Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part three, chapter 1

On the afternoon of October 24 of that year 1714 there was a show of the Holy Office. The day before, the first procession for the opening of the act of faith had come out of the Steri's palace. He preceded a riding of knights, to which followed the red banner of the Holy Faith brought by the prince of the Catholic, the Company of the Assumption with the torches lit, the hospices of the missing children and orphans, the friars, the parishes, the Congregation of the Fishery whose banner was brought by the prince of Montevago, and the white cross brought by the knight Filingeri: Then followed the forists of the Holy Office, the officers in body, the musicians, the green cross brought by a priest in pivial between the torches on.

The procession went up to the Cassaro, slowly, to the level of the Cathedral, where on a large stage high from the ground about eight palms had been built the loggias and benches for the celebration of the act; hence the loggia of the inquisitors, higher than the others, beyond that of the Senate; in the middle, the bench of the inquisitions; in the space the altar, the pulpit; other loggias were intended to welcome the magistrates of the kingdom.

The procession went up to the stage, turned until the priest placed the green cross on the altar and went back, on the same road.

This was the first function of the act of faith by which almost that kind of theatre was consecrated and took possession of it.

On the day of the show the procession was repeated, but with some diversity. The Company of the Assumption went ahead without torches, and without torches the friars and priests: And after them came the altar on horseback; the friars of the Fishing instead of torches carried weapons, and among them went the inquisitions, which were twenty, behind which followed the captain of the Holy Office on horseback, accompanied by knights, and then the counselors, the lawyers, the qualified of the Court, the dismissed of Lorenzo with the banner of Cremisino, and, finally, majestic and solemn on their mules, the three inquisitors, one after the other, flanked by nobles and senators and surrounded by the Alabardiers of the Viceroy.

The whole Cassaro was crowded with people who wanted to see the inquisitions, poor people, the most part of the provinces, ignorant and superstitious or epileptic and hysterical. Other crowd crowded the floor of the Cathedral, thickened on the Cassaro. In the balconies and windows of the palaces overlooking the floor another crowd shone with thirst and jewelry: It was the nobility, which intervened, as the chroniclers of the time express, "with gale the most exquisite, to celebrate the triumph of faith."

The nearby floor of the Royal Palace, the road behind the Duomo, were full of carriages and pedestals.

When the procession came to the floor of the Cathedral and went up to the stage, it offered an impressive spectacle to the eye. From the top of the loggia, which looked like a throne, the three inquisitors of the kingdom ruled the crowd and indeed seemed to be in their hands the supreme power, the supreme authority. Around them the fronts bowed for fear; the same Senate, which at times dared to oppose with the authority of the Viceroy, bowed subdued before the solemn and terrible majesty of that gloomy court.

The inquisites sat on the stairs against the pulpit; the confreres of the Pescagione accompanied them one by one, and they looked around amazed or confused, some ashamed; all with a certain trepidation in the presence of such apparatus.

At first they sat down the men: And there were two or three of them, who were clothed in the habit of a friar; and the women: a bizzocca, a nun, four peasants; last was a civilian, dressed in black, very pale, who kept her face low as if to hide it. Only when he sat, did he raise his eyes above the crowd, as if to seek a known face, and come back to bend them full of tears. That was Mrs. Francesca.

The sermon began. A Dominican friar, with the gesture and with the emphatic voice, after an apostrophe laudatory to the majesty of the court and a praise to the "greater divorce and exemplariness of the rushed nobility" dealt with the Christian faith and divine mercy, to which the holy court was inspired, which was dismayed and terror only of the obstinate heretical pravity. And he went on for about an hour in this tone, voicing, with great sentences and simulating a great concussion, against the rei: the faults of which, though not deserving of the most serious punishments, they were nevertheless extremely offended at the holiness of religion and choice before God.

There were people who were moved by the description of the infernal pains, and wept; Mrs. Francesca seemed to be petrified by pain and gave no sign of life. She seemed to be looking for the reason why she was on that stage, and what those vexed words were about her.

When the preaching was stopped, another friar read the trials, one by one, calling the rei who went to listen to the reading under the pulpit, and in the end confirmed their statements of submission to the sentence of the sacred court. Four of those wretched accused as heretical blasphemers, who had abjured de levi, were condemned to be brought into the streets to shame with bite, and to exile from their countries and neighbors, such as for one, such as for two or three years. A fifth, Augustinian friar of Caltagirone "sortilego and heretical blasphemer" was sentenced to imprisonment in a convent. They came after two bigamies, one of Girgenti, the other of Patti; they were sentenced to the whip in the streets and to the oar for three years; the other friars and deacons, were guilty of spelling and trade with the devil and heretical propositions; the Holy Office sentenced them to imprisonment for five years, such as in convents, such as the life imprisonment of the Holy Office. Then came the women. Of the ignorant old men were guilty of trade with the devil and craftsman and were condemned to the whip in public streets and to life imprisonment; one, such Barbara, destiny, heretics, craftsman, had the most serious condemnation: brought to shame in the streets, two hundred whips and five years of life.

The reading of these trials and condemnations proceeded with a cold and heavy monotony; those pillows, those public whips, evoked sad non-frequent performances at that time, which left as an infamous mark in those who suffered them. The souls accustomed to this did not take pity and the eyes looked curiously; perhaps in secret someone regretted the victims, but did not dare to express their feelings, for fear of appearing un fervent Catholic.

When Mrs. Francesca's turn came, a certain movement of curiosity was noticed in a part of the crowd: the surname of the Admired, in the capacity of "prosecute" on the charge of being part of the sect of the Beati Paoli, made his wife an interesting subject. Everyone looked to see if the wives of the Beati Paoli had any sign, some special coat of arms, that it was like the seal of the mystery surrounding the sect.

She stood up wavering, listened to the process, in which among the Latin formulas, a mixture of religious invocations and barbaric legal phrases, it was exposed that for manifest evidence, the named Francisca Admirata, native of Palermo, was convinced that she had blasphemed and uttered heretical propositions, doubting God and his divine Providence; that during the trial, far from recognizing the divine justice and the sacred character of the Holy Inquisition, she had stubbornly uttered offensive words and showed a spirit inclined to pravity, and finally that she had given justified reasons to believe that she belonged to the sect of the Beati Paoli, who usurped an additional proper of the Church, and used rites that believed to be detrimental to the holy faith.

Nevertheless, persuaded by the eloquence of the spiritual fathers appointed to convert it, Mrs. Francesca Admirata had abjured her mistakes, putting herself back to the foreknowledge of the sacred court, which condemned her to public shame with fifty whips, to be administered in the designated places, with the usual rite, and to three years of imprisonment in the life of the Holy Office.

At the reading of the infamous sentence, Mrs. Francesca fell to her knees raising her hands to heaven and shouting:

"I swear before God that he sees us, that I am innocent, that I am innocent!"

And from a corner of the square a voice exclaimed:

"This is an infamy!"

But this voice gathered from the neighbors did not spread; it provoked a movement of surprise in that corner; it unleashed the forists of the nearest Holy Office, scandalized that someone dared offend the majesty of that moment.

Meanwhile, when the reading was over and the rei was handed over to the captain for the execution of the sentences, the procession resumed the journey towards the Steri, where it dissolved.

It was about 22 and a half hours, and executions began. The rei, placed on carts, a machine gun on his head, his bare shoulders, his arms tied behind his kidneys, were scourged by the executioner and his helpers. The cart stood before the archbishopric, in Piazza dei Bologna, the four Songs, in front of the Vicaria, in front of the Palazzo del Sant'Offizio where the condemned were laid. At every stop the trumpet rang and the executioner whipped. A crowd of curious, most young people, in whom the spectacle aroused the most beastly instincts, followed it. Of the mud, of the bullocks, of the garbage flew on the back, on the face of Those unfortunates, among the insults, the squealing of the populace, who especially targeted the old condemned for spelling and invoices.

He fell in the evening, and the sad spectacle continued along the Cassaro: the last to walk that painful ordeal, as the last to be called on stage, was Mrs. Francesca: standing on the chariot, with her high head she had her eyes as dry and shining as by fever; her gaze was wandering from time to time in the crowd as in search of someone.

The first trumpet ring had been given to the corner of the archbishop's palace; the first whips had fallen over the shoulders of the poor woman, and the cart had moved towards the plane of Bologna, when, after crossing the corner of the monastery of the Seven Angels, the oxen pulling the car crashed on the ground, as struck by lightning; Mrs. Francesca, the executioner faltered, fell into the bottom of the cart, into a beam. There was a moment of confusion: the forers, the guards of the Holy Office immediately threw themselves into the chariot, surrounding it, and defending themselves, as if to make sure of the doomed: In that plot, a man slipped from among the wheels of the chariot, and was confused among the crowds.

The drivers tried to raise up the beasts, but they realized that they had cut their hooks; the astonishment of the discovery increased the confusion; some people tried to approach the chariot; some of the hands stretched out, but the tips of the alabards flashed in the air; they sounded alarm shouts; then the captain came on horseback with some knights, the urban guards of the nearby pretorium palace came; the crowd gaily rejected: Mrs. Francesca, taken away from the cart, thrown on the back of a horse and surrounded by guards, was taken away to the Steri palace without lashes. She didn't look like a doomed woman who was sent back to prison, but a woman who was abducted.

The crowd gathered again, approaching the abandoned chariot, and the oxen, with bloody feet, moaning painfully and for all mouths there were comments full of amazement and a certain dismay.

At the Palazzo del Sant'Offizio they were not surprised by the fact, new in the annals of the Inquisition of Sicily, and unexpected. It was evident that Mrs. Francesca had been tried to remove from the torture of the whip and public shame, and that the authors of this attack, which seemed a very serious and sacrilegious offense to the majesty of the sacred court, could only be the accomplices of her husband, the sectarians, that is, Beati Paoli, who thus gave evidence of their transcotanza.

But this did not save Mrs. Francesca from the torture, for the sentence had to have full effect. The inquisitors postponed it to the next day, limiting the public exhibition to Marina Square and surrounding the victim by a real army of guards.

The executioner staffed her; but the curious, greedy of tragic shows, still noticed that the executioner occasionally looked into the crowd with suspicious and fearful eyes.

For among the crowds were eyes that followed him, menacing and murky.