Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/457

Rh of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to confess. Hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed to the torture which could be administered; but when Christianity had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was developed with a cruelty never before known. The theological doctrine of "excepted cases" was evolved—these "excepted cases" being heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and natural process of theological reasoning it was held that Satan would give supernatural strength to his special devotees—that is, to heretics and witches; and therefore, that in dealing with them there should be no limits to the torture. The result was in this particular case, as in tens of thousands besides, that the accused confessed everything which could be suggested to them, and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more than all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest. Finally, a great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel death which could be invented. The records of their trials and deaths are frightful. The treatise which in recent years has first brought to light in connected form an authentic account of the proceedings in this affair, and which gives at the end engravings of the accused submitting to horrible tortures on their way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is one of the most fearful k monuments of theological reasoning and human folly.

To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured into a confession that he had made the magic ointment, and had been put to death with the most exquisite refinements of torture, his family were obliged to take another name, and were driven out from the city; his house was torn down, and on its site was erected "The Column of Infamy," which remained on this spot until, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a party of young radicals, probably influenced by the reading of Beccaria, sallied forth one night and leveled this pious monument to the ground.

Herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull "Summis Desiderantes." It had been issued by him whom a vast majority of the Christian world believes to be infallible in his teachings to the Church as regards faith and morals; yet here was a deliberate utterance in a matter of faith and morals which even children now know to be utterly untrue. Though Beccaria's book on Crimes and Punishments, with its declarations against torture, was placed by the church authorities upon the Index, and though the faithful throughout the Christian world were forbidden to read it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth over this infallible utterance of Innocent VIII.