the accused subjected
to horrible tortures on their way to the stake and at the place of
execution itself, is one of the most fearful 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 when he 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 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.(333)

(333) As to the fearful effects of the papal bull Summis Desiderantes in
south Germany, as to the Protestant severities in north Germany, as to
the immense number of women and children put to death for witchcraft
in Germany generally for spreading storms and pestilence, and as to the
monstrous doctrine of "excepted cases," see the standard authorities on
witchcraft, especially Wachter, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Strafrechts,
Soldan, Horst, Hauber, and Langin; also Burr, as above. In another
series of chapters on The Warfare of Humanity with Theology, I hope to
go more fully into the subject. For the magic spreading of the plague at
Milan, see Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi and La Colonna Infame; and for
the origin of the charges, with all the details of the trail, see the
Precesso Originale degli Untori, Milan, 1839, passim, but especially
the large folding plate at the end, exhibiting the tortures. For the
after-history of the Column of Infamy, and for the placing of Beccaria's
book on the Index, se