Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/113

 The first step was to obtain leave for the treat in contemplation from the sovereign. Charles the Sixth, the third king of Sicily of the name. He writes in Spanish from Prague on the 7th of July, 1723, "not only approving the celebration, but with splendid liberality promising that the royal treasury should supply the expenses necessary for carrying it out with all possible punctuality and splendour."

Then the 6th of April, 1724, is fixed by the Inquisitors as the great day. And Don Francesco Perino, clad in a gown of crimson velvet, and mounted on a horse caparisoned with gold brocaded trappings, and attended by the constables of the senate, all in crimson velvet gowns, and further attended by trumpeters, pipers, drummers, and cymbal-players, is sent to ride through the city and make proclamation of the intended Public Act, with due notice of time and place. He also proclaims the indulgences promised by the Holy Father to all those who shall be present on the occasion. Everybody is invited; "taking note, however, that they are to come in the best clothes that they can wear, in order to appear duly decorated for the great lustre of the occasion, and glory of God."

There is first to be a great procession from the Palace of the Inquisition to the theatre prepared for the celebration of the "Act of Faith," carrying the great "green cross" of the Inquisition, which will be erected on the altar in the theatre on that day, and will remain there all that night in custody of officers of the Inquisition. Special invitations are sent to all the civil and ecclesiastical bodies to take part in the procession. Only to the "bare-footed Augustines" no invitation is sent, for "reasons of convenience and propriety," i.e., because the man to be burned was one of their body. Specially the company of "La Vergine Assunta" was invited not only to be present, but to perform their part of the show. They were instituted for the express purpose of endeavouring to save the souls of those condemned by the Inquisition, by convincing them of their errors. The company of the "Assunta" would have been terribly affronted if they had not been duly invited to play their part in the spectacle. They kept twelve theologians specially trained to hunt down heresy into its last retreats. And all of these were brought to bear upon the obstinate heretics, a couple at a time at first, and then as the last hour drew near, all twelve together!

On the following day, the 6th, there is to be another great and solemn procession, on the occasion of bringing the prisoners from the prison of the Inquisition to the theatre. Everybody in Palermo, who had any sort of civil or religious status whatsoever, is to take part in this; a great number of them on horseback, many carrying huge lighted tapers of yellow wax, and all in the fullest of full dress.

Then we have a detailed description of the theatre: not the place where the last scene of all, the actual burning, was to take place, but that in which the reading of the sentences with great pomp, and in the presence of almost all the city, was to be performed. Thence the prisoners were to be taken, with more "pride, pomp, and circumstance," to another spot hard by.

This theatre was erected on a large open space immediately on the south side of the cathedral. Every detail of the construction, with the measurements of every part, is given by Canon Mongitore. We may, however, content ourselves with a general notion of the arrangement and appearance of the whole. In the old book, from which the reprint has been made, and which may still be seen in the Magliabecchian library, there is a large illustration, not reproduced in the reprint.

Supposing a wooden building of vast size to have been raised, much in the form of an ordinary theatre, let the reader represent to himself a huge and lofty throne occupying the centre of what in such a theatre would be the stage. This is for the three Inquisitors, with lower seats by the side of, and beneath it, for their principal officials. A series of compartments, very much in the nature of the boxes in a theatre, but more extensive, occupy the place of the ordinary boxes; except that at one part of the semicircle there is an open space left void, in order to allow a free view of the proceedings to a distinguished portion of the rank and fashion of Palermo, who occupy the balconies and windows of a neighbouring palace. All this range of boxes is assigned to the various public bodies of the city. Two large galleries, however, are set apart, one for the Princess Roecaporita, and one for the Princess Resuttana, and the ladies in great numbers invited by them.

In the middle of the space occupied by the orchestra in theatres destined to less holy purposes, is an isolated stage, high, but of small dimensions. This is to be occupied by the prisoners one at a time. There are twenty-eight of them; but only two are to be burned. The others having abjured their errors, and become reconciled to the Church, are to receive their sentences to minor punishments. These six-and-twenty, of both sexes, are accused, for the most part, of bigamy and fortune-telling; the men mainly of the first; the women of the second, crime. And they are condemned to various terms of seclusion, imprisonment, banishment, forced labour, and in every case to a sort of pillory procession through the city. There is a species of dock at the back part of the pit for all these prisoners, and leading from that to the high stage in the middle of the orchestra is a raised pathway—much like that used by flying-leap performers with the trapeze—along which the criminals are to be brought one by one to take their stand on the high stage, while their crimes are rehearsed and their sentences read. The hero and heroine of the day are reserved to the last; the other twenty-six are evidently regarded by all the assemblage as mere