[277]. I cannot here avoid giving my reader a more particular account of this execution from Dr. Geddes, who himself was once present at it. His words are these: “The prisoners are no sooner in the hands of the civil magistrate, than they are loaded with chains, before the eyes of the inquisitors; and being carried first to the secular jail, are, within an hour or two, brought from thence, before the lord chief justice, who without knowing any thing of their particular crimes, or of the evidence that was against them, asks them, one by one, in what religion they do intend to die? If they answer, that they will die in the communion of the Church of Rome, they are condemned by him, to be carried forthwith to the place of execution, and there to be first strangled, and afterwards burnt to ashes. But if they say, they will die in the Protestant, or in any other faith that is contrary to the Roman, they are then sentenced by him, to be carried forthwith to the place of execution, and there to be burnt alive.
“At the place of execution, which at Lisbon is the Ribera, there are so many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a good quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed, as the inquisitors call them, may be about four yards high, and have a small board, whereon the prisoner is to be seated, within half a yard of the top. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed go up a ladder, betwixt the two jesuits, which have attended them all day; and when they are come even with the forementioned board, they turn about to the people, and the jesuits spend near a quarter of an hour in exhorting the professed to be reconciled to the Church of Rome; which, if they refuse to be, the jesuits come down, and the executioner ascends, and having turned the professed off the ladder upon the seat, and chained their bodies close to the stake, he leaves them; and the jesuits go up to them a second time, to renew their exhortation to them, and at parting tell them, that they leave them to the devil, who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them with him into the flames of hell-fire, so soon as they are out of their bodies. Upon this a great shout is raised, and as soon as the jesuits are off the ladders, the cry is, ‘Let the dogs beards, let the dogs beards be made;’ which is done by thrusting flaming furzes, fastened to a long pole, against their faces. And this inhumanity is commonly continued until their faces are burnt to a coal, and is always accompanied with such loud acclamations of joy, as are not to be heard upon any other occasion; a bull feast, or a farce, being dull entertainments, to the using a professed heretic thus inhumanly.
“The professed beards having been thus made, or trimmed, as they call it in jollity, fire is set to the furze, which are at the bottom of the stake, and above which the professed are chained so high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they sit on; and if there happens to be a wind, to which that place is much exposed, it seldom reaches so high as their knees: so that though, if there be a calm, the professed are commonly dead in about half an hour after the furze is set on fire; yet, if the weather prove windy, they are not after that dead in an hour and a half, or two hours, and so are really roasted, and not burnt to death. But though, out of hell, there cannot possibly be a more lamentable spectacle than this, being joined with the sufferers (so long as they are able to speak) crying out, ‘Miserecordia por amor de Dios, Mercy for the love of God;’ yet it is beheld by people of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of joy and satisfaction, as are not on any other occasion to be met with.” Dr. Gedde’s Tracts, vol. I. p. 447, &c. Thus far Dr. Geddes.
When Mr. Wilcox, afterwards the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Rochester, was minister to the English factory at Lisbon, he sent the following letter to the then Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Gilbert Burnet, dated at Lisbon, Jan. 15, 1706, N. S. which I publish by his lordship’s allowance and approbation, and which abundantly confirms the foregoing account.
“My Lord,
“In obedience to your lordship’s commands, of the 10th ult. I have here sent all that was printed concerning the last Auto de Fe. I saw the whole process, which was agreeable to what is published by Limborch and others upon that subject. Of the five persons condemned, there were but four burnt; Antonio Tavanes, by an unusual reprieve, being saved after the procession. Heytor Dias, and Maria Pinteyra, were burnt alive, and the other two first strangled. The execution was very cruel. The woman was alive in the flames half an hour, and the man above an hour. The present king and his brothers were seated at a window so near, as to be addressed to a considerable time, in very moving terms, by the man as he was burning. But though the favour he begged was only a few more faggots, yet he was not able to obtain it. Those which are burnt alive here, are seated on a bench twelve feet high, fastened to a pole, and above six feet higher than the faggots. The wind being a little fresh, the man’s hinder parts were perfectly wasted; and as he turned himself, his ribs opened before he left speaking, the fire being recruited as it wasted, to keep him just in the same degree of heat. But all his entreaties could not procure him a larger allowance of wood to shorten his misery and dispatch him.” Thus far the Letter.
How diabolical a religion must that be, which thus divests men of all the sentiments of humanity and compassion, and hardens them against all the miseries and sufferings of their fellow creatures! For as Dr. Geddes observes, ibid. p. 450, “That the reader may not think that this inhuman joy is the effect of a natural cruelty that is in these peoples disposition, and not of the spirit of their religion, he may rest assured, that all public malefactors besides heretics, have their violent deaths no where more tenderly lamented than amongst the same people, and even when there is nothing in the manner of their deaths that appears inhuman or cruel.”
[278]. P. 135.
[279]. Pray for us.
[280]. L. 2. t. 2. c. 5. n. 9, 10, 11.