THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL AND INDIA
The Inquisition in Spain abolished by Napoleon's invasion--Its
revival--Persecution of the Freemasons--The "Tribunal of Faith"
established--Inquisition in Portugal--The case of an Englishman
who is arrested, tortured and burnt alive--Difference between
the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal--The supreme power of the
Holy Office in Portugal in the eighteenth century--The terrible
earthquake at Lisbon--Establishment of the Holy Office in India at
Goa--Description of the Inquisition prison at Goa by M. Dellon--Case
of Father Ephrem--His arrest and rescue by the English from the hands
of the inquisitors.
Napoleon's invasion of Spain and the removal of the young king,
Ferdinand VII, to France, put an end to the Inquisition. When the
Emperor took possession of Madrid, he called upon all public bodies
to submit to his authority, but the Holy Office refused. Whereupon he
issued an order to arrest the inquisitors, abolish the Inquisition,
and sequestrate its revenues. All Spain did not readily yield to the
French conqueror, and when the Cortes met in Cadiz they empowered one
of the inquisitors, who had escaped, to reconstitute the tribunal, but
it was never really restored. At the same time, the governing powers
appointed a special commission to enquire into the legal status of the
ancient body, and to decide whether the Inquisition had any legal right
to exist. A report was published in 1812, reviewing its whole history
and condemning it as incompatible with the liberties of the country.
The indictment against it was couched in very vigorous language. It was
held to have been guilty of the most harsh and oppressive measures; to
have inflicted the most cruel and illegal punishments; "in the darkness
of the night it had dragged the husband from the side of his wife, the
father from the children, the children from their parents, and none may
see the other again until they are absolved or condemned without having
had the means of contributing to their defence or knowing whether they
had been fairly tried." The result was a law passed by the Cortes to
suppress the Inquisition in Spain.
The restoration of Ferdinand VII, at the termination of the war in
1814, gave the Inquisition fresh life. He resented the action taken by
the Cortes, arrested its members, and cast them into prison, declaring
them to be infidels and rebels, and forthwith issued a decree reviving
the tribunal of the Holy Office. Its supreme council met in Seville and
persecution was renewed under the new inquisitor-general, Xavier Mier y
Campillo, who put out a fresh list of prohibited books, tried to raise
revenues and issued a new Edict of Faith. There might have been another
_auto da fé_ even in the nineteenth century, but informers would
not come forward and latter-day victims could not be found. Dread,
nevertheless, prevailed, and numbers fled for refuge into foreign
lands. Fierce energy was directed against the Freemasons, for during
the French occupation, the palace of the Inquisition at Seville had
been used, partly as a common gaol and partly as a Freemasons' lodge.
The members of the craft who were found in Spain were dealt with as
heretics, and all Freemasons were excommunicated.
For a time the Inquisition languished, although favoured by the
arbitrary régime introduced by Ferdinand VII, who sought to reinstate
it on its former lines. It was destroyed or at least suspended by
the Revolution of 1820, and on his restoration, the king did not
reëstablish it, though the officials still hoped for a better day and
continued to draw their salaries. Some of the bishops established
_juntas de fé_, which took up much the same work, and July 26th, 1826,
a poor schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll, was hanged for heresy--the last
execution for this crime in Spain. Finally, January 4th, 1834, the
Inquisition was definitely abolished, and the _juntas de fé_ were
abolished the next year.
The Inquisition extended its influence into the neighbouring country of
Portugal, which was an independent kingdom until conquered by Philip
II in 1580. Here persecution prevailed from the fifteenth century,
chiefly of the Jews and new Christians, who flocked into the country
from Spain, and were treated with great severity. The Holy Office
was set up in Lisbon under an inquisitor-general, Diego de Silva, and
Portugal was divided into inquisitional districts. _Autos da fé_ were
frequent, and on a scale hardly known in Spain, though the records are
fragmentary.
From among the cases reported, we may quote that of an Englishman, a
native of Bristol, engaged in commerce in Lisbon, who boldly assaulted
the cardinal archbishop in the act of performing mass. Gardiner,
as fiercely intolerant as those of the dominant religion who were
worshipping according to their own rites, attacked the priest when he
elevated the host, "snatched away the cake with one hand, trod it under
his feet, and with the other overthrew the chalice." The congregation,
at first utterly astounded, raised one great cry and fell bodily upon
the sacrilegious wretch, who was promptly stabbed in the shoulder and
haled before the king, who was present in the cathedral, and forthwith
interrogated. It was thought that he had been instigated by the English
Protestants to this outrageous insult, but he declared that he had been
solely moved by his abhorrence of the idolatry he had witnessed. He was
imprisoned and with him all the English in Lisbon. So soon as his wound
was healed, he was examined by the Holy Office, tortured and condemned.
Then he was carried to the market place on an ass and his left hand
was cut off; thence he was taken to the river side and by a rope and
pulley hoisted over a pile of wood which was set on fire. "In spite
of the great torment he continued in a constant spirit and the more
terribly he burned the more vehemently he prayed." He was in the act of
reciting a psalm, when by the use of exceeding violence, the burning
rope broke and he was precipitated into the devouring flames.
A fellow lodger of Gardiner was detained in the Inquisition for two
years, and was frequently tortured to elicit evidence against other
Englishmen, but without avail. A Scotch professor of Greek in the
university of Coimbra was charged with Lutheranism, and imprisoned for
a year and a half, after which he was committed to a monastery so that
he might be instructed by the monks in the true religion. They did not
change his views and he was presently set free. Another, an English
shipmaster, was less fortunate and was burned alive as a heretic at
Lisbon.
It has been observed that, on comparison of the Inquisitions of Spain
and Portugal, a certain marked difference was disclosed between them.
The same precise rigour of the Spanish inquisitors was not exhibited
by the Portuguese. In Portugal the discipline was more savage yet
more feeble. Yet in the latter country there was a brutal and more
wanton excess in inflicting pain at the _autos da fé_. When convicts
were about to suffer they were taken before the Lord Chief Justice to
answer the enquiry as to what religion they intended to die in. If
the answer was "in the Roman Catholic Apostolic," the order was given
that they should be strangled before burning. If in the Protestant, or
in any other religion, death in the flames was decreed. At Lisbon the
place of execution, as has been said, was at the waterside. A thick
stake was erected for each person condemned, with a wide crosspiece
at the top against which a crosspiece was nailed to receive the tops
of two ladders. In the centre the victim was secured by a chain, with
a Jesuit priest on either side, seated on a ladder, who proceeded to
exhort him to repentance. If they failed they declared they left him
to the devil and the mob roared, "Let the dog's beard be trimmed," in
other words, "his face scorched." This was effected by applying an
ignited furze bush at the end of a long pole till his face was burned
and blackened. The record of the Portuguese Inquisition to 1794 shows a
total of one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five relaxed in person,
_i. e._ executed, six hundred and thirty-three relaxed in effigy, and
twenty-nine thousand, five hundred and ninety penanced.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade with the Far East
and, after Vasco de Gama had discovered India, Albuquerque annexed and
occupied Goa, which might have become the seat and centre of the great
empire which fell at length into British hands.
Portugal sacrificed all power and prosperity to the extirpation of
heresy in its new possessions and was chiefly concerned in the
establishment of the Holy Office in India. The early Portuguese
settlers in the East clamoured loudly for the Inquisition; the Jesuit
fathers who were zealous in their propaganda in India declared that
the tribunal was most necessary in Goa, owing to the prevailing
licentiousness and the medley of all nations and superstitions. It
was accordingly established in 1560, and soon commenced its active
operations with terrific vigour. General baptisms were frequent in
this the ecclesiastical metropolis of India, and so were _autos da fé_
conducted with great pomp with many victims.
A light upon the proceedings of the Holy Office in Goa is afforded by
the story told by a French traveller, M. Dellon, who was arrested at
the instance of the Portuguese governor at Damaum, and imprisoned at
Goa in the private prison of the archbishop. "The most filthy," says
Dellon, "the darkest and most horrible of any I had ever seen.... It
is a kind of cave wherein there is no day seen but by a very little
hole. The most subtle rays of the sun cannot enter it and there is
never any true light in it. The stench is extreme...." M. Dellon
was dragged before the Board of the Holy Office, seated in the Holy
House, which is described as a great and magnificent building, "one
side of a great space before the church of St. Catherine." There were
three gates. The prisoners entered by the central or largest, and
ascending a stately flight of steps, reached the great hall. Behind the
principal building was another very spacious, two stories high
and consisting of a double row of cells. Those on the ground floor
were the smallest, due to the greater thickness of the walls, and
had no apertures for light or air. The upper cells were vaulted and
whitewashed, and each had a small strongly grated window without glass.
The cells had double doors, the outer of which was kept constantly
open, an indispensable plan in this climate or the occupant must have
died of suffocation.
[Illustration: _Peint par D. F. Laugée_
_Photogravure Goupil & C^{ie}._
_The Question_
One of the forms of torture before a tribunal of the Inquisition, used
in the examination of the accused. Lighted charcoal was placed under
the victim's feet, which were greased over with lard, so that the heat
of the fire might more quickly become effective.]
The régime was, to some extent, humane. Water for ablutions was
provided and for drinking purposes, food was given sparingly in three
daily meals, but was wholesome in quality. Physicians were at hand
to attend the sick and confessors to wait on the dying, but they
administered no unction, gave no viaticum, said no mass. If any died,
as many did, his death was unknown to all without. He was buried within
the walls with no sacred ceremony, and if it was decided that he had
died in heresy, his bones were exhumed to be burnt at the next act of
Faith. While alive he lived apart in all the strictness of the modern
solitary cell. Alone and silent, for the prisoner was forbidden to
speak, he was not allowed even to groan or sob or sigh aloud.
The Holy Office in Goa was worked on the same lines as that of Spain as
already described and by the same officers. There was the _Inquisidor
Mor_ or grand-inquisitor, a secular priest, a second or assistant
inquisitor, a Dominican monk, with many deputies; "qualifiers," to
examine books and writings; a fiscal and a procurator; notaries and
familiars. The authority of the tribunal was absolute in Goa except
that the great officials, archbishop and his grand-vicar, the viceroy
and the governor, could not be arrested without the sanction of the
supreme council in Lisbon. The procedure, the examination and use of
torture was exactly as in other places.
M. Dellon was taxed with having spoken ill of the Inquisition, and
was called upon to confess his sins, being constantly brought out and
again relegated to his cell and continually harassed to make him accuse
himself, until in a frenzy of despair he resolved to commit suicide
by refusing food. The physician bled him and treated him for fever,
but he tore off the bandages hoping to bleed to death. He was taken up
insensible, restored by cordials, and carried before the inquisitor,
where he lay on the floor and was assailed with bitter reproaches,
heavily ironed and sent back to languish in his cell in a wild access
of fury approaching madness.
At last the great day of the Act of Faith approached, and Dellon heard
on every side the agonised cries of both men and women. During the
night the alcaide and warders came into his cell with lights bringing
a suit of clothes, linen, best trousers, black striped with white. He
was marched to join a couple of hundred other penitents squatted on
the floor along the sides of a spacious gallery, all motionless but
in an agony of apprehension, for none knew his doom. A large company
of women were collected in a neighbouring chamber and a third lot in
_sanbenitos_, among whom the priests moved seeking confessions and if
made the boon of strangulation was conceded before "tasting the fire."
Shortly before sunrise the great bell of the Cathedral tolled and
roused the city into life. People filled the chief streets, lined the
thoroughfares and crowded into places whence they might best see the
procession. With daylight Dellon saw from the faces of his companions
that they were mostly Indians with but a dozen white men among them. M.
Dellon went barefoot with the rest over the loose flints of the badly
paved streets, and, at length, cut and bleeding, entered the church of
St. Francisco, for the ceremony could not be performed under the fierce
sky of this torrid climate. Dellon's punishment was confiscation of all
his property, and banishment from India, with five years' service in
the galleys of Portugal.
The rest of his sad adventures may be told briefly. He was brought
back to Lisbon and worked at the oar with other convicts for some
years, when at the intercession of friends in France the Portuguese
government consented to release him. There is no record that the French
authorities made any claim or reclamation for the ill-usage of a French
subject.
It was otherwise with their neighbours, the English, who even before
their power in India was established, would not suffer the Portuguese
authorities in Goa to ill-treat a person who could claim British
protection. A French Capuchin, named Father Ephrem, had visited Madras
when on his way to join the Catholic mission in Pegu. He was invited to
remain in Madras and was promised entire liberty with respect to his
religion, and permitted to minister to the Catholics already settled
in the factory. In the course of his preaching he laid down a dogma
offensive, as it was asserted, to the Mother of God, and information
thereof was laid with the inquisitors at Goa, who made their plans to
kidnap Father Ephrem and carry him off to Goa, some six hundred miles
distant from Madras. The plot succeeded and the French Capuchin was
lodged in the prison of the Holy Office at Goa. This was not to be
brooked by the English in Madras. An English ship forthwith proceeded
to Goa and a party of ten determined men, well-armed, landed and
appeared at the gates of the Inquisition and demanded admittance.
Leaving a couple of men on guard at the gate, the rest entered the gaol
and insisted at the point of the sword that Father Ephrem should be
forthwith surrendered to them. An order thus enforced was irresistible,
and the prisoner was released, taken down to the ship's boat,
reëmbarked and carried back in safety to Madras.
The aims of the Inquisition are no longer those of modern communities.
So widely has the idea of toleration extended, that we often forget
how recent it is. The relations of Church and State are so changed in
the last two centuries, that it is difficult to understand the times
of the Spanish Inquisition. Then it was universally believed that
orthodoxy in faith was intimately connected with loyalty to the state.
As a matter of fact, nearly all the earlier heretical movements were
also social or political revolts. It is, therefore, easy to see how
heresy and high treason came to appear identical.
Some of the inquisitors were corrupt, others were naturally cruel,
others, drunk with power, were more zealous in exerting that power
than they were in deciding between guilt and innocence. On the other
hand many were zealous because of their honesty. If a man believes
that he knows the only hope of salvation, it is perfectly logical
to compel another by force, if necessary, to follow that hope. Any
physical punishment is slight compared with the great reward which
reconciliation brings. On the other hand, if he is firm in his heresy,
he is as dangerous as a wild beast. We are more tolerant now, less
certain, perhaps, of our ground, but three or four hundred years ago
these points were a stern reality.
That many inquisitors were more concerned with the Church as an
institution than as a means of salvation is also true. They punished
disrespect to an officer or to a law more severely than they did
a doctrinal error, but that was, perhaps, inevitable. The Spanish
Inquisition, which, as has been said, was to some extent a state
affair, punished many for what we might call trifling offences, or,
indeed, no offence at all, but it was an intolerant age, in and out of
Spain.
The number punished has been grossly exaggerated, but it was enough to
injure Spain permanently, to crush out freedom of thought and action to
an unwarrantable extent. The historian must attribute much of Spain's
decadence to the work of the mistaken advocate of absolute uniformity.