The Portuguese Inquisition
The Portuguese Inquisition (Portuguese: Inquisição Portuguesa), officially known as the General Council of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal, was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of its king, John III. Although Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of his marriage with Maria of Aragon, it was only after his death that Pope Paul III acquiesced. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Christian Inquisition, along with the Spanish Inquisition and Roman Inquisition. The Goa Inquisition was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in colonial-era Portuguese India.
The Portuguese Inquisition was terminated in 1821.
In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV issued the papal bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus that allowed the installation of the Inquisition in Castile, which created a strong wave of immigration of Jews and heretics to Portugal.
It was after these events that the situation of the Jews and Moors in Portugal worsened. Before that, there was not violence against Jews as such. The Portuguese Jews had lived in self-governing communities, called judiarias. The free practice of Judaism (and of Islam) was recognized and guaranteed by law.
On December 5, 1496, as a result of the clause present in his marriage contract with Princess Isabel of Spain, D. Manuel I signed an order that forced all Jews to choose between leaving Portugal or converting. However, the number of voluntary conversions was much lower than expected and the king decided to close all ports in Portugal (except Lisbon) to prevent these Jews from escaping.
In April 1497, an order was issued for the forcible removal on Easter Sunday of all Jewish sons and daughters under the age of 14 from those Jews who had chosen to leave Portugal rather than convert. Many of these children were then distributed throughout the country's cities and towns to be educated according to the Christian faith at the king's expense, and it is not known how many managed to return to their biological families. In October 1497, the Jews who didn't flee ended up being forcibly baptized, thus giving rise to the so-called New Christians.
Nevertheless, historian A.J. Saraiva tells us that the community of former Jews was on its way to integration when on April 9, 1506 at Lisbon, a mob killed two thousands of New Christians , accused of being the cause of drought and plague that devastated the country. After the three days massacre, the king punished those responsible and renewed the rights that the Jews had before 1497, giving the New Christians the privilege of not being questioned for their religious practices, and authorizing them to leave Portugal freely. But, on August 1515, the king Manuel I wrote to his ambassador in Rome, instructing him to ask the Pope for an inquisition according to the Castilian model.
In December 1531, Pope Clement VII granted permission for the Inquisition, but under conditions that the king did not want and did not accept; and in April 1535 the same pope went back on his word, suspended the Inquisition, ordered the general pardon of those guilty of Judaism, the release of prisoners and convicts, and the restitution of confiscated property. The basis for Clement VII's decisions was a report that recalled "the true doctrine on the conversion of the Infidels": persuasion and gentleness, following Christ's example. The report reproduced some information about the workings of the inquisitorial courts, saying the abuses of the inquisitors were such that it was easy to understandy that they were "ministers of Satan and not of Christ", acting like "thieves and mercenaries".
The death of Pope Clement VII prevented the application of the bull of pardon. His successor, Paul III, after several hesitations, put it into effect, and meanwhile the portuguese king John III, continued to insist and negotiate, including using the intercession of Charles V, his brother-in-law, to re-establish the Inquisition.
After many years of negotiations between the kings and the popes, the Portuguese Inquisition was established on May 23, 1536, by order of Pope Paul III bull Cum ad nihil magis, and imposed the censorship of printed publications, starting with the prohibition of the Bible in languages other than Latin.
The major target of the Portuguese Inquisition were those who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism, the Conversos (also known as New Christians or Marranos), who were suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. Many of these were originally Spanish Jews who had left Spain for Portugal, when Spain forced Jews to convert to Christianity or leave. The number of these victims ( between 1540 and 1765) is estimated as around 40,000. To a lesser extent people of other ethnicities and faiths, such as African practitioners of diasporic African religions and Vodun smuggled through the Atlantic slave trade from the colonies and territories of the Portuguese Empire, were put on trial and imprisoned with the accusations of heresy and witchcraft by the Portuguese Inquisition. Brazil's Romani community of around 800,000 descended from Sinti and Roma deported from the Portuguese Empire during the Inquisition.
As in Spain, the Inquisition was subject to the authority of the King, although the Portuguese Inquisition in practice exercised a considerable degree of institutional independence from both the Crown and the papacy compared to its Spanish counterpart. It was headed by a Grand Inquisitor, or General Inquisitor, named by the Pope but selected by the king, always from within the royal family. The Grand Inquisitor would later nominate other inquisitors. In Portugal, the first Grand Inquisitor was D. Diogo da Silva, personal confessor of King John III and Bishop of Ceuta. He was followed by Cardinal Henry, brother of John III, who would later become king. There were Courts of the Inquisition in Lisbon, Coimbra, and Évora, and for a short time (1541 until c. 1547) also in Porto, Tomar, and Lamego.
It held its first auto de fé in Portugal in 1540. Like the Spanish Inquisition, it concentrated its efforts on rooting out those who had converted from other faiths (overwhelmingly Judaism) but allegedly did not adhere to the strictures of Catholic orthodoxy.
The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to Portugal's colonial possessions, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and Goa in India, where it continued investigating and trying cases based on supposed breaches of orthodox Catholicism until 1821.
Under John III, the activity of the courts was extended to the censure of books, as well as undertaking cases of divination, witchcraft, and bigamy. Originally aimed at religious matters, the Inquisition had an influence on almost every aspect of Portuguese life – political, cultural, and social.
Many New Christians from Portugal migrated to Goa in the 1500s as a result of the inquisition in Portugal. They were Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Muslims, falsely-converted Jews and Muslims who were secretly practising their old religions. Both were considered a security threat to the Portuguese, because Jews had an established reputation in Iberia for joining forces with Muslims to overthrow Christian rulers. The Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier requested that the Goa Inquisition be set up in a letter dated 16 May 1546 to King John III of Portugal, in order to deal with false converts to Catholicism. The Inquisition began in Goa in 1560. Of the 1,582 persons convicted between 1560 and 1623, 45.2% were convicted for offenses related to Judaism and Islam.
The Goa Inquisition also turned its attention to allegedly falsely-converted and non-convert Hindus. It prosecuted non-convert Hindus who broke prohibitions against the public observance of Hindu rites, and those non-convert Hindus who interfered with sincere converts to Catholicism. A compilation of the auto de fé statistics of the Goa Inquisition from its beginning 1560 till its end in 1821 reveal that a total of 57 persons were burnt in the flesh and 64 in effigy (i.e. a statue resembling the person). All the burnt were convicted as relapsed heretics or for sodomy.
Among the main targets of the Inquisition were also the Portuguese Christian traditions and movements that were not perceived as orthodox. The millenarian and national Feast of the Cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit, dating from the mid 13th century, spread throughout all mainland Portugal from then into the 14th century. In the following centuries it spread throughout Portugal's Atlantic islands and empire, where it was the main target of prohibition and surveillance by the Inquisition after the 1540s, since it had almost disappeared from continental Portugal and India. This spiritual tradition, practiced exclusively by non-religious officials and popular Brotherhoods in the Middle Ages and following centuries, was gradually restored only after the second half of the 20th century in some municipalities of mainland Portugal. By then, except for a few faithful and accurate local traditions, it had undergone major deletions and changes (in what remained or was restored) of the ancient rituals.
According to the traditional Feast of the Empire of the Holy Spirit, celebrated at the feast of Pentecost, a future, third age would be governed by the Empire of Holy Spirit and would represent a monastic or fraternal governance, in which the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the intermediaries, and the organized Churches would be unnecessary, and infidels would unite with Christians by free will. Until the 16th century, this was the main annual festivity in most of the major Portuguese cities, with multiple celebrations in Lisbon (with 8), Porto (4), and Coimbra (3). The Church and the Inquisition would not tolerate a spiritual tradition entirely popular and without the mediation of the clergy at the time, and most importantly, celebrating a future Age which would bring an end to the Church.
The cult of the Holy Spirit survived in the Azores Islands among the local population and under the traditional protection of the Order of Christ. Here the arm of the Inquisition did not effectively extend its power, despite reports from local ecclesiastical authorities. Beyond the Azores, the cult survived in many parts of Brazil (where it was established in the 16th through 18th centuries) and is celebrated today in all Brazilian states except two, as well as in pockets of Portuguese settlers in North America (Canada and USA), mainly among those of Azorean descent. Afro-Brazilian religious mystic and formerly enslaved prostitute, Rosa Egipcíaca, was imprisoned in both Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon by the Inquisition. She died working in the kitchen of the Lisbon inquisition. Egipcíaca was the author of the first book to be written by a black woman in Brazil - entitled Sagrada Teologia do Amor Divino das Almas Peregrinas it detailed her religious visions and prophecies.
The movements and concepts of Sebastianism and of the Fifth Empire were sometimes also targets of the Inquisition (the most intense persecution of Sebastianists being during the Philippine Dynasty, though it lasted beyond then), both considered unorthodox and even heretical. But targeting was intermittent and selective since some important familiares (associated people) of the Holy Office (Inquisition) were Sebastianists.
The financial problems of King Sebastian in 1577 led him, in exchange for a large sum of money, to allow the free departure of New Christians, and to ban the confiscation of property by the Inquisition for 10 years.
King John IV, in 1649, banned the confiscation of property by the Inquisition and was excommunicated immediately by Rome. This law was only fully withdrawn around 1656, with the death of the king.
From 1674 to 1681 the Inquisition was suspended in Portugal: autos de fé were suspended and inquisitors were instructed not to inflict sentences of relaxation (hand over to secular justice for execution), confiscation, or perpetual galleys. This was an action of father António Vieira in Rome to put an end to the Inquisition in Portugal and its Empire. Vieira had earned the name of the Apostle of Brazil. At the request of the pope he drew up a report of two hundred pages on the Inquisition in Portugal, with the result that after a judicial inquiry Pope Innocent XI himself suspended it for five years (1676–81).
António Vieira had long regarded the New Christians with compassion and had urged King John IV, with whom he had much influence and support, not only to abolish confiscation but to remove the distinctions between them and the Old Christians. He had made enemies and the Inquisition readily undertook his punishment. His writings in favor of the oppressed were condemned as "rash, scandalous, erroneous, savoring of heresy, and well adapted to pervert the ignorant." After three years of incarceration, he was penanced in the audience-chamber of Coimbra on 23 December 1667. His sympathy for the victims of the Holy Office was sharpened by his experience of its "unwholesome prisons", where he wrote that "five unfortunates were not uncommonly placed in a cell nine feet by eleven, where the only light came from a narrow opening near the ceiling, where the vessels were changed only once a week, and all spiritual consolation was denied." Then, in the safety of Rome, he raised his voice for the relief of the oppressed, in several writings in which he characterized the "Holy Office of Portugal as a tribunal which served only to deprive men of their fortunes, their honor, and their lives, while unable to discriminate between guilt and innocence; it was known to be holy only in name, while its works were cruelty and injustice, unworthy of rational beings, although it was always proclaiming its superior piety."
In 1773 and 1774 Pombaline Reforms ended the Limpeza de Sangue (purity of blood) statutes and their discrimination against New Christians, the Jews and all their descendants who had converted to Christianity in order to escape the Portuguese Inquisition.
The Portuguese inquisition was terminated only in 1821 by the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Assembly of the Portuguese Nation."
The Portuguese Inquisition was terminated in 1821.
In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV issued the papal bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus that allowed the installation of the Inquisition in Castile, which created a strong wave of immigration of Jews and heretics to Portugal.
It was after these events that the situation of the Jews and Moors in Portugal worsened. Before that, there was not violence against Jews as such. The Portuguese Jews had lived in self-governing communities, called judiarias. The free practice of Judaism (and of Islam) was recognized and guaranteed by law.
On December 5, 1496, as a result of the clause present in his marriage contract with Princess Isabel of Spain, D. Manuel I signed an order that forced all Jews to choose between leaving Portugal or converting. However, the number of voluntary conversions was much lower than expected and the king decided to close all ports in Portugal (except Lisbon) to prevent these Jews from escaping.
In April 1497, an order was issued for the forcible removal on Easter Sunday of all Jewish sons and daughters under the age of 14 from those Jews who had chosen to leave Portugal rather than convert. Many of these children were then distributed throughout the country's cities and towns to be educated according to the Christian faith at the king's expense, and it is not known how many managed to return to their biological families. In October 1497, the Jews who didn't flee ended up being forcibly baptized, thus giving rise to the so-called New Christians.
Nevertheless, historian A.J. Saraiva tells us that the community of former Jews was on its way to integration when on April 9, 1506 at Lisbon, a mob killed two thousands of New Christians , accused of being the cause of drought and plague that devastated the country. After the three days massacre, the king punished those responsible and renewed the rights that the Jews had before 1497, giving the New Christians the privilege of not being questioned for their religious practices, and authorizing them to leave Portugal freely. But, on August 1515, the king Manuel I wrote to his ambassador in Rome, instructing him to ask the Pope for an inquisition according to the Castilian model.
In December 1531, Pope Clement VII granted permission for the Inquisition, but under conditions that the king did not want and did not accept; and in April 1535 the same pope went back on his word, suspended the Inquisition, ordered the general pardon of those guilty of Judaism, the release of prisoners and convicts, and the restitution of confiscated property. The basis for Clement VII's decisions was a report that recalled "the true doctrine on the conversion of the Infidels": persuasion and gentleness, following Christ's example. The report reproduced some information about the workings of the inquisitorial courts, saying the abuses of the inquisitors were such that it was easy to understandy that they were "ministers of Satan and not of Christ", acting like "thieves and mercenaries".
The death of Pope Clement VII prevented the application of the bull of pardon. His successor, Paul III, after several hesitations, put it into effect, and meanwhile the portuguese king John III, continued to insist and negotiate, including using the intercession of Charles V, his brother-in-law, to re-establish the Inquisition.
After many years of negotiations between the kings and the popes, the Portuguese Inquisition was established on May 23, 1536, by order of Pope Paul III bull Cum ad nihil magis, and imposed the censorship of printed publications, starting with the prohibition of the Bible in languages other than Latin.
The major target of the Portuguese Inquisition were those who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism, the Conversos (also known as New Christians or Marranos), who were suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. Many of these were originally Spanish Jews who had left Spain for Portugal, when Spain forced Jews to convert to Christianity or leave. The number of these victims ( between 1540 and 1765) is estimated as around 40,000. To a lesser extent people of other ethnicities and faiths, such as African practitioners of diasporic African religions and Vodun smuggled through the Atlantic slave trade from the colonies and territories of the Portuguese Empire, were put on trial and imprisoned with the accusations of heresy and witchcraft by the Portuguese Inquisition. Brazil's Romani community of around 800,000 descended from Sinti and Roma deported from the Portuguese Empire during the Inquisition.
As in Spain, the Inquisition was subject to the authority of the King, although the Portuguese Inquisition in practice exercised a considerable degree of institutional independence from both the Crown and the papacy compared to its Spanish counterpart. It was headed by a Grand Inquisitor, or General Inquisitor, named by the Pope but selected by the king, always from within the royal family. The Grand Inquisitor would later nominate other inquisitors. In Portugal, the first Grand Inquisitor was D. Diogo da Silva, personal confessor of King John III and Bishop of Ceuta. He was followed by Cardinal Henry, brother of John III, who would later become king. There were Courts of the Inquisition in Lisbon, Coimbra, and Évora, and for a short time (1541 until c. 1547) also in Porto, Tomar, and Lamego.
It held its first auto de fé in Portugal in 1540. Like the Spanish Inquisition, it concentrated its efforts on rooting out those who had converted from other faiths (overwhelmingly Judaism) but allegedly did not adhere to the strictures of Catholic orthodoxy.
The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to Portugal's colonial possessions, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and Goa in India, where it continued investigating and trying cases based on supposed breaches of orthodox Catholicism until 1821.
Under John III, the activity of the courts was extended to the censure of books, as well as undertaking cases of divination, witchcraft, and bigamy. Originally aimed at religious matters, the Inquisition had an influence on almost every aspect of Portuguese life – political, cultural, and social.
Many New Christians from Portugal migrated to Goa in the 1500s as a result of the inquisition in Portugal. They were Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Muslims, falsely-converted Jews and Muslims who were secretly practising their old religions. Both were considered a security threat to the Portuguese, because Jews had an established reputation in Iberia for joining forces with Muslims to overthrow Christian rulers. The Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier requested that the Goa Inquisition be set up in a letter dated 16 May 1546 to King John III of Portugal, in order to deal with false converts to Catholicism. The Inquisition began in Goa in 1560. Of the 1,582 persons convicted between 1560 and 1623, 45.2% were convicted for offenses related to Judaism and Islam.
The Goa Inquisition also turned its attention to allegedly falsely-converted and non-convert Hindus. It prosecuted non-convert Hindus who broke prohibitions against the public observance of Hindu rites, and those non-convert Hindus who interfered with sincere converts to Catholicism. A compilation of the auto de fé statistics of the Goa Inquisition from its beginning 1560 till its end in 1821 reveal that a total of 57 persons were burnt in the flesh and 64 in effigy (i.e. a statue resembling the person). All the burnt were convicted as relapsed heretics or for sodomy.
Among the main targets of the Inquisition were also the Portuguese Christian traditions and movements that were not perceived as orthodox. The millenarian and national Feast of the Cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit, dating from the mid 13th century, spread throughout all mainland Portugal from then into the 14th century. In the following centuries it spread throughout Portugal's Atlantic islands and empire, where it was the main target of prohibition and surveillance by the Inquisition after the 1540s, since it had almost disappeared from continental Portugal and India. This spiritual tradition, practiced exclusively by non-religious officials and popular Brotherhoods in the Middle Ages and following centuries, was gradually restored only after the second half of the 20th century in some municipalities of mainland Portugal. By then, except for a few faithful and accurate local traditions, it had undergone major deletions and changes (in what remained or was restored) of the ancient rituals.
According to the traditional Feast of the Empire of the Holy Spirit, celebrated at the feast of Pentecost, a future, third age would be governed by the Empire of Holy Spirit and would represent a monastic or fraternal governance, in which the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the intermediaries, and the organized Churches would be unnecessary, and infidels would unite with Christians by free will. Until the 16th century, this was the main annual festivity in most of the major Portuguese cities, with multiple celebrations in Lisbon (with 8), Porto (4), and Coimbra (3). The Church and the Inquisition would not tolerate a spiritual tradition entirely popular and without the mediation of the clergy at the time, and most importantly, celebrating a future Age which would bring an end to the Church.
The cult of the Holy Spirit survived in the Azores Islands among the local population and under the traditional protection of the Order of Christ. Here the arm of the Inquisition did not effectively extend its power, despite reports from local ecclesiastical authorities. Beyond the Azores, the cult survived in many parts of Brazil (where it was established in the 16th through 18th centuries) and is celebrated today in all Brazilian states except two, as well as in pockets of Portuguese settlers in North America (Canada and USA), mainly among those of Azorean descent. Afro-Brazilian religious mystic and formerly enslaved prostitute, Rosa Egipcíaca, was imprisoned in both Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon by the Inquisition. She died working in the kitchen of the Lisbon inquisition. Egipcíaca was the author of the first book to be written by a black woman in Brazil - entitled Sagrada Teologia do Amor Divino das Almas Peregrinas it detailed her religious visions and prophecies.
The movements and concepts of Sebastianism and of the Fifth Empire were sometimes also targets of the Inquisition (the most intense persecution of Sebastianists being during the Philippine Dynasty, though it lasted beyond then), both considered unorthodox and even heretical. But targeting was intermittent and selective since some important familiares (associated people) of the Holy Office (Inquisition) were Sebastianists.
The financial problems of King Sebastian in 1577 led him, in exchange for a large sum of money, to allow the free departure of New Christians, and to ban the confiscation of property by the Inquisition for 10 years.
King John IV, in 1649, banned the confiscation of property by the Inquisition and was excommunicated immediately by Rome. This law was only fully withdrawn around 1656, with the death of the king.
From 1674 to 1681 the Inquisition was suspended in Portugal: autos de fé were suspended and inquisitors were instructed not to inflict sentences of relaxation (hand over to secular justice for execution), confiscation, or perpetual galleys. This was an action of father António Vieira in Rome to put an end to the Inquisition in Portugal and its Empire. Vieira had earned the name of the Apostle of Brazil. At the request of the pope he drew up a report of two hundred pages on the Inquisition in Portugal, with the result that after a judicial inquiry Pope Innocent XI himself suspended it for five years (1676–81).
António Vieira had long regarded the New Christians with compassion and had urged King John IV, with whom he had much influence and support, not only to abolish confiscation but to remove the distinctions between them and the Old Christians. He had made enemies and the Inquisition readily undertook his punishment. His writings in favor of the oppressed were condemned as "rash, scandalous, erroneous, savoring of heresy, and well adapted to pervert the ignorant." After three years of incarceration, he was penanced in the audience-chamber of Coimbra on 23 December 1667. His sympathy for the victims of the Holy Office was sharpened by his experience of its "unwholesome prisons", where he wrote that "five unfortunates were not uncommonly placed in a cell nine feet by eleven, where the only light came from a narrow opening near the ceiling, where the vessels were changed only once a week, and all spiritual consolation was denied." Then, in the safety of Rome, he raised his voice for the relief of the oppressed, in several writings in which he characterized the "Holy Office of Portugal as a tribunal which served only to deprive men of their fortunes, their honor, and their lives, while unable to discriminate between guilt and innocence; it was known to be holy only in name, while its works were cruelty and injustice, unworthy of rational beings, although it was always proclaiming its superior piety."
In 1773 and 1774 Pombaline Reforms ended the Limpeza de Sangue (purity of blood) statutes and their discrimination against New Christians, the Jews and all their descendants who had converted to Christianity in order to escape the Portuguese Inquisition.
The Portuguese inquisition was terminated only in 1821 by the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Assembly of the Portuguese Nation."
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