there is something more tragical in what follows; in which we shall find that all the horrors of the "dry-pan," or burning to death, were actually realized in the case of young accomplished ladies, for no crime but that of heresy, or believing as they were taught by the word of God. I quote from an article formerly referred to, in the Literary and Statistical Magazine for June last; as continued from the number for March:

"Among the twenty-one victims who were burned at Valladolid, in the auto-da-fe of 1559, the case of Dona Maria de Bohorques is peculiarly interesting. Dona Maria was a natural daughter of Pedro Garcia de Xeres Bohorques, and had just completed her twenty-first year, when she was arrested on suspicion of Lutheranism. Under the instruction of D. Juan Gil, bishop elect of Tortosa, she was perfectly acquainted with the Latin language, and had made considerable progress in Greek. She knew the gospels by heart, and was deeply read in those commentaries, which explain in a Lutheran sense, the texts referring to justification by faith, good works, the sacraments, and the characteristics of the true church.

"Dona Maria was confined in the secret prison of the Inquisition, where she avowed the doctrines imputed to her, defended them against the arguments of the priests who visited her, and boldly told the inquisitors, that instead of punishing her for the creed which she held, they would do much better to imitate her example. With regard to the depositions of her accusers, though she allowed the principal points, she persisted in denying some facts which related to the opinions of other individuals; and this denial gave the inquisitors an opportunity of putting her to the rack. By this torture they only procured a confession, that her sister Johanna Bohorques knew her sentiments and had not disapproved them: and as she persisted in her profession of faith, sentence was passed upon her as an obstinate heretic. In the interval between her condemnation and the auto-da-fe, in which she was to suffer, the inquisitors made every exertion to bring her back to the Romish faith. They sent to her successively two Jesuits and two Dominican priests, who laboured with great zeal for her conversion, but returned without having effected their object, full of admiration of the talents she displayed, and regretting the obstinacy with which she persisted in what they supposed a damnable heresy. The evening before the auto-da-fe, two Dominicans joined in the attempt, and were followed by several theologians of other orders. Dona Maria received them with civility, but dissuaded them from attempting a hopeless task. To the professions which they made of being interested in the welfare of her soul, she answered that she believed them to be sincere, but that they must not suppose that she, being the party chiefly concerned, felt a less interest in the matter than they did. She told them that she came to prison fully satisfied of the orthodoxy of the creed which she held, and that she had been confirmed in her belief by the evident futility of the arguments brought against it.

"At the stake, Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had just abjured the Lutheran doctrines, exhorted Dona Maria to follow his example. The weakness of this apostate for a moment overcame her, and she silenced him by language rather of contempt than of pity. Recollecting herself, however, she told him that the time for controversy was past, and

that their wisest plan would be, to occupy the few minutes which remained to them, in meditating on the death of their Redeemer, in order to confirm that faith by which alone they could be justified. We have already mentioned, that if a condemned heretic renounced his heresy even at the stake, he was not burned alive, but first strangled and then burned; (and this was all that poor Juan Ponce de Leon gained by his apostasy.) On this occasion the attendant priests, moved by the youth and talents of Dona Maria, offered her this milder death if she would merely repeat the creed. With this offer she readily complied, but having finished it, she immediately began to explain its articles according to the sense of the reformers. This confession of faith was imme diately interrupted; Dona Maria was strangled by the executioner, and her body was afterwards consumed to ashes.

"We have mentioned that the only confession extorted by the rack from Maria Bohorques was, that her sister knew her religious sentiments, and had not disapproved them. This sister was named Johanna; she was a legitimate daughter of the same Pedro Garcia, and was married to Don Francis de Vargas, lord of Heguera. She was immediately arrested upon the confession of her sister Maria; and though six months advanced in pregnancy, she was confined in one of the common dungeons of the Inquisition. In this dungeon she was delivered of a child, and received no assistance except from a young woman, confined on a charge of Lutheranism, who occupied the same cell. Eight days after its birth the child was taken from her; and soon after, her friendly nurse, having been tortured, returned to the dungeon with bruised and dislocated limbs; and Dona Johanna, still feeble from her confinement, was called upon to repay the charitable attentions she had received. Before her health was established, she also was subjected to the torture. Her enfeebled frame sunk under its sufferings: a blood vessel burst while she was on the rack, and in two days she was delivered by death from any further persecution. After perpetrating this foul murder, the inquisitors thought it sufficient expiation to declare Dona Johanna innocent at the ensuing auto-da-fe."

Cases of the same kind might be multiplied to any extent; but my design is, to give only a selection by way of sample. The following affords a view of the secresy with which the affairs of the holy office were conducted: "When the familiar is sent for to apprehend any person, he has the following order put into his hand. By the command of the reverend Father N. an inquisitor of heretical pravity, let B. be apprehended and committed to the prisons of this holy office, and not be released out of them, but by the express order of the said reverend inquisitor.' And if several persons are to be taken up at the same time, the familiars are commanded so to order things, that they may know nothing of one another's being apprehended. And at this the familiars are so expert, that a father and his three sons, and three daughters, who lived together in the same house, were all carried prisoners to the Inquisition, without knowing any thing of one another's being there until seven years afterwards, when they that were alive came forth to an auto-da-fe.”—Limborch, Vol. I. p. 187.

Thus persons the most nearly related to one another, may be confined in contiguous cells without knowing it; and the merciless turnkeys of the holy office are constantly on the watch, to prevent the utter

ance of any sound, lest it should occasion the discovery of some secret. If a person bemoans himself, or bewails his misfortune, or prays to God with an audible voice, or sings a psalm or sacred hymn, he is instantly silenced. Persons may know one another by their cough, as well as by their articulate voice, and therefore, no man was allowed even this expression of his misery in the damp dungeons of the Inquisition. Limborch relates the following instance, which, he says, he had from several persons. "A prisoner in the Inquisition coughed. The jailers came to him, and admonished him to forbear coughing, because it was unlawful to make any noise in that house. He answered it was not in his power to forbear. However, they admonished him a second time to forbear it, and because he did not, they stripped him naked and cruelly beat him. This increased his cough, for which they beat him so often, that at last he died through the pain and anguish of his stripes."

I shall bring in here what was intended for the conclusion of Chap. CXXV., but for which I had not room. These cruelties were not, indeed, committed within the walls of the Inquisition, but they were done with the concurrence of the head of the church, and the head inquisitor at Rome.

Sir Samuel Moreland has given a great number of instances of cruelty to individuals whom he names, with the attestations of witnesses, which he procured upon the spot. With a few of these I shall conclude the present number. I have been accused of being too delicate in some instances, especially in my treatment of the subject of clerical celibacy. I have now with some reluctance brought myself to speak plainly out, some facts and circumstances, which I hope will have the effect which I have all along avowed to be the object of my work, not to injure the persons of Papists, but to hold up the system of popery, which I maintain to be the invention of the devil, to universal detestation. I advise all who have the misfortune to have weak nerves, to read no more of this number.

Upon the 22d of April, 1655, in a certain place called La Sarcena, one Captain Pola, of Pancalier, took two poor women of La Torre, and with a falchion ripped up their bellies, and left them wallowing upon the snow in this lamentable condition. And this was seen by M. Gross, minister of Villaro.

Martha Constantin, wife of Jacob Barral, after she had seen several others most cruelly put to death, was herself first ravished, and then had her breasts cut off. The soldiers took and fried them, and presented

them to their comrades as tripe.

Anna, daughter of Giovanni Charboniere, had a long stake thrust through her body longitudinally, by some soldiers, who carried her thus upon their shoulders, quite naked, until they were tired; and then they stuck the end of the stake in the ground, and thus left her dead body exposed to the world.

Giovanni Tolasano, a mercer of Villaro, as he was passing by the hill of Juliano, saw a poor woman flying from the soldiers, with a cradle upon her head, wherein was a young sucking child; but seeing she was like to be overtaken by them, she left her cradle in the middle of the way, as verily believing those butchers could not possibly have such hearts of adamant as to lay violent hands upon the poor innocent babe, and so hid herself not far from the place, in the cleft of a rock. But

those blood-hounds having found the infant in the cradle, in the most savage manner took it out, and pulled it into four pieces or quarters; and afterwards finding the mother, ravished her, then cut off her head, and left her dead body upon the snow.

The daughter of Moyses Long, of Bobio, about ten years of age, was taken by the soldiers of Piedmont, as she was flying upon the snow, who, broaching her upon a pike or halbert, roasted her alive upon a broad stone not far from the place. When they had thus done, they cut off a slice of her flesh, intending to have made a meal's meat on her, but not finding it thoroughly roasted, their stomachs would not serve them to eat it.

Mr. Gross, pastor of Villario, in Bobio, told the author, (Sir S. M.) during his abode at Geneva, that being at Pignerolio, he heard several persons affirm, that some of the murderers, having taken eleven men at Garcigliana, heated a great oven or furnace red hot, and caused those poor creatures to throw one another into the said burning fiery furnace; and when it came to the last man, they themselves threw him in. It is a thing most certain also, that very frequently these blood-hounds pursued and hunted out multitudes of those poor Protestants among the rocks and mountains, by the very traces of their bleeding feet and legs, which had been sorely cut and mangled by the ice and flints which they met with by the way, in their flight.

These are a few examples, taken almost at random from a catalogue of some hundreds, related with horrible minuteness by the English ambassador. It would be difficult to find instances of such cruelty among the rudest savages; for there is no ferocity or cruelty equal to that with which the devil qualifies his agents for the propagation of idolatry and superstition, and for blotting out the knowledge of real Christianity from the earth.

This remark is confirmed by what Dr. Geddes records of what came under his own observation, when he was an eyewitness of an autoda-fe. The victims were chained to stakes, at the height of about four feet from the ground. A quantity of furze that lay round the bottom of the stakes was set on fire; by a current of wind it was in some cases prevented from reaching above the lowest extremities of the body. Some were thus kept in torture for an hour or two, and were actually roasted, not burnt to death. This spectacle, says he, is beheld by people of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of joy and satisfaction, as are not on any other occasion to be met with. And that the reader may not think that this inhuman joy is the effect of a natural cruelty that is in these people's disposition, and not the spirit of their religion, he may rest assured, that all public malefactors, except heretics, have their violent death nowhere more tenderly lamented, than amongst the same people, and even when there is nothing in the manner of their death that appears inhuman or cruel. See Limborch, Vol. II. P. 301.

CHAPTER CXXIX.

AUTO-DA-FE. HYPOCRITICAL MOCKERY OF THE INQUISITION. SUFFERINGS OF ISAAC MARTIN, MASSACRE AT PARIS, AND MEDAL STRUCK BY ORDER OF THE POPE TO COMMEMORATE IT. MASSACRE OF PROTESTANTS IN IRELAND IN THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE. GRAHAM'S ANNALS OF IRELAND. REMARKS. SATURDAY, December 30th, 1820.

ACCORDING to the courtly, or over-courteous morality of this world, it is alleged, that the more deficient a man is known to be, with respect to any particular virtue, the more abundantly it ought to be bestowed upon him, by his flatterers during his life, and his panegyrists after his death. The Inquisition seems to have acted upon this principle from its very commencement. It gave itself out as the holy office, and all men were required to regard it, and call it holy, though it is well known to have been the most unholy tribunal that ever afflicted the world. In like manner the Inquisition incessantly boasted of its justice and its mercy, especially of the latter, though it is certain that its justice was a perversion of all righteousness, and the tenderest of its mercies was the most barbarous cruelty.

I had thought of afflicting my readers by presenting them with a particular account of an auto-da-fe, which would have occupied a number or two, but on reflection, I rather chose to pass this over. Those who wish to have their souls harrowed up by such an exhibition, may find materials in Limborch's History, and in almost all the Martyrologies in the English language. Suffice it to say, that an auto-da-fe, or act of faith, was the burning to death of such persons as the holy Inquisition was pleased to pronounce defective in their belief of all, or any of the error and nonsense which the church of Rome had propounded as articles of faith. This burning took place as often as the holy office could provide subjects for the fire. Kings and queens were not only invited to witness it as a most joyful spectacle; but actually required to sanction it with their presence, under the pain of being themselves suspected of heretical pravity. Limborch gives a series of prints, in which the king and queen of Spain are represented under a rich and royal canopy, feasting their eyes with the delightful spectacle of a number of poor wretches led to be committed to the flames; and the representation is by no means a production of the fancy. It is sober historical truth, the memory of which will remain to the latest ages, as an evidence of the diabolical cruelty and wickedness of the church of Rome, and of all those who lent themselves to its support.

It was the manner of the holy inquisitors to be continually boasting of their mercy. It often happened that the most inoffensive man in a city was brought before them, under a vague suspicion of something which related to the integrity of the faith. After having his spirits broken by confinement in a dungeon for months or years, he was required to make confession of his crimes, while he was not conscious of any thing in his conduct that deserved the name of crime. The holy fathers would not condescend to tell him what it was of which he was accused; but they would assure him that the holy Inquisition was merciful, and that if he would make a free and candid confession, he should be mercifully dealt with. The poor man could not confess crimes of