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.
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