BY A ROMAN LADY
THIS story was narrated to us when in Rome, and it is guaranteed by the Rev. James Wall, from whose Italian magazine we have translated it. It may seem but as a fable to most English readers, but to those to whom the city of Rome is familiar, the misery and horror in the story unfolded appear quite natural. It is a fact unknown to many that the Inquisition still holds its secret councils in the Vatican, and that were the civil authority withdrawn, its victims would at once be seized and incarcerated.
Under the sacred hill stained with blood during the heroic defense of Rome in 1849, and precisely beneath the monument of our great hero, Garibaldi, on the Janicolo Hill, stands the Convent of the Good Shepherd. It is a low prison destined for fallen women, and there, many who were the victims of clerical ferocity were incarcerated for years, and died at last in moral distresses and material torments unknown to the outside world, and their lamentations unheard.
In one of those repugnant, unhealthy, underground chambers I was locked up for nine months in the year 1862. I was charged under a political indictment, and my offence was termed, “organising a committee of action.” My cell was the seventh wooden-blinded window that could be seen from the street, Vicolo Penitenza.
After a few nights passed on a dirty palliasse in the darkness and silence of that tomb, I heard some knocking at the wall. The hammering drew me to a part of the wall which proved to be very thin, so much so that I was able to maintain a conversation through it. A pitiful voice asked me: “Don’t you sleep?” I was weeping, and again the voice said, “Are you despondent? Have courage! How many days have you been in prison?” “Eight,” I answered. “To what tribunal do you belong?” “I believe to the Sacra Consulta,” was my reply.
After awhile my neighbor continued “Are you sure you are not under the Supreme Tribunal?”
“The Supreme Tribunal,” I replied, “is the Sacra Consulta.”
“Oh, no, no!” she returned; “it is the Holy Inquisition.”
“But the Inquisition is abolished,” said I. She, sighing, added: “So you believe, but it is alive and flagellates worse than ever.”
“Do you belong to it?” I ventured.
“I have been here under it eight years,” was the response.
Thus our conversation closed that night. Every night afterwards the welcome knocking gave me a decided relief. We talked more and more, and we became intimate friends. Friends in misfortune are stronger than blood relations. I loved my neighbor, who, poor soul was groaning in the dungeon year after year. She liked talking about my case, but whenever I inquired of hers she sighed, and I could never obtain particulars. A suspicion struck my mind―was she a detective? I ceased therefore to be agreeable with her, and she understood from my broken phrases that I had no more confidence in her, and she told me of it.
“Your reserve as to your case,” I said, “arouses my suspicions.”
I heard her sobbing.
“I am convicted for life!”
“And for what crime? I ask you.”
“My sentence is for ‘presumed sanctity.’
“I shuddered.
“On what evidence, pray! What are the documents, the proofs, for such a sentence?”
Here is her history. She was a native of the Marche; her name was Marianna Mauccini. She belonged to an independent but honest family; she had lived with her old and widowed mother and a brother priest; her age was then twenty-five years.
A rich old lady of the same town, an invalid, took a liking for her, and through her distributed charity to poor families. When the lady went to her country seat she would take Marianna with her for the best part of a year.
This lady was Cardinal Bernabo’s sister, but she had nephews of a lower condition, who hoped to receive a great deal on her death. Therefore the intimacy existing between their aunt and Miss Mauccini made these nephews jealous, and when they heard that a project was on foot for the foundation of an orphan asylum by the Lady Bernabo, under the direction of Miss Mauccini, they became furious. How they got rid of Marianna Mauccini is now to be shown. One day a coach stopped at the door of the Lady. Bernabo’s house, and three men―seemingly ushers―exhibited a warrant, claiming Miss Mauccini at once as a witness in an important case. The ladies were both much alarmed; they could not guess what might the matter be. “I thought for a moment,” said the poor prisoner, “it was a conspiracy.” But she was compelled to go, and the coach made off with her. At the end of the drive she was informed that they were to proceed at once to Rome. In vain were her entreaties. Rome was entered by the Porta del Popolo, and the carriage passing through long streets and lanes arrived at the Convent of the Good Shepherd.
The Superior of the Belgian nuns there gave the agents a written receipt. “That receipt,” she said, “was one of my most afflicting impressions. I had become a thing, a parcel delivered; individual freedom had disappeared”
She was at once conducted to the cell where she told me her story. She asked the Superior where was the tribunal which had to examine her. “You shall know it in its proper time,” she answered, and locked the door, leaving her there alone in darkness. The next day, as every day afterwards, the same Superior brought her her meals; but to her enquiries, entreaties, and lamentations the answer was invariably this: “Pray for your soul.”
The nuns of the Convent of the Good Shepherd had their spirits deluded by religious fanaticism; they were convinced that every creature entrusted to them must be a great sinner, and they thought it a work of mercy to inflict moral and material torments upon their prisoner, in order to assist in the expiation of her sins.
In that pitiless solitude Miss Mauccini passed a year. One morning the Superior said to her, “Follow me,” and conducted her to a large room, in the middle of which there was a large table covered with green cloth, a big cross standing in the center of it, and an open Bible by it. Around the table were seated four Dominican friars, and the chair was taken by a Mon signore Primavera. “Come forward,” he said to her; “put your hand upon the Bible, and swear, that on no matter, and on no occasion, you will say anything about what we are going to communicate to you, lest you shall incur the greatest excommunication.”
Full of fear she took that oath, and sat upon the culprit bench. “You are accused,” they said to her, “of the greatest crime in our holy religion― ‘presumed holiness.’”
She fell on her knees, exclaiming in terror:
“Enlighten my spirit, fathers. I have no knowledge of having committed such a tremendous sin.”
An angry answer was given, and the Superior was called to conduct her back to her cell without a word of explanation.
The next year (1855), on the same day, the same Superior bade her again to follow her, and again took her to the same hall, where she found the same Dominican friars, presided over by the same Monsignore Primavera, all wearing the “stola” round their shoulders. Poor Mauccini sat upon the culprit bench, and had to hear the Psalmody for the Dead recited. Then her hair was cut off, and the sentence was pronounced on her―convicted for life for “presumed holiness.”
“I felt I was dying,” she said. “I was stunned, and out of my senses, but I remember well that I had in myself the full conviction that I was damned really and for ever. You may imagine in what condition they took me back to my cell. I had lost both soul and body. I was left alone without light, work, books, or human society.”
One day, in a moment of despair, she threw herself at the feet of the Superior, and pitifully asked her to let her have news of her aged mother. She simply answered: “We’ll see about that.”
On the Christmas Eve of the fourth year of her imprisonment a letter was shown to her beginning with “Dear Sister,” and ending “Your affectionate Brother.” The body of the letter was covered over with a blank sheet so that she could not read one word of it. “You see,” said the Superior, “that your brother is still in the world.” But of her brokenhearted mother nobody ever told her.
As I heard this horrible history I thought I was dreaming. Eight years of cellular system, and of the most rigorous kind! and really I don’t know whether, for the moment, I suffered the more for her or for myself!
During the first five months of my imprisonment I had, as a jailer, a woman who was condemned for twenty years for some crime. She took an interest in my case, and through her I was able to send news of myself to my family, and received news from them. I often asked her about my neighbor, but this made her awfully frightened. “For all the saints’ sake,” she would say, “don’t ask me, or let it ever be known to the Superior or the judges that you are aware she is your neighbor; you would see daylight no more. She belongs to the Holy Office, and she is entrusted solely to the Superior. Of this class we must know not even their existence; we should be punished and thrown God knows where! They have been here the last ten years, and not one of us has ever seen their faces.”
“Are there many of them?” I asked. “I believe there are fifteen, all in separated cells. Some of them have been here since 1850.”
“Listen, Veronica” ―such was my jailer’s name―I said. “I wish particularly to see my neighbor.”
“Most Holy Virgin!” she exclaimed, “you wish me and yourself also to be burned alive? There is no sport with the Holy Office. If you continue to speak to me about her I shall have to cease coming here.”
When Christmas came round I was suffering from a serious illness; I could hardly stand on my legs. My good-hearted jailer, every time she left me, would look as if she were leaving her heart behind. On that morning, seeing me so miserable, she looked as if she would kiss me, saying, “Oh! what would I do to see you in a better spirit!”
“Veronica,” I said, “you cannot imagine what a happy Christmas this would be for me if I could only see the face of my neighbor through the grating of her door, and wish her a Christmas greeting. When I get out of this prison―as I shall do if the revolution takes place―I will come, Veronica, to free you and her. Do grant me this favor on such a day as this.”
“My Lady!” she cried. “And the excommunication! I should lose my soul. Are you not aware that it is excommunication if we speak with that woman?”
“My dear Veronica, don’t you believe in those bugbears; they have been invented by false Christians, who stand under the weight of God’s malediction,” said I.
Convulsively she suddenly took hold of my hand and led me to that door, opened the grating, and all in a tremble pushed me against it. I shall never forget that pallid face, and those flashing eyes, as I saw them through the grating, sparkle like stars at me.
“The excommunication!” murmured the prisoner.
“Don’t believe,” I said, “in that imposture. God is good, and likes that the unhappy shall love and help each other; hope in Providence and the revolution.” She covered her face with both her hands and I returned to my cell. In those eight years, besides the face of the Superior, mine was the only one she had ever seen.
Two days afterwards I was transferred to another cell, and could not persuade Veronica to speak about the prisoner again.
Nine long months I was in the prison called the “Convent of the Good Shepherd,” but on the loth September, 1870 (the year when the Pope lost his temporal power), I was set free. I at once told this tale to several members of Parliament, and, among others, to the Hon. Micelo Asproni and General Fabrizi, and with these last two I went myself to the Convent of the Good Shepherd. The staff of the prison had been changed, and the nuns had gone away. We could only find an old woman, who knew nothing about the prisoners. She told us that they had been removed under the Inquisition to the Refuge, a sort of convent prison in the Vatican. This prison cannot be interfered with because of the law of Guarantee.
Surely, if the great European Powers had well considered the horrible law of the Guarantee and its consequences, they would not have allowed the head of a religion who lives amongst a people recently made free, to conspire against them, and in spite of them to continue with impunity the execrable institution of the Inquisition called the “Holy Office.”