Inquisition in Goa (1560-1812)

 by Alfredo de Mello 

(Chapter 21 " Memoirs of Goa")


The Portuguese, although a small nation, can be proud of their History, and of their achievements not only as experienced mariners discovering new lands, and being undisputed lords of the Seas during the 16th century, but also as colonizers with their settlements all over Asia, Africa and the Far East, carrying on their crusade against their eternal enemies, the Moors (Muslims), and being proud standard bearers of Christianity. 

Goa was the seat of their sea-borne Empire.

However, there was a flaw which crept in just a few decades after their monumental discovery of the sea route to India. The famous historian and writer Teofilo Braga wrote that "there are two dates which signal the downfall of the nationality: 1536, when the Inquisition was inaugurated in Portugal, due to the instigations of the Emperor Charles V, of Spain, and with the loss of the freedom of conscience, silencing the poet who had most fought on its behalf, Gil Vicente; and 1580, the national independence becomes extinct on account of the invasion of Philip II ( of Spain) who imposed his dynastic rights " (1)

Indeed King D. Joao III married to Catarina, daughter of Juana la Loca, was beset by the priests who insinuated the suggestion of fanaticism, in order to exploit the obsession of the terrors of afterlife. It is under the crisis of this moral and political depression that the Company of Jesus entered into Portugal, recommended by the famous pedagogist Dr. Diogo de Gouvea and by the ambassador D. Pedro de Mascarenhas ( later Viceroy in Goa) who was an intimate of the emperor Charles V. The newly founded Company of Jesus, in their Counter-reformation zeal after the Council of Trent, anointed themselves with the title of Apostles. King Joao III pleaded with the General Ignatius de Loyola in Rome, that he should send missionaries for the Orient. Promptly Francis Xavier was sent to Portugal in 1541.

Already in 1545 Francis Xavier wrote to Rome from Goa , asking for the Inquisition to be installed immediately. King Joao III under the influx of the Dominicans, considered the Inquisitor General to be worth more than royalty itself, and surrendered his powers totally to the Company of Jesus, granting the widest possible powers to the Jesuits, who were able even to alter the civil laws. Even the Viceroys of India were afraid of the Inquisition.,

The Christian religion on account of its mystical passivity leads to a state of apathy. It was a regression to medieval apathy, extinguishing all individualism, by the contemplation of Death and the terrors of Hell, by frequent confessions.

In another chapter dealing with the nefarious, fiendish, lustful, corrupt religious orders which pounced on Goa for the purpose of destroying paganism and introducing the true religion of Christ (poor Jesus, if He only knew what was done in His name!), I have dwelt briefly on the Inquisition, which was introduced in 1560 and lasted until the year 1812, that is a span of 252 years, during which period it held its sway with a power that Stalin and other tyrants would have liked to hold. Stalin was a tyrant, murderer, but at least he was not a hypocrite.

Xavier did not see his wish fulfilled, but in the year 1560 the first inquisitors Aleixo Dias Falcao and Francisco Marques, secular canonists, established the Inquisition in Goa. This Inquisition was definitely abolished in 1812 – when the British Forces were occupying Goa - and the files were kept first in Goa, and later sent on to Lisbon.

The "Holy Office", as it called itself, settled in the Palace of the Sabaio Adil Khan. From 1510 onwards this palace in Old Goa had become the palace of the Governors and Viceroys who lived there until 1554, when viceroy D. Pedro de Mascarenhas, being 70 years old, and very frail, was unwilling to climb the stairs to two stories. Consequently this vacated palace was occupied by the Inquisition six years later. The palace was modified with a chapel, halls of entrance, the hall of audiences, house of despacho, residence of the first inquisitor, house of secret, house of doctrine, any number of cells, and other special ones: of secret, of penitence; of perpetual confinement; of the tortures; all this within a great building which had an outer wall of seven spans ( 1.5 mts).

The Palace of the Inquisition was pointed out in awe by Goans, who called it Orlem Goro. or Big House, with two hundred cells. The Inquisition in Goa, on account of its rigours, was reputed to be the worst of the existing inquisitions in the catholic orb of the five parts of the world, as felt unanimously by national and foreign writers.

"......The Inquisition, this tribunal of fire, thrown on the surface of the globe for the scourge of humanity, this horrible institution, which will eternally cover with shame its authors, fixed its brutal domicile in the fertile plains of the Hindustan. On seeing the monster everyone fled and disappeared, Moguls, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, and Jews. The Indians even, more tolerant and pacific, were astounded to see the God of Christianity more cruel than that of Mohammed, deserted the territory of the Portuguese and went to the lands of the Muslims, with whom time had made peaceful living possible, in spite of the fact that they (Indians) had received from them enormous and incalculable evils. In this fashion the fields and cities became deserted as are today Diu and Goa " (2)

Alexandre Herculano, a famous writer of the 19th century, mentioned in his "Fragment about the Inquisition": "...The terrors inflicted on pregnant women made them abort....Neither the beauty or decorousness of the flower of youth, nor the old age, so worthy of compassion in a woman, exempted the weaker sex from the brutal ferocity of the supposed defenders of the religion...."

"...There were days when seven or eight were submitted to torture. These scenes were reserved for the inquisitors after dinner. It was a post-prandial entertainment. Many a time during those acts, the inquisitors compared notes in the appreciation of the beauty of the human form. While the unlucky damsel twisted in the intolerable pains of torture, or fainted in the intensity of the agony, one inquisitor applauded the angelic touches of her face, another the brightness of her eyes, another, the voluptuous contours of her breast, another the shape of her hands. In this conjuncture, men of blood transformed themselves into real artists !!"

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