THE TWO REGULATIONS OF PAUL IV. which he had blessed. Then he declared that Cardinal Alfonso Carafa would communicate his orders to the Congregation, which was done on September 8th. As the constitutions appeared in print in the same year, 1558, the Papal order with regard to the three years' duration of the office of General and to the choir, had to be added on the last page.1 These two regulations, however, were not yet made permanent laws; for this the forms required for the publication of an ecclesiastical law were still wanting. They were simply orders which ceased to be in force with the death of the person who issued them.2 On the advice of able canonists, they gave the prayer in choir after the death of Paul IV. After three years of office Lainez declared that he was willing to resign the generalship, but in this case also they acted on the principle that after the death of Paul IV. his regulation was no longer in force.3 Besides this, Pius IV. expressly repealed the decree up 1 Copy of this last page in SOMMervogel, Bibl., V., 76 seq. After the death of Paul IV. this page was replaced by another. 2 Ecclesiastical law distinguishes between laws and (general and particular) orders. A law, in the first place, relates to a territorium and remains in force after the death of him who issued it. A particular order relates, in the first place, to persons, and according to the general opinion of canonists, lapses with the death of the person who issued it. The proceedings of Paul IV. in this case may be explained by the fact that he hesitated to alter the bulls of Paul III. and Julius III., and therefore wished to make the Jesuits adopt prayer in choir, and a three years' period of office for the General, on their own initiative, and that he expressed his displeasure by the order of September 8, that his repeated hints to this effect had not had the desired result. He certainly must have known that he could not alter, by a merely verbal indication of his wishes, what had been confirmed by the bulls of Paul III. and Julius III., unless he first expressly repealed the regulations of his predecessors. 3 ASTRAIN, II., 36 seqq. Mon. hist. Soc. Iesu: S. FRANC. BORGIA, III., 576. Bobadilla had now become quite reconciled with Lainez, and to the Constitutions. He wrote to Lainez: "My wish, with regard to the position of the General, is that it may always be for life. In the case of your reverence, may it 17 VOL. XIV. of Paul IV. and confirmed the constitutions of the Order.1 " last a hundred years, and if you should happen to come back to life after your death, may it last until the Day of Judgment ! ASTRAIN, II., 37. 1 H. NATALIS, Scholia in Constitutiones, Prati, 1883, 275. S. FRANC. BORGIA, III., 671 seq. CHAPTER X. PAUL IV. AND THE ROMAN INQUISITION. THE fiery zeal with which Paul IV. confronted the worldliness and corruption in the Church was even surpassed by his care for the protection of the true faith. From the very first, the preservation in all its purity and the defence of this precious gift seemed to be one of the principal tasks of the supreme ecclesiastical authority. Having been raised to the throne of St. Peter, he meant, as the lawful shepherd and teacher appointed by God for the preservation of the full, pure and unalloyed truth, to use the whole of his power to defend it, all the more as the dangers by which it was threatened on every side became greater. Even more than in his measures for reform, Paul IV. displayed, in his attacks on those who deviated from the true faith, that pitiless severity and impetuous violence which were characteristic of all his actions. If one should employ every means to stamp out the plague, even to the destruction by fire of infected houses and clothing, one should proceed in like manner in fighting and extirpating the plague of the soul, which is to be prized so much more highly than the body.2 1 Besides Vol. X. of this work, p. 371 seq., and Vol. XII., PP. 504-510, and supra Vol. XIII., p. 215, cf. the testimony of Cardinal Ant. Carafa in his *Apologia (National Library, Naples); see also the letter of Ignatius of Loyola of August 13, 1555, in the Mon. Ign., Ser. 1, IX., 465. 2 Paul IV. spoke repeatedly to Navagero in this sense. See the latter's *report of May 1, 1556, in which he quotes the following words of the Pope : "L'heresia è da esser perseguitata con ogni rigor et asprezza come la peste del corpo, perche ella è peste dell' anima Se si appartano, si abbrugiano, si consumano li lochi, et robbe appestate, perchè non si dee con l'istessa severità The terrible weapons which the tribunal of the Roman Inquisition, as reorganized by Paul III., opposed to heresy, such as imprisonment, execution, and the forfeiture of the estates of those condemned to death, had been, until now, used in a comparatively moderate and merciful manner. As no permanent success had been attained in this way, Paul IV. determined to meet the efforts of the Protestant propaganda to win over Italy to its side with all the means at his command. He proceeded methodically and according to plan, displaying in so doing, a severity that no less a person than the celebrated Augustinian, Seripando, has described as inhuman.1 These ruthless proceedings had, as a consequence, the fact that, after the death of the Pope, the fury of the populace broke out, and vented itself principally on the buildings of the Inquisition. In the course of the acts of devastation carried out there, the documents of this tribunal were, for the greater part, destroyed. The authentic sources have thus been lost, and little enough remains with which to replace them. Not even the number of cases tried, or even of the executions which took place, partly in the Piazza Navona, and partly in the Campo di Fiore and the Piazza Giudea, can now be stated with any degree of accuracy.2 estirpar, annichilar et allontanar l'heresia, morbo dell'anima, che val senza comparatione più del corpo" (Cod. 9445, f. 180 of the Library of St. Mark's, Venice). A similar utterance of Paul IV. to Navagero in JENSEN, G. P. Caraffa, Copenhagen, 1880, 137, n. 1. Whether the four rules which, according to CARACCIOLO, *Vita 3, 5 (afterwards in RANKE, 18., 137, with inexact quotation) Carafa prescribed for himself, in the treatment of heretics, are authentic, appears doubtful. I consider them a later compilation. 1 MERKLE, II., 405; cf. our remarks in Vol. XII. of this work, p. 508 seq. It is also quite wrong when MORONI (XXXV., 46) maintains: " dolcissima e paterna fu sempre la condotta tenuta dal tribunale di Roma." 2 The statements of CARACCIOLA, *Vita di Paolo IV., 4, 8 (Casanate Libr.) are insufficient, and not always reliable; they stand greatly in need of a critical investigation (cf. AMABILE, I., 138 n.). The statements of the *Libri delle giustizie della THE INQUISITION. 261 The general decrees of the Inquisition escaped destruction in the troubles of August, 1559; they are preserved in the confraternità di S. Giovanni decollato (now in the State Archives, Rome) upon which ORANO (p. 4 seq.) has drawn, are thoroughly reliable, but not complete. According to this source, there was executed in Rome, on the 15 Juni, 1556, Ambrogio de Cavoli di Milano (cf. the *letter of G. A. Calegari to Commendone, dated June 17, 1556: 'Domenica alli 14 fu una solenne abiuratione de' heretici ne la Minerva; il lunedì seguente fu strangolato et arso un frate Ambrosio da Milano sfratato già più anni, non volse mai veder il crucifisso ne esser confortato." Lett. di princ., XXIII., n. 8. Secret Archives of the Vatican; cf. Arch. stor. Napol., 593, n. 4), on August 19, 1556, Pomponio de Algerio di Nola (cf. BROWN, VI., 3, App. n. 155; AMABILE, I., 166 seq. ; DE BLASIIS in the Arch. stor. Napol., XIII., 569 seqq.; BERTOLOTTI, Martiri, 19; VOLPICELLA, Racconti di stor. Napol., Naples, 1909, 27-88), on June 15, 1555, Gisberto di Milanuccio Poggio di Cività di Penne, on February 8, 1559, Antonio di Colella Grosso della Rocca di Policastro, Leonardo di Paolo da Meola da Pontecorvo and Giovanni Antonio del Bo; one of these three, however, was no heretic, as is evident from the *Avviso of February 11, 1559 (see Appendix No. 52). Cf. also BERTOLOTTI, Martiri, 26, and TURINOZZI, 7. The burning of a Waldensian in 1558 is mentioned by BROMATO (II., 454). Carnesecchi was summoned to Rome on October 25, 1557, and as he refused to appear he was condemned in his absence on April 6, 1558. Particulars concerning him in a future volume of this work. With regard to the action against Andrea Centani, Bishop of Limosso and Cyprus, see, besides BUSCHBELL, 81, n. 6, the *Acta consist. cancell., VII., of February 4, 1558: *R. Saracenus proposuit unam causam contra episcopum Limosien. depositionis ipsius ab episcopatu propter heresim (Consistorial Archives). Concerning the further course of this affair see *Acta consist. of July 24 and August 9, 1559. According to Navagero (AMABILE, I., 141) about 60 prisoners were in the dungeons of the Inquisition at the death of Paul IV. (according to BROMATO [II., 577], there were 72). It can also be proved, not for Rome, but for Bologna, that witches were burned there by order of Paul IV.; see BATTISTELLA, Il S. Officio e la riforma religiosa in Bologna, Bologna, 1905, 168. |