"As the publication of the proceedings against each party commenced, he was conducted by the alcalde into the middle of the aisle, where he continued standing with a lighted taper in his hand, until his sentence was delivered. I was summoned, in my turn, and was declared excommunicate; my goods were forfeited to the king, and myself banished from the Indies, and condemned to serve in the galleys of Portugal for five years; and moreover to perform such other penances, as might be expressly enjoined by the Inquisitors.
"The ceremony being concluded, and the Inquisitor re-seated, the wretched victims to be sacrificed by the holy Inquisition were ordered to advance separately. There were a man and a woman, and the images of four men deceased, with the chests in which their bones were deposited. The man and woman were black native Christians accused of magic, and condemned as apostates; but, in truth, as little sorcerers as those by whom they were condemned.
"The proceedings against these unfortunates were then read, all of which concluded in these terms: 'That the mercy of the holy office being prevented by their relapse or contumacy, and being indispensably obliged to punish them according to the rigour of the law, it gave them up to the secular power and civil justice, which it nevertheless entreated to regard with mercy and clemency these miserable creatures, and if they were liable to capital punishment, that it should be inflicted without the effusion of blood.'
"At the conclusion of these words, a tipstaff of the lay court approached, and seized his victims, each previously receiving a slight blow on the breast from the alcalde of the holy office, to testify that they were abandoned.
"How benevolent is the Inquisition thus to intercede for the guilty! What extreme condescension in the magistrates, to be satisfied, from complaisance to the Inquisition, with burning the culprits to the very marrow of their bones, rather than shed their blood!
"Thus terminated the act of faith; and whilst these wretches were conveyed to the banks of the river, where the viceroy and his court were assembled, and where the faggots on which they were to be immolated had been piled the preceding day, we were re-conducted to the holy office.
"After remaining in the Inquisition until the 23d of January, we were then conveyed to the hall of the court, and thence separately summoned to the board of the holy office, to receive from the Inquisitor a paper containing the penances to which he was pleased to sentence us. I went in my turn, and was directed to kneel down, after laying my hands upon the gospels, and in that posture to promise to preserve the most inviolable secrecy concerning all that had passed, and had come to my knowledge during my detention. My judge then gave me a writing signed by his hand, in the words following: 1st. In the three ensuing years he shall confess and communicate—during the first year, once a month—and the two following, at the feasts of Easter, Whitsuntide, Christmas, and the Assumption of our Lady. 2d. He shall, if practicable, hear mass and a sermon every Sunday and holiday. 3d. During the first three years he shall repeat, five times every day, the Lord's Prayer and Ave Maria, in honour of the five wounds of our Saviour. 4th. He shall not form any friendship nor particular intimacy with heretics or persons holding suspicious doctrines, which may prejudice his salvation. 5th. And lastly, he shall be inflexibly reserved as to every thing which he has seen, said, or heard, or the treatment which has been observed to him, as well at the board as in the other places of the holy office."
Such is a specimen of the practice of the Portuguese Inquisition, of which some further account will be given in the following chapter, from the late visit of Dr. Buchanan to Goa. The celebration of an act of faith in India, thus described by Dellon, is, as must have been observed by the reader, in some respects different from that in Spain; but though the procedure of the holy office in these countries may vary in some points of little moment, yet all the Inquisitorial tribunals uniformly agree in this, to sacrifice innocence, piety, and truth, to avarice, tyranny, and superstition.