Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

‘Christian: “Jehovah and Jesus Christ are God under different names.”

‘One man was asked by the officer: “Who are your companions, fellow?” To whom he replied: “You and all the people on the earth are my companions.” This same man strengthened his fellow Christians by saying: “Be not afraid of them who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him Who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

‘On Wednesday, March, 28, 1849, a proclamation was issued and read at Anàlakèly condemning the eighteen Christians who had refused to give up praying to Jesus Christ and worship the idols. It ran—“Concerning these eighteen brothers and sisters whom I have interrogated and examined: they will not follow the doings of you the majority of my subjects; therefore I shall put them to death. Some of them shall be burned at Fàravòhitra, and the rest I shall fling over the precipice.” When the condemned heard the sentence, they began singing a favourite hymn: “We are going home, O God.”

‘The Christians were mocked, jeered at, and vilified by their fellow countrymen, called traitors to their fatherland, and worshippers of the “white man’s ancestor[11].”’

‘The sentences of the queen upon the offenders were divided into classes, according to their rank or their crimes. The four nobles, two of whom were husband and wife, were sentenced to be burned alive at Fàravòhitra, at the northern end of the hill on which the city is built; and they were burned under circumstances of cruelty which dare hardly be described. The fourteen others of inferior rank were sentenced to be hurled from the edge of Ampàmarìnana, a precipice to the west of the palace, and their wives and children sold into irredeemable slavery. The total number of those on whom one or other of the sentences was pronounced on this occasion amounted, at the lowest computation, to 1,903, but by some accounts it is nearer 3,000.

‘The soldiers took up the four nobles, and carried them from the plain up the hill-side to Fàravòhitra, to a place on the highest part of the hill. As they were carried along they kept on with their hymn-singing. Thus they sang until they reached the spot where four piles of firewood were built up. They were then fastened to stakes in the centre of the piles above the wood. When the piles were kindled, and the flames were rising round them, they prayed and praised the Lord. Among the utterances then heard by those standing near were: “Lord Jesus, receive our spirits—lay not this sin to their charge”; and, as if the visions of the future triumphs of the Lord were given to their departing spirits, one was heard to exclaim: “His name, His praise, shall endure for ever and ever.”’

One of the four burned was a woman, Ramàrindàlana, the wife of Andrìampanìry, who was a preacher at Fìarènana, West Vònizòngo. The condition of this poor woman failed to move the hearts of her persecutors. She was about to become a mother, and actually gave birth to a child in the flames which consumed her and her offspring. Truly ‘the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.’

‘Once, if not more than once, the falling rain extinguished the fire, which was rekindled; and to one of the sufferers (as we have said) the pains of maternity were added to those of the flames. While they were thus suffering, a large and triple rainbow—the sign of God’s promise and faithfulness—stretched across the heavens, one end seeming to rest upon the spot whence the martyrs’ spirits were departing. Some of the spectators, to whom the phenomenon appeared supernatural, fled in terror. One friend, who faithfully remained to the end, records of the martyrs: “They prayed as long as they had life. Then they died; but softly, gently. Indeed, gentle was the going forth of their life, and astonished were all the people around that beheld the burning of them there[12].”’

The names of the four martyrs burned at Fàravòhitra were Ràmitràha, Andrìantsiàmba, Andrìampanìry and Ramànandàlana his wife.

‘Among these so-called criminals who perished at the stake were some, as we have seen, of the highest rank, in whose veins the blood of former kings was supposed to flow. In the same order and manner in which they had been brought to receive judgement the remaining fourteen confessors (all of whom were from the province of Vònizòngo) were taken along the public streets, through the crowds in the city, the agitated and deeply affected crowds, to the top of the rock at Ampàmarìnana, the Tarpeian rock of Antanànarìvo. There on the top of that lofty precipice, at the edge of the western crest of the hill on which the city is built, the filthy fragments of matting wrapped round their bodies were removed. Their arms still remained pinioned and their ankles bound. Thus bound they were rolled in mats, carried one by one to the edge of the precipice and rolled over the downward-curving edge, whence they fell fifty feet, striking a projecting ledge, bounding off, and then falling upon the jagged and broken fragments of granite lying at the base of the precipice, some two hundred feet below the edge from which they had been hurled[13].’