I Think There Are Ten Convents And Three Nunneries
Within And Without The Walls Of Nice; And Among Them All, I Never
Could Hear Of One Man Who Had Made Any Tolerable Advances In Any
Kind Of Human Learning.
All ecclesiastics are exempted from any
exertion of civil power, being under the immediate protection and
authority of the bishop, or his vicar.
The bishop of Nice is
suffragan of the archbishop of Ambrun in France; and the revenues
of the see amount to between five and six hundred pounds
sterling. We have likewise an office of the inquisition, though I
do not hear that it presumes to execute any acts of jurisdiction,
without the king's special permission. All the churches are
sanctuaries for all kinds of criminals, except those guilty of
high treason; and the priests are extremely jealous of their
privileges in this particular. They receive, with open arms,
murderers, robbers, smugglers, fraudulent bankrupts, and felons
of every denomination; and never give them up, until after
having stipulated for their lives and liberty. I need not enlarge
upon the pernicious consequences of this infamous prerogative,
calculated to raise and extend the power and influence of the
Roman church, on the ruins of morality and good order. I saw a
fellow, who had three days before murdered his wife in the last
month of pregnancy, taking the air with great composure and
serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence; and nothing is
more common, than to see the most execrable villains diverting
themselves in the cloysters of some convents at Rome.
Nice abounds with noblesse, marquisses, counts, and barons. Of
these, three or four families are really respectable: the rest
are novi homines, sprung from Bourgeois, who have saved a little
money by their different occupations, and raised themselves to
the rank of noblesse by purchase. One is descended from an
avocat; another from an apothecary; a third from a retailer of
wine, a fourth from a dealer in anchovies; and I am told, there
is actually a count at Villefranche, whose father sold macaroni
in the streets. A man in this country may buy a marquisate, or a
county, for the value of three or four hundred pounds sterling,
and the title follows the fief; but he may purchase lettres de
noblesse for about thirty or forty guineas. In Savoy, there are
six hundred families of noblesse; the greater part of which have
not above one hundred crowns a year to maintain their dignity. In
the mountains of Piedmont, and even in this country of Nice,
there are some representatives of very antient and noble
families, reduced to the condition of common peasants; but they
still retain the antient pride of their houses, and boast of the
noble blood that runs in their veins. A gentleman told me, that
in travelling through the mountains, he was obliged to pass a
night in the cottage of one of these rusticated nobles, who
called to his son in the evening, "Chevalier, as-tu donne a
manger aux cochons?" "Have you fed the Hogs, Sir Knight?" This,
however, is not the case with the noblesse of Nice.
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