The procedure which the Church uses today is not that which the Apostles used: for they converted the people with preaching and the example of a good life, but now whoever does not wish to be a Catholic must endure punishment and pain, for force is used and not love; the world cannot go on like this, for there is nothing but ignorance and no religion which is good.
—Giordano Bruno
AS BRUNO WAS taken across the Tiber running through the heart of the eternal city, he would have caught a view of the cylindrical bulk of the Castel Sant’Angelo. He had seen it before, during his first visit to the city sixteen years earlier. Perhaps he had recalled the stories told to every good Catholic child—how after a terrible plague in 590 the then pope, Gregory the Great, had a vision of Archangel Michael alighting on top of the turret of the castle and sheathing his sword. To Gregory, this vision had signaled the end of the plague, and from it the bleak, ugly monolith gained its name. For centuries, the Castel Sant’Angelo had been a place of refuge for the pious and home of unimaginable pain for the sinner and the heretic. Pope Clement VII barracked himself within the walls when Rome was sacked by Hapsburg troops in 1527, only sixty-six years before Bruno’s arrival there, and for over one thousand years, every important prisoner of the Vatican had been incarcerated within its three-foot-thick walls, for this was the home of the prisons of the Inquisition.
The dungeons of the Roman Inquisition were notorious even for the time, and today they still retain an element of horror. Within, the darkness is all-pervading; you can imagine long-ago cries of agony that once resounded through the passageways that link tiny low-ceilinged, dank chambers. The dark atmosphere of such a place exaggerates fear, heightens awareness, and nourishes inner demons; this is an aspect of its power. If you walk through these rooms today, there is always the surety that after a few more turns in the corridor you will be out in the light once again, breathing the charmed air of freedom. For those cast into darkness here by the Inquisition, there was no such reassurance.
And then, as if the claustrophobia, the smell, and the cloying ghosts are not enough, beyond a dozen identical chambers and along a narrow corridor you emerge into a high-ceilinged chamber twenty feet square. Around the walls hang ropes and wires. To one side lies a blackened grate, and set in the walls seven feet above the ground there are foot-wide cast-iron rings. And here you can almost taste blood on your tongue. If you close your eyes, you may catch a whiff of singed flesh, hear the screams of agony. In this chamber the wall rings found continuous use and a fire burned constantly in the grate. Here may be found the very heart of darkness, the epicenter of Christian evil, the torture chamber of the Roman Inquisition.
What little of these rooms was known by the innocent faithful sent ice-cold fingers of fear along spines; for anyone, anyone at all, could be unlucky enough to find himself stretched upon the rack or chained to a wall ring and facing a white-hot poker. But even the Inquisition had grades of punishment, fine divisions of persecution. For those convicted of relatively insignificant crimes against the Church and those who had repented fully, there was the murus largus, the “wide wall” or ordinary prison. Here prisoners were allowed to meet and to talk, and they were allowed gifts from the outside, including food to supplement the meager rations provided by the state. But for those found guilty of more serious offenses or under sentence of extreme heresy who found themselves under the turrets of the Castel Sant’Angelo, there was a far more punitive regime, the murus strictus, or “narrow wall.” Here the prisoner was kept in solitary confinement twenty-four hours a day and had to make do with a virtual starvation diet, which, in the words of one of the Inquisition’s founding fathers, Bernard Gui, consisted of “the bread of suffering and the water of tribulation.” And in extreme cases there was an even harsher system, the murus strictissimus, what may be thought of as a “super-dungeon” in which the prisoner was chained by the wrists and ankles. No one was allowed into the cell and food was passed through a slit in the door. This form of imprisonment was reserved for those convicted of the most heinous crimes against the Church.
Bruno was placed in the middle category. We know this from the evidence of a few surviving scraps of documents in which he is reported asking for food. As in the Venetian system, in these dungeons prisoners relied upon donations of food from friends or family on the outside or from charitable brotherhoods that were allowed occasional visits to the citadel. But even then the great majority of supplies ended up furnishing the tables of guards and officials and very little made it through to the prisoner. It is hardly surprising then that many guests of the Inquisition died of starvation even before they could be adequately tortured.
Yet, true to their desire to portray an image of humane discipline, the Roman Inquisition had very strict rules guiding the torturer’s hand. Manuals containing detailed instructions for the Inquisitor had been produced by the Papal Inquisition as early as the thirteenth century, and these were used until the practice was finally made illegal four centuries later. “Torture,” the manual recorded, “…should be conducted in accordance with the conscience and will of the appointed judges, following law, reason, and good conscience. Inquisitors should take great care that the sentence of torture is justified and follows precedent.”1 But because all the proceedings of the Inquisition were carried out in absolute secrecy, no one knows precisely what horrors were perpetrated in the name of the Lord.
And the Inquisitors were indeed deft at bending the rules. The manual stipulated that no prisoner could be tortured in the same way more than once. But this presented only a minor, temporary hurdle, for it was soon realized that if the Inquisitor wished to repeat a torture, it was merely recorded as a continuation of the previous session.
In the early days of the Inquisition, priests were forbidden to torture because it was impossible for the pope to then allow them to tender the spiritual needs of the laity; instead clerics were present only in a supervisory role and professional torturers were employed. But in 1256, Pope Alexander IV came to the conclusion that if each torture session was attended by at least two priests, they could dispense with the hired hand and afterward absolve each other—even after committing the most diabolical physical abuses. The Bull ordered: “Provincials of the Mendicant Orders to assign two or more companions to the inquisitors specifically for the task of absolving them from any irregularities they may meet during the course of their work.”
A further stipulation from the manual was that the prisoner must not be made to bleed. The reason for this is obscure but seems to derive from the idea that if a prisoner was cut and bled profusely, he might identify himself with Christ and thereby derive an inner strength from the act. It is also possible that by assiduously avoiding the shedding of blood the Inquisitors believed they were distancing themselves from any possible link to Christ’s persecutors and torturers who shed the Lord’s blood during the crucifixion. Whatever the derivation of this perverse form of self-restraint, it merely meant a little more imagination was required of the torturer; they had to devise forms of abuse that caused maximum pain but kept the body of the victim more or less intact.
The ordeal of water involved forcing a prisoner to consume large quantities of water, usually through a funnel but sometimes through a rag stuffed into the mouth. A variation upon this theme required blocking the prisoner’s nose and allowing water to drip slowly into the throat, thus producing the effect of drowning. The Inquisitor would then let the prisoner catch his breath before starting again immediately and continuing until a confession was obtained.
Ordeal by fire was a favorite of the Inquisitors. The prisoner, bound along the length of his body, would be placed in front of a roaring fire. After coating the prisoner’s feet with grease, the Inquisitor moved the victim close to the flames so his feet fried. A protective screen could then be placed in front of the fire to give the prisoner a chance to talk, but removed again if the confession was deemed insufficient.
With the strappado, or pulley torture, the prisoner had his ankles and wrists bound behind his back. He was then hoisted to the ceiling by a sturdy rope and left to hang for as long as the Inquisitor chose. Then, without warning, a lever was pulled, the rope ran free, and the prisoner fell. But the rope contained just enough slack to bring the prisoner to a violent halt a foot or two above the floor. Like bungee-jumping without elastic, this caused multiple dislocations and extreme pain.
The wheel was one of the earliest forms of torture employed by the Inquisition and one of the most popular. It was still in use among Catholic extremists in the West Indies as late as 1761. In its mildest form, the prisoner, once strapped to the wheel by hands and feet, was subjected to repeated whipping, but if a confession remained elusive the torturers resorted to using iron bars to shatter knees and fracture limbs.
The most famous of all the Inquisitor’s techniques was the rack, an ingenious device that slowly stretched the body of the unfortunate prisoner. According to the responses of the victim, the Inquisitor allowed the rollers at each end to move at his chosen speed, pulling muscles and ligaments until, in extreme cases, limbs would be wrenched from sockets and bodies stretched to the point of dismemberment, when internal bleeding would lead to a slow, agonizing death.
The final form of torture was reserved for the most persistently stubborn prisoners and the worst heretics. The strivaletto or brodequin consisted of four pieces of sturdy wood bound to the ankles with strong rope. The Inquisitor forced wooden wedges between the planks and the ankles of the prisoner, hammering them in with a mallet. In extreme cases, when the prisoner continued to withhold information, up to eight such wedges could be hammered into place until the ropes cut deep into the legs and the bones of the ankles imploded.
Often prisoners confessed before they were tortured, for the mere sight of the implements and a detailed description of what was about to be done were understandably terrifying enough. But some victims were remarkably resistant, or their confessions constantly deemed inadequate. In these cases, the Inquisitors used intimidation and the powerful psychological device of keeping the prisoner in a state of seemingly endless suspense. By continually delaying the torture and allowing the prisoner time to reflect upon the horrors awaiting him, the Inquisitors could often obtain the information they wanted. More often than not they then tortured the hapless prisoner with fire, water, and rope anyway.
Some popes made genuine attempts to control the practices of the Inquisition. In 1306, Clement V had ordered an inquiry into the Inquisitors’ use of torture, and his successor, John XXII, passed legislation limiting its practice. In a papal decree of 1317 he insisted upon the addition to the rules which stated, “Torture should be used only with mature and careful deliberation.” Whatever John’s intention, the addition unfortunately meant nothing and achieved less. John then issued a further instruction stipulating that before he could subject a prisoner to torture, an Inquisitor must obtain the agreement of the bishop of a province so long as it could be obtained within eight days.
Many senior members of the Inquisition objected strongly to this. The senior Inquisitor Bernard Gui was particularly vociferous in his criticism of the rule, claiming that it would greatly impede the work of the Inquisition. But this was an overreaction, for the power of John’s edict was limited by the fact that if the bishop’s permission to go ahead with torture was not obtained within eight days, the Inquisitors could proceed on their own volition.
The official record covering Bruno’s seven years in the Castel Sant’Angelo is extremely sparse, so we cannot determine unequivocally whether or not he underwent extensive torture. However, it is hard to imagine a man with Bruno’s pedigree serving so long a term in the prisons of the Roman Inquisition without suffering the sadistic attentions of his jailers and persecutors. We know the evil these men perpetrated, and we know how they felt about Bruno, perhaps the most loathed heretic of his or any age.