THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL AND INDIA

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.

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.