. We must bear in mind that
Mutinelli, who published the extracts from the Venetian dispatches which
contain these details, does not profess to aim at completeness. Gaps of
several years occur between the documents of one envoy and those of his
successor. Nor does it appear that the writers themselves took notice of
more than solemn and ceremonial proceedings, in which the Acts of the
Inquisition were published with Pontifical and Curial pomp.[101] Still,
when these considerations have been weighed, it will appear that the
victims of the Inquisition, in Rome, could be counted, not by hundreds,
but by units. After illustrious examples, like those of Aonio Paleario,
Pietro Carnesecchi, Giordano Bruno, who were burned for Protestant or
Atheistical opinions, the names of distinguished sufferers are few. Wary
heretics, a Celio Secundo Curio, a Galeazzo Caracciolo, a Bernardino
Ochino, a Pietro Martire Vermigli, a Pietro Paolo Vergerio, a Lelio
Socino, escaped betimes to Switzerland, and carried on their warfare
with the Church by means of writings.[102] Others, tainted with heresy,
like Marco Antonio Flaminio, managed to satisfy the Inquisition by
timely concessions. The Protestant Churches, which had sprung up in
Venice, Lucca, Modena, Ferrara, Faenza, Vicenza, Bologna, Naples, and
Siena, were easily dispersed.[103] Their pastors fled or submitted. The
flocks conformed to Catholic orthodoxy. Only in a few cases was extreme
rigor displayed. A memorable massacre took place in the year 1561 in
Calabria within the province of Cosenza.[104] Here at the end of the
fourteenth century a colony of Waldensians had settled in some villages
upon the coast. They preserved their peculiar beliefs and ritual, and
after three centuries numbered about 4000 souls. Nearly the whole of
these, it seems, were exterminated by sword, fire, famine, torture,
noisome imprisonment, and hurling from the summits of high cliffs. A few
of the survivors were sent to work upon the Spanish galleys. Some women
and children were sold into slavery. At Locarno, on the Lago Maggiore, a
Protestant community of nearly 300 persons was driven into exile in
1555; and at Venice, in 1560-7, a small sect, holding reformed opinions,
suffered punishment of a peculiar kind. We read of five persons by name,
who, after being condemned by the Holy Office, were taken at night from
their dungeons to the Porto del Lido beyond the Due Castelli, and there
set upon a plank between two