The existence of the Inquisition - such a huge monument of power and fanaticism - should be considered as not only inimical to civil liberty, but also preposterous in the administration of a state. The repeated struggles of the nations to dislodge this tribunal, as well as the revolting acts it had so frequently committed, were fresh in the memories of many; and others were besides sensible that to make man amenable to the tribunals of justice for sentiments originating in and confined to his own breast.
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It is the year of the Lord 1554, the Time of the Plague. The town of Ferrara, in Italy, is deluged by the Inquisition'spies, which are trying to find all Protestant, Lutheran or Calvinist heretics. Every dwelling, no matter whether the palace of the noble, or the hovel of the meanest laborer, in which any inmate was imagined to be Protestant, or even to favor the Reformed religion, had, through the agency of spies, a perfect continuity established between it and the Holy Office. Not infrequently these spies were to be found among members of the family itself, especially the younger ones. The civil law has no more power; the public worship has been abolished and declared penal by the ecclesiastical courts. Este Palace, the house of the Duchess Renée, becomes an oasis for the Protestants after the Duchess renounce the Catholic faith. Bernardino Ochino, ex-Capuchin Friar, ex-Confessor to the Pope, ex-General of the Order of the Capuchins, auto-declared himself a Reformer after an animated debate with Calvin.In the middle of this turmoil, he comes to Ferrara to seek the help and the protection of the Duchess. The book, first published in 1731, touches all the Inquisition's details in 116 chapters. From the doctrine of Jesus Christ and the Arian persecution of the Orthodox, the speedy progress of Inquisition in Europe and the wars against the Waldenses, Albigenses, Apostolics, Templars, Beguins; the organization - from the Ministers and Inquisitors to the Familiars and Cross-Bearers; types of Heretics and their punishments; from the arts of the Inquisitors used to draw confessions to the canonical purgation, torture and the Act of Faith. The Mysteries of the Vatican: Crimes of the Papacy Vol. I and II. - Dr. Theodor Griesinger6/19/2017 A concise sketch of the principal events, and slowly developing characteristics, which mark the rise, culmination, and decline of the Papal Regnum. Commencing with St. Peter, whose sojourn in Rome Dr. Griesinger, with most modern critics, holds highly problematical, he paints the forlorn condition of the first Christians in the eternal city, where, in honor of the gods of Latium, Christian blood flowed as water, or as it has since flowed to the cry of “heresy!” He shows us the rapid corruption of the church under imperial adoption, — the awakening lust of power in the episcopal breast; and how, under Constantine, Clovis, the Valois, the Hapsburgs, the modern Bourbons, — monarchical and priestly unrighteousness have gone hand in hand; and the “in hoc signo vinces” has been interpreted by succeeding despots as meaning the cross of St. Peter over the Vatican. |