The Inquisition revealed

by Thomas Timpson

“Is there in all history,” asks Dr. Geddes, “an instance of so gross and confident a mockery of God and the world as this of the inquisitors, earnestly beseeching the civil magistrates not to put the heretic they have condemned and delivered to them to death? For were they in earnest when they make their solemn petition to the secular magistrates, why do they bring their prisoners out of the Inquisition, and deliver them to those magistrates, in coats painted over with flames? Why do they teach that all heretics, above all other malefactors, ought to be punished with death? And why do they never resent the secular magistrates having so little regard to their earnest and joint petition as never to fail to burn all the heretics which are delivered to them by the Inquisition, within an hour or two after they have them in their hands? And why, in Rome, where the supreme civil and ecclesiastical authority are lodged in the same person, is this petition of the Inquisition, which is made there as well as in other places, never granted? Certainly, not to take any notice of the old canon, which forbids the clergy to have any hand in the blood of any person whatsoever, would be a much less dishonour to the Inquisition, than to pretend to go on observing that canon, by making a petition which is known to be so contrary to their principles and desires.

“The prisoners are no sooner in the hands of the civil magistrate than they are loaded with chains, and before the eyes of the inquisitors; and, being first carried to the secular gaols, are within an hour or two brought 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 do they intend to die? If they answer that they will die in the communion of the Roman church, they are condemned by him to be carried forth to the place of execution, and there to be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes. But if they say that they will die in the Protestant or any other faith that is contrary to the Roman, they are sentenced by him to be carried to the place of execution, and there to be burnt alive. At the place of execution, which, at Lisbon, is in 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 their top. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed go up a ladder between the two Jesuits, who have attended them all day, and when they are come even with the fore-mentioned board, they turn about to the people, and the Jesuits do spend near a quarter of an hour in exhorting the professed to be reconciled to the church of Rome; which, if the professed 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 ladder, the cry is, ‘Let the dogs’ beards be made! Let the dogs’ beards be made!’ which is done by thrusting of flaming furzes, fastened to a long pole, against their faces; and this inhumanity is commonly continued until their faces are burned to a coal, and is always accompanied with such acclamations of joy as are not to be heard on any other occasion; a bull fight or a farce being but dull entertainments to the using of a professed heretic thus inhumanly.

“The beards of the professed having been thus made, as they call it in jollity, fire is set to the furze which is at the bottom of the stake, and above which the professed are chained so high that the top of the flame seldom reacheth higher than the seat they sit upon; and if there happen to be a wind, and to which that place is much exposed, it seldom reacheth so high as their knees; so that though there be a calm, the professed are commonly dead in half an hour after the furze is set on fire; yet, if it 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 be a more lamentable spectacle than this, being joined with the sufferers, so long as they are able to speak, crying out, ‘Misericordia, por amos de Dios’ (Mercy, for the love of God,) yet it is beheld by people of both sexes and of all ages with such transports of joy and satisfaction, as are not on any other occasion to be met with. And that the reader may not think that this inhuman joy may be the effect of a natural cruelty that is in those people’s disposition, and not of the spirit of their religion, he may rest assured that all public malefactors, besides heretics, have their violent deaths nowhere more tenderly lamented than among the same people, and even when there is nothing in the manner of their deaths that appears inhuman or cruel.

“Within a few days after the execution, the pictures of all that have been burnt, and which were taken off their breasts when they were brought to the stake, are hung up in St. Domingo’s church, whose west end, though very high, is all covered over with such trophies of the Inquisition, hung up there in honour to Dominic, who, to fulfil his mother’s dream, was the first inventor of that court. Dominic’s mother, when she was about to be delivered, having dreamed that she was delivered, not of a human creature, but of a fierce dog, with a burning torch in his mouth!”

Enormities of cruel bigotry so truly shocking might well require to be authenticated by the most unquestionable testimony. This has been given. That of the Rev. Mr. Wilcox, chaplain to the English factory of Lisbon in the reign of Queen Anne, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, wrote in reply to the inquiry of Bishop Burnet, confirming the statements of Dr. Geddes, June 15, 1706. Part of his letter is as follows:—

“My Lord,—In obedience to your lordship’s commands of the 10th ultimo, I have here sent all that was printed concerning the last auto da fé. I saw the whole process, which is agreeable to what is published by Limborch and others upon that subject. Of the five persons condemned, there were but four burnt; Antonio Tavances, 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, for 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 who 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 entreaties could not procure him a larger allowance of wood to shorten his misery and dispatch him!”

CHAPTER XVI.
MODERN VICTIMS OF THE INQUISITION.

Galileo—Dr. Orobio de Castro—Count of Olavides—A Beata—Joseph da Costa.

“Popery is unchangeable.” Such is the profession of its greatest advocates. They declare that “the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church” is ever the same in its divine foundation, its principles of faith, and its ecclesiastical order. But history, as we have seen, records a long series of changes in its doctrines and institutions, adapted to the varying policy of its hierarchy, which is antichristian; and the advancement of society in knowledge and religion has compelled the observance of far more respect than formerly to the dictates of humanity. Hence the abolition of the horrid custom of publicly burning men for their religious opinions. The spirit of intolerance and bigotry, however, is essential to Romanism, as a system of priestly claims; but even this spirit has been restrained, as will appear from the following examples of its modern victims.

1. Galileo tortured in the Inquisition.—Galileo Galilei, son of a Florentine nobleman, was born A.D. 1564. He became a famous mathematician and astronomer at Pisa and Padua, and by his newly invented telescope he made valuable discoveries, so that, A.D. 1615, he taught that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of our system. This was considered by the Pope and cardinals a heresy, and he was seized by the Inquisition, and condemned as a heretic. He recanted, and was released under promise not to offend again; but being confident in the correctness of his science, he published, A.D. 1632, his “Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican System of the World,” when he was again arrested and condemned by that court to imprisonment for life, while his books were burnt, as if science could injure religon. Torture in the prison compelled him to sign the following abjuration; and, lest his death should endanger the Inquisition, he was banished to Florence. “I, Galileus, son of the late Vincentius Galileus, a Florentine, aged seventy, being here personally upon my trial, and on my knees before you, the most eminent and reverend the lord cardinals, inquisitors-general of the universal Christian commonwealth against heretical pravity, having before my eyes the most Holy Gospels, which I touch with my proper hands, do swear that I always have believed, and do now believe, and by the help of God hereafter will believe all that which the holy Catholic and apostolic Roman church doth hold, preach, and teach. But because, after I had been juridically enjoined and commanded by this Holy Office, that I should wholly forsake that false opinion, which holds that the sun is the centre, and immoveable; and that I should not hold, defend, nor by any manner, neither by word or writing, teach the aforesaid false doctrine; and after it was notified to me that the aforesaid doctrine was contrary to the Holy Scripture, I have written and printed a book, in which I treat of the said doctrine already condemned, and produce reasons of great force in favour of it, without giving any answer to them, I am, therefore, judged by the Holy Office as vehemently suspected of heresy, viz., that I have held and believed that the sun is the centre of the world, and immoveable, and that the earth is not the centre, but moves.