Sketches from Venetian History (Volume 2)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832 edition. Excerpt: ...in penitential garb testified their contrition in the seven basilica; and humbled themselves upon their knees, while supplicating absolution, before the papal throne, ostentatiously raised in front of the brazen portals of the Vatican. It was esteemed no ordinary condonation that the stripes were remitted which it was sometimes customary for the pope and cardinals to inflict; and the master of the ceremonies, to whose official care was intrusted the arrangement of this spectacle, strenuously insisted upon the necessity of adhering to that edifying custom. Among other precedents, he cited ' Erano entrati con abiti e con modi miserabili i sei orator! del senato 'Veneziano, i quail essendo consueti a emrarvl con pomps fasto granUasimo.--Guicciardini, lib. viii. vol. ii. p. 232. 164 PENANCE OF THE VENETIAN AMBASSADORS. I that of Innocent VIII., who, having summoned before him the gonfaloniere and one of the ancients of Bologna, for hanging a priest and a Franciscan in the streets of their city, stripped them naked to their very drawers, and flogged them with unsparing severity, not only by his own hands, but by those also of numerous assistants, during the recital of no less than three out of the seven penitential psalms. similar vengeance on some refractory Asculans; and the pontifical arbiter eleganliarurri, confiding on those sound authorities, recommended that the cardinal penitentiary should.deliver thirteen rode, one to each of his officiating brother cardinals; and the last, more handsomely finished than the rest, and distinguished by a napkin at the handle, for the pope's own use. With these scourges, a slight blow was to be inflicted on the shoulders of the envoys during the recital of each verse of the Miserere. Julius, however, had good...