forum, which is to be cleared down to its ancient level, from the Arch of Titus to the foot of the Capitol. The elm trees growing upon the superincumbent accumulations, are removed. The rubbish is removed by contract, and used in filling in the foundation of the railway. All this at Rome! But this is not the most exciting. The letter writer proceeds to describe a visit he had made that very morning, to the works going on in the subterranean vaults of tho Holy Office, where he was not a little horrified, he says, at what he saw with his own eyes, and held with his own hands.

   The building is in a close court, back of St. Peter's, and is modern and comfortable in external appearance. But on entering, the real character of the place appears. On the ground floor is a range of strongly barred prisons, used as receiving rooms; further on, in a small court yard, is a triple row of small dungeons, capable of holding sixty prisoners, and a supplementary row to the back of the quadrangle. All have iron rings let in the masonry. Numerous inscriptions, of ancient date, are traced on the walls; one is of this import—"The caprice or wickedness of man cannot exclude me from thy church, O Christ, my only hope." The correspondent says:

   "The officer in charge let me down to where the men were digging in the vaults below; they had cleared a downward flight of steps, which was choked up with old rubbish, and had come to a series of dungeons under the vaults, deeper still, and which immediately brought to my mind the prisons of the Doge under the canal of the Bridge of Sighs, at Venice, only that here there was a surpassing horror.

   "I saw, imbedded in old masonry, unsymmetrically arranged, five skeletons, in various recesses, and the clearance had only just begun; the period of their insertion in this spot must have been more than a century and a half. From another vault full of skulls and scattered human remains, there was a shaft, about four feet square, ascending perpendicularly to the first floor of the building, and ending in a passage off the hall of the chancery, where a trap door lay between the tribunal and the way into a suite of rooms destined for one of the officials. The object of this shaft could admit of but one surmise. The ground of the vault was made up of decayed animal matter, a lump of which held imbedded in it, a long, silken lock of hair, as I found by personal examination, as it was shoveled up from below.

   "But that is not all; there are two large subterranean limekilns, if I may so call them, shaped like a bee-hive in masonry, filled with layers of calcined bones, forming the substratum of two other chambers on the ground floor, in the immediate vicinity of the very mysterious shaft above mentioned."

   The correspondent, who says he has been familiar with every thing in and about Rome, for a quarter of a century, very properly raises the inquiry why such a charnel-house should have been constructed under the building, with a large space of ground lying outside. He thus comments on the affair:

   "I know not what interest you may attach to what looks like a chapter from Mrs. Radcliff, but had I not the evidence of mv own senses, I would never have dreamed of such appearances in a prison of the holy office; being thoroughly sick of the nonsense that has for years been put forth on that topic by partisan pens. But here the thing will become serious, for to-morrow the whole population of Rome is publicly invited by the authorities, to come and see with their own eyes one of the results of entrusting power to clerical hands. Libels on the clergy have been manifold during the last four months, and have done their work among the masses. But mere talk is nothing to the actual view of realities."

   He adds that the archives of the inquisition have been overhauled, and that selections will be published forthwith, including cases of the most intense interest, from Galileo's time downward to modern days. And he concludes:

   "It is quite possible that the Croats of Radetsky may force back on the population of these territories, clerical rulers again; but no friend of the Roman Catholic church, acquainted with the present sentiments of the Romans, can view such an event without deep alarm."

Cambridge Chronicle, Volume IV, Number 22, 31 May 1849, p. 1.

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