Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 837 pages of information about Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2.

Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 837 pages of information about Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2.
cliffs.  A few of the survivors were sent to work upon the Spanish galleys.  Some women and children were sold into slavery.  At Locarno, on the Lago Maggiore, a Protestant community of nearly 300 persons was driven into exile in 1555; and at Venice, in 1560-7, a small sect, holding reformed opinions, suffered punishment of a peculiar kind.  We read of five persons by name, who, after being condemned by the Holy Office, were taken at night from their dungeons to the Porto del Lido beyond the Due Castelli, and there set upon a plank between two gondolas.  The gondolas rowed asunder; and one by one the martyrs fell and perished in the waters.[105]

[Footnote 101:  It is singular that only one contemporary writes from Rome about Bruno’s execution in 1600; whence, I think, we may infer that such events were too common to excite much attention.]

[Footnote 102:  The main facts about these men may be found in Cantu’s Gli Eretici d’Italia, vol. ii.  This work is written in no spirit of sympathy with Reformers.  But it is superior in learning and impartiality to McCrie’s.]

[Footnote 103:  For the repressive measures used at Lucca, see Archivio Storico, vol. x. pp. 162-185.  They include the prohibition of books, regulation of the religious observances of Lucchese citizens abroad in France or Flanders, and proscription of certain heretics, with whom all intercourse was forbidden.]

[Footnote 104:  An eye-witness gives a heart-rending account of these persecutions:  sixty thrown from the tower of Guardia, eighty-eight butchered like beasts in one day at Montalto, seven burned alive, one hundred old women tortured and then slaughtered. Arch.  Stor., vol. ix. pp. 193-195.]

[Footnote 105:  McCrie, op. cit. p. 232-236.  The five men were Giulio Gherlandi of Spresian, near Treviso (executed in 1562), Antonio Rizzetta of Vicenza (in 1566), Francesco Sega of Rovigo (sentenced in 1566), Francesco Spinola of Milan (in 1567), and Fra Baldo Lupatino (1556).  McCrie bases his report upon the Histoire des Martyrs (Geneve, 1597) and De Porta’s Historia Reformationis Rhaeticarum Ecclesiarum.  Thinking these sources somewhat suspicious, I applied to my friend Mr. H.F.  Brown, whose researches in the Venetian archives are becoming known to students of Italian history.  He tells me that all the above cases, except that of Spinola, exist in the Frari.  Lupatino was condemned as a Lutheran; the others as Anabaptists.  In passing sentence on Lupatino, the Chief Inquisitor remarked that he could not condemn him to death by fire in Venice, but must consign him to a watery grave.  This is characteristic of Venetian state policy.  It appears that, of the above-named persons, Sega, though sentenced to death by drowning, recanted at the last moment, saying, ’Non voglio esser negato, ma voglio redirmi et morir buon Christiano.’  Mr. Brown adds that there is nothing in the archives to prove that he was executed; but there is also nothing

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