When Michelangelo, the great Florentine sculptor and artist, received a commission from Pope Julius II to execute his statue in marble he proceeded with the task but came to a standstill, not knowing what to place in the pope's right hand.  "Would your holiness allow me to put a book there?" asked Michelangelo.  "Nothing of the kind" retorted the pope, "but a sword, I know how to handle that better!"

In these days a "romantic halo of holiness" seems to hang over the Roman church.  How often she is portrayed in the media in a favourable light - as one "taking the gospel to the world".  In reality she is the antithesis of true Christianity.

When in power she ruled with fire and sword and persecuted to death those who resisted her false teachings.  She crushed all liberty of thought and action, deposed monarchs at will and placed whole kingdoms under her Interdicts.  In 1229 the Bible was officially forbidden to laymen.  She set up the Inquisition, and in 1233 Pope Gregory IX entrusted the work of searching out and putting to death "heretics" to the Dominicans.  With unrelenting zeal she sought to exterminate the Waldensians.  Pope Innocent VIII, in 1487, offered rewards and a plenary Indulgence (full remission of temporal punishment due to sin) to any willing to join arms and blot them out.

However, there were men and women brought up in the Roman church who, by the grace of God, were enabled to stand for Bible truths, at the risk of certain death.

A few miles outside Turin in Italy was the ancestral home of the Curioni family.  Celio Secundo was born in 1503.  His mother died shortly after, and his father, an Italian noble of some piety, not many years later.  Just before his death when Celio was nine years old, his father gave him an old family Bible written on parchment.  He little realised the effect this was to have.

Moving to his grandmother's home he went through his studies before entering the University of Turin, which at that time witnessed heated discussions on the works of the Reformers which the Inquisition declared heretical.  Curioni resolved to investigate for himself.  He read Luther's "Babylonian Captivity of the Church" and the works of Melancthon.  These so impressed him, he began to study his father's Bible.  Realising the harmony between the teaching of the Reformers and Scripture itself, he decided to cross the Alps and set out for Wittenberg with two college friends.

The journey was long and not without danger, for any travelling from Italy to Saxony were looked on with suspicion.  Unfortunately they made their opinions known to others they met along the road and were betrayed to the Cardinal Bishop of Ivrea.  They were arrested by an armed band, and Celio was imprisoned in the castle of Capranio, chained and manacled.  After two months some personal friends, Italian nobles, got him released, but he was sent to a convent to finish his studies, where an eye could be kept on him.

THE RELICS OF ST AGAPETUS AND THE BIBLE
The convent of San Benigno was a stronghold of superstition.  It possessed bones and relics which drew crowds of worshippers.  Curioni was shocked at their superstition, and angry with the monks who encouraged it.  In 1530, when the monks were occupied elsewhere, he went into the church.  On the altar was the shrine containing the skull and bones of St Agapetus; he cautiously removed the relics replacing them with a Bible he had taken from the library, on which he had written "This is the Ark of the Covenant where the true oracles of God are to be found".  Replacing the keys he left the church and threw the relics away.

A saint's day came round, and the shrine was carried forth in solemn procession, but when the box was opened, instead of the bones of St Agapetus, there was a Bible!  The monks were beside themselves with rage.  "Find Celio Curioni!"  He had disappeared as effectually as the relics, but his next battle with a Dominican friar was to bring him before the dreaded Inquisition.

Some time after Curioni's escape from the convent of San Benigno, he returned to Milan.  War was raging in Italy between Emperor Charles V of Spain and the King of France.  The great ambition of Emperor Charles V was the suppression of the Protestant Reformation; ruthless edicts were issued against the reformers.

Milan was in a turmoil, there was famine and plague, and many people had fled.  Curioni's friends urged him to do the same, but he resolved to stay and went about helping the sick and dying, raising what money he could for the poor, earning the gratitude of the people.  During that time he stayed at the home of a Milanese noble.  Afterwards he married a daughter of the noble, Margarita Bianca,a woman of great beauty, who was to share his sorrows and his joys.  For a while his life was one of domestic happiness and contentment, away from priests and soldiers alike, but this was a lull between the storms.

CAPTURED BY THE INQUISITION
It was decided that Curioni should return to Piedmont to take possession of his ancestral property - surely the hostility of the Roman church towards him had diminished?  However, his sister Maria and her husband, anxious to keep the property for themselves, stirred up the church and denounced Curioni as a heretic.  Curioni fled to Moncaglieri and settled for a time on his farm.

One day a Dominican friar arrived from Turin to give an address.  Curioni went along with some friends, slipping a copy of Luther's commentary on Galatians into his pocket.  The friar launched into an attack against Martin Luther before the assembled crowd.

"Why does Luther please the Germans?" he shouted, "because he allows them to live in sin and calls that Christian liberty!"  He was continuing in this way when Curioni stepped forward.

"Reverend father" he said, "you have made some serious charges, but I will tell you where Luther has taught the exact opposite".  Pulling the book from his pocket he read aloud several extracts demolishing the friar's charges.  The enraged crowd now rushed at the friar and struck him several times before the Governor intervened.  The friar hurried away and laid the incident before the Inquisition.  It was referred to Bishop Aventino Cirica who, with an armed band, surrounded the farm in Moncaglieri and arrested Curioni.  He was taken to Turin and imprisoned in a fortress, his feet firmly manacled.  The bishop then left for Rome, determined that this heretic would die at the stake.

THE ESCAPE
The iron chains began to cause Curioni's feet to swell, giving pain.  Asking the gaoler if one foot could be released for some respite, he consented, confident that with the other securely chained he was not likely to escape - but was he?

A daring idea had seized Curioni; he would make a great bid for freedom before the bishop's return.  Removing the boot from his freed leg, he stuffed it with rags torn from his clothes; he attached his stocking to the sham leg, fixing it to his knee, and then covered all by the long cloak he wore.

When the gaoler returned later that evening, and suspecting nothing amiss, he fastened the chains to the sham leg, releasing the other.  Curioni was free!  The gaoler left and Curioni remained motionless for some while, then when he considered it was safe he cautiously opened the door and crept down the stairs.

Alas, the door to the outer entrance was locked.  In desperation he climbed to the sill of a window overlooking the courtyard and sprang down.  Crossing the yard without being seen he came to the outer wall, and with supreme effort scaled the wall, dropping into the deserted street outside.  He had escaped!

Next morning the gaolers stood bewildered.  Where was Curioni?  It was inexplicable.  The Roman church issued a statement that the Devil had come to the heretic's aid, but Curioni did not allow them to cherish any such opinion and there appeared a printed pamphlet written by himself explaining everything.

Curioni had made a vow in prison that he would devote himself and all he possessed to the service of Jesus Christ his Redeemer.  "I prayed that I might not live according to my own desires, but be drawn by the Spirit towards Him, and be used in His service as a chosen vessel for His glory."

Seeing it was impossible for him to remain in Turin he joined his wife and children and sought shelter in the village of Sale in the Duchy of Milan, but the Inquisition kept a close watch on him, for they were resolved to get him into their clutches.

When the ruthless Cardinal Caraffa was asked the best way to stamp out the spread of the Reformation in Italy he replied "the Inquisition!" and when he mounted the papal chair in 1555 as Pope Paul IV, a cry of despair ran through Italy.  "It is scarcely possible to be a Christian and die quietly in one's bed" said Paleario, the Christian scholar, who himself perished at the hands of the Inquisition in 1570.

The battle for the truth of the gospel against the errors of Romanism was fierce; many of God's true saints died horrible deaths.  Curioni having escaped from the hands of the Inquisition accepted a professorship at the University of Pavia, which belonged to the republic of Venice.  However, the Inquisition had not given up its determination to capture him, and a plan was laid to seize him on his way to one of his lectures, but this was discovered and a great crowd of students escorted him to the university and accompanied him home!  When this happened several times the Pope demanded he be expelled and then threatened the city if they did not comply.  Not wishing to bring harm to his friends, he left, but wherever he went he was hounded by the familiars of the "Holy Office".  At Lucca, where he was professor at the college, Pope Paul III ordered his arrest as a "heretic".  Curioni realised with sorrow there was nowhere in his beloved Italy where he would be safe.

IN DANGER AT PESCIA
After a while he was offered the rectorship of Lausanne College in Switzerland, and while arrangements were being made for the safe removal of his wife and children, Curioni went to the village of Pescia a mile or so from Lucca and entering the local inn he ordered a meal, unaware that his movements had been closely watched.  Suddenly the soldiers of the Inquisition burst in - "In the name of God and the pope you are my prisoner".  Curioni leapt to his feet, the knife with which he had been carving his meat still in his hand.  The soldiers drew back, momentarily stopped in their tracks - this was the daring man who had escaped so many times before!  Seizing this opportunity at their seeming paralysis he dashed from the room and taking a horse rode swiftly away.  The spell was broken and the soldiers gave chase and were gaining ground when a violent storm broke.  In the noise, darkness and heavy downpour of rain he was hidden from his enemies and once again avoided capture.  This was his last brush with danger.

CLOSING YEARS
He spent his last years at Basle, working and writing in the cause of the Reformation.  His domestic life was not without sadness at the loss of six of his children.  When his beloved daughter Violante died aged twenty-three he wrote, "Ho, the treacherousness of all mortal hopes, the vanity of all human efforts if our hopes are not placed upon Christ Jesus alone!"

His heart was with his Italian brethren and sisters exposed to the relentless cruelty of the Inquisition, and in a letter to them - "Celio Secundo Curioni to the brethren scattered throughout the kingdoms of Babylon", he says:

"All our actions and reasonings have two ends to which we ought to direct them.  The one is the glory of Christ and His righteousness, the other is the salvation of our brethren.  If we have truly learned Christ and firmly believed that He is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, if we have laid up our riches, treasures and hopes in heaven where He reigns at the right hand of God, we shall think but little of aught else."

On the 25th November 1569, aged sixty-six he died, deeply lamented, and was buried in the Cathedral cloisters at Basle beside his son and three of his daughters.  "I die", he said, "in the faith of Christ and of the Reformed churches".