The Goa Inquisition and the Early Modern Religious History of Portugal
José Pedro Paiva
Professor of History
University of Coimbra, Coimbra
With
Dale Luis Menezes
Georgetown University
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Dale Luis Menezes: Hello and welcome to this special web series on the Goa Inquisition. The series introduces you to the most recent research produced by internationally recognized scholars. I am Dale Luis Menezes.
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Our guests will give you a glimpse of their research, as well as the research that has taken place over the last half century. You will hear directly from the experts about the nature of state and religious violence, as well as the challenges a historian faces in researching a difficult topic such as the history of the Inquisition.
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Our web series aims to educate the public about the various aspects of this historical phenomenon. The web series is supported by the Al-Zulaij Collective in Goa. Additionally, the series is also supported by the History of the Inquisitions Group, a group of scholars spread across the world with institutional support from the Center for Religious History Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal and of the Chair of Sephardic Studies Alberto Benveniste at the University of Lisbon. We thank them all for the generous moral support.
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I guest today is Professor José Pedro Paiva. He studied at the European University Institute in Florence and holds a PhD in history in early modern and contemporary studies. Currently, he is full professor of early modern history at the University of Coimbra and the researcher at the Center for the history of society and culture. Welcome, Professor Paiva.
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José Pedro Paiva: Thank you very much for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you.
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We’ll get straight to the questions. I know you’re an expert and you’ve written several articles and books on the topic and so we’re going to discuss some of the writings that you have been doing recently. And particularly your work deals with the foundation of the Goa Inquisition, and you write about it in the global framework that pertains not only to the institutional history of the Inquisition per se, but also to the politics of confessionalization in Portugal at the time. Could you tell us more about the purpose for which the Goa Inquisition was established?
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José Pedro Paiva: Goa was the first Holy Office tribunal to be created outside Europe. It happened in December 1560, with the arrival of two inquisitors from Portugal. They traveled to India with the same fleet as the first Archbishop of Goa, Gaspar de Leão, who according to an order of the inquisitor general was also responsible for the process of establishing a new tribunal in Goa.
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Goa Inquisition, in fact, predated even the tribunals of Lima and Mexico, the two that were first created in Spanish America. Both in 1569, that is the order of the King was from 1569 and after founded in 1570 and 1571 respectively. The Indian inquisition, as it was also called, India inquisition or a Goa Inquisition had jurisdiction over a vast territory.
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It covered all the Portuguese areas from the East African coast to Macau and Timor, including various fortresses in Ormuz, India, Ceylon, Malacca and the Moluccas, for example. It was an enormous institution controlling a greater area than any other Holy Office tribunals in Portugal, Spain or in the Italian peninsula.
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Why was it created? Well, the first historian who studied this process seriously was a Portuguese historian called António Baião. His main argument was that the Goa Inquisition emerged from pressures and proposals put forward by certain Jesuits, in particular, Francis Xavier, who is very well known nowadays in Goa, who feared the growing numbers of New Christians in Cochin and Goa, and against the background of an imperial policy that displayed a greater interest in expanding and consolidating Christianity in Asia, a policy intensified after 1515, more or less after 1515.
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Well, in my opinion, Baião was right, however, I think the process was a bit more complex than this. It was not only the result of a pressure made by Francis Xavier in the context of this new policies of the Crown. My point is that there was a cluster of causalities which created a vast network of convergent forces that favored the founding of an Inquisition in Asia in 1560.
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Some important steps in this direction, were undertaken by another colleague of mine called Ana Cannas da Cunha, with a book she published in 1995. There she underlined four very important aspects, in my opinion, together with the panic caused in Cochin in 1557 that Baião referred or mentioned.
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The first of her points, was the growing fears that life in this region of the empire would be dominated by New Christian fugitives from Portugal, since they have become firmly established there, in Asia and they managed to obtain key positions in the so-called Estado da Índia, the Indian State, at the expense of the old Christian community.
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Second, Cannas da Cunha argued, the Crown feared of alliances between the New Christians and the Ottoman Jews who had set up commercial networks for trading spices and precious stones against the interests of the Portuguese Crown.
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Third, the recognition that attempts at religious integration in Asia, have not been very successful during the 30s and the 50s of the 16th century, making it necessary to adopt new policies to eradicate those who opposed Catholicism, which would in turn require, so to say, a more powerful coercive mechanism that is something similar to the Inquisition.
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And fourth and last, according to Cannas da Cunha, the fact that in Goa the jurisdiction of the authority responsible for overseeing deviations from the faith was not clearly defined. And the proceedings involving matters of faith needed to be clarified and concentrated within a single institution that is once again something similar to the Holy Office.
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Well, still, I would argue that there are other important elements, including the emphasis on the role played by different agents that should be stressed. One of the agents was the Inquisitor General, Dom Henrique, as he was called. He was a cardinal by this time, and also the General Inquisitor and later he would become king of Portugal also in 1578. The General Inquisitor was concerned with the incidents in Cochin in 1557.
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He also received many other reports, not only from Xavier but also from the Bishop of Goa, Juan de Albuquerque, for instance, and other Jesuits spread in different areas in Asia, concerning the presence, not only of New Christians on those territories, but also have Lutherans, Muslims. And the so-called heresies of large numbers of new converts named in the Portuguese sources, Christians of the land, Christãos da Terra, in Portuguese. So the creation of the Goa Inquisition was also a personal decision of the General Inquisitor first in 1554, a order that failed due to the fact that the inquisitor that was sent to Goa died in the meanwhile, and then a second order that succeeded in 1560.
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Another important point, in my view, is linked to the imperialist dynamics of the Portuguese presence in Asia. We could say that until the 40s of the 16th century, a policy of relatively pragmatic religious tolerance, a word that should be used with caution, in this context. But a policy of religious tolerance prevailed until the 40s. But afterwards the Crown’s imperial policy involved the combined efforts of the regular clergy and the episcopacy in attempting to transform Goa into a bastion of Christianity in Asia.
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After the arrival of the first Bishop of Goa in 1538, and especially after 1550s, new policies of militant conversion or religious imperialism were set up. The purpose was to impose a monolithic faith, with no margin for doubts or uncertainties in what concerned the Christian religion. The creation of the Inquisition was also part of these policies and processes.
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A third key strand, which in my view explains the creation of the Goa Inquisition, concerns the European Catholic world in the 50s and the 60s of the 16th century, a time when religious policies were consolidated and measures to combat any deviations from religious orthodoxy intensified.
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Both developments underpinned by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, and during the Council of Trent which ended in 1563 but [had] started earlier, 18 years earlier, in 1545. It was within this context, at the time when the Inquisition has already been established in Portugal, that the idea of creating a Holy Office in Goa took root.
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I remember that one of the targets of the Council of Trent was to remodel the faithful by the creation of mechanisms designed to discipline the soul, the body and also discipline the society as Paulo Brody mentioned. All aspects evident in the work of the ecclesiastical and religious organizations present in Portuguese Asia and applied with growing intensity from 1554-40 onwards, the Inquisition was also a piece of this strategy.
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Another matter to be considered is the way in which Christianity was disseminated in Asia. The policies adopted there to perform new conversions among agents usually baptized without religious instruction provoked an increase in number of Christians in India, of course, but, as they were poorly instructed they became, or these forms of instruction became a potential source of errors and misunderstandings. So, the Inquisition was also created to address some of these problems, especially by using a strategy of repression of those who did not behave according to the rules of the Church.
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And finally, this is a long exposition of course there were lots of causes and I am synthesizing. Finally, we should also take in consideration that when the decision was made to create a tribunal of the Inquisition in Goa, there was an ongoing breakup of the jurisdictional boundaries for the surveillance of heresy in a context in which the relations formed by the various religious authorities involved in safeguarding and spreading the faith were extremely flexible. In fact, there were different examples of Jesuits, for example, arresting suspects of heresy, which was not their task and handing them over to the episcopal justice authorities, for example.
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These situations were increasing in number and could undermine the unstable relations between the various bodies involved in these religious matters. Occasionally, also including the secular justice authorities. In 1560, for example, a Jesuit reported that in a small town close to Bombay, a wealthy moor who had been caught by another Jesuit was imprisoned in the secular jail for proclaiming verses from the Quran. A case that according to the Portuguese rules, should be only sentenced by an ecclesiastical authority.
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So, this situation regarding jurisdiction was so confused that, for instance in 1558, the residents of Cochin believe that some New Christians that were arrested in the previous year, were arrested by the Inquisition, an institution that was not created yet! So, the Goa Inquisition was therefore also founded to address the problem of the new [unclear] inquisitors being created in India quite every day.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Yes, yes, and I think that’s such a rich array of causes that you have set out, but just to add to it, it seems that the imperatives of imperial rule, and to govern society overseas, and even in Asia, over a very large area are the main causes that led to the foundation right? Just to summarize.
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José Pedro Paiva: Yes, it is one of the great causes. But the impulse from the general inquisitor and also the necessity of clarifying the jurisdiction between different ecclesiastical agents, especially one should be aware of the fact that in the 60s, you have different members of religious orders, especially at the time Franciscans and Jesuits operating in Asia, in different parts of Asia, you have the Bishop and their agents, their vicars and there was a kind of a confusion and also secular agents pursuing cases of heresy, so it was a panorama of confusion and the Inquisition served also to put order on this.
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Dale Luis Menezes: So, it’s a combination of state institutions, religious institutions but also individuals, right?
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José Pedro Paiva: And personal agency.
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Dale Luis Menezes: All of them came together and that’s essentially the stuff of history. Thank you.
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Let’s move on to the next question that I have for you and this pertains to the uniqueness of the Goa Inquisition, and I think you alluded to it earlier, when you said it was one of the earliest to be set up overseas, out of Europe. And this was from your book that you co-authored with another scholar Giuseppe Marcocci, titled ‘História da Inquisição Portuguesa’, or The History of the Portuguese Inquisition, which came out in 2013, which is one of the only books that have surveyed the Portuguese Tribunal from its foundation till its abolition. The whole 200 [250] years of its existence. That book reveals how much the Inquisition changed over time right, and it’s very important to consider the change over time and also the unique features across the globe. So, could you tell us what are these unique features of the Goa Inquisition?
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José Pedro Paiva: Well, as you said, things changed in [over] time so to explain these in detail, we would need a long, long talk and I already gave you a very long answer to the first question and I don’t want to do that again. So, I will try to be a little bit more syntactical this time.
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As conversion transformed some Asian native populations into new subjects of the Portuguese Crown, the enormous range of cultures and religions in India and elsewhere, represented a really new and challenging world for the Holy Office in Asian. In Goa, the Holy Office repressed beliefs and customs considered heathen and idolatrous, this was one of his main characteristics and it is very different from what happened in Portugal, of course.
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Initially, it launched an attack on the so-called converted natives. Many of the first to be sentenced by the Inquisition were of Hindu origin, accused of heathenism, ‘gentilidade’, was the Portuguese term used at the time. But persecution on the grounds of Islam was also very common at the beginning. Afraid of the local impact, the Inquisition might have, initially the Inquisitor granted the Christians of the land, even a five-year exemption from confiscation of assets, in addition to the privilege of avoiding formal absolution and abjuration, at the end of the first trial they suffered.
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At the same time, the Inquisition transferred to Asia, especially in the 16th century, the battle against New Christians, a battle that was being played, so to say, in Portugal and that was also transferred to Asia. But in opposition to what happened in Portugal, where in general, the Holy Office only condemned persons who have been baptized and became Christians because they were baptized, in Asia they faced a new problem, that is, the problem created by Hindus and Muslims, not baptized people accused of obstructing the conversion of other co-religionists or undermining the fragile Christian faith of the newly baptized. So, in Goa, and this is a specificity of the Goan tribunal, even Muslims and Hindus were put on trial.
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This does not happen in the European tribunals of the Inquisition. The collaboration of the bishops and that officials, as well as a more functional relationship with the missionaries, was another feature of the Goan tribunal. In fact, there, the inquisitors were assisted by deputies mainly recruited from the religious orders that is Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and later Augustinian.
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Well, this gave rise to the figure of the ‘missionary inquisitor’ a peculiarity of the Portuguese world, consolidating the alliance between, especially the Society of Jesus and the Holy Office, which proved stronger in an imperial context then in Portugal, of course, in Portugal, also the members of the religious order supported in some aspects, the role of the Inquisition, but here it was created a special kind of agent, the missionary who at the same time was an inquisitor. In practical terms the Inquisition created in Asia a web of commissaries that extended throughout territories, all over the Estado da Índia and the Goa Tribunal regularly used these ecclesiastical agents throughout its vast jurisdiction.
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In Goa, we find also the figure of the ‘Holy Office Naique’, a position for natives peculiar to the Goa Inquisition, which involved serving as an interpreter. It was a very specific problem in Goa, the Portuguese inquisitors they didn’t speak the local languages. And they had to try local people.
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Dale Luis Menezes: So, this was a particular person drawn from the local society but, the term ‘Naique’ over here would refer to, I suppose, somebody like a prominent person from the community, not just anybody?
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José Pedro Paiva: Yes, of course. Usually, they recruited…
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Dale Luis Menezes: A ‘Mukkadam’ kind of a person?
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José Pedro Paiva: Yes, that’s it. That’s the kind of person and they used the same name to call these people. They had some privileges that very similar to the ones that the ‘familiars’ of the Inquisition, in Portugal, had. The familiars of the Inquisition were secular agents of the Inquisition. Usually used by the Inquisition to arrest, for example, people in different places all over Portugal.
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Another peculiarity of the Goa Inquisition was that it served as the laboratory for testing out new inquisitorial strategies, always in consultation with the general council of the Holy Office in Lisbon, thanks to the regular exchange of correspondence of letters. I mean, this is another very important aspect, the Goan Inquisition was too much dependent from orders received from Lisbon.
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And sometimes the impact of this was that the trials lasted longer in Asia then usually in the tribunals of the Portuguese inquisition in Europe. Tensions with secular authorities was another characteristic of Goan Inquisition. These types of tensions dated back to the initial phase and characterized the entire history of the Goa Inquisition, either due to controversies involving jurisdiction and precedents, or difficulties and delays on the part of the Viceroys or Governors in paying the salaries of the inquisitors.
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Because they were the agents in Goa who paid the inquisitors and their officials, of course. Or, sometimes the delay in paying the expenses for the Autos da Fé, the great ritual of the inquisition where the persons that were tried were publicly exhibited, and sometimes at the end of the Auto da Fé those condemned to death penalty were burned at the stake, and this is another characteristic of the Goa Inquisition these tensions with secular authorities.
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Finally, I must underline, and this is also very important that the tribunal of Goa was the most violent of all the Portuguese ones. I mean the one which sentenced more people and the one which more applied death penalty, and until very late. The last three individuals to be executed in the entire history of the Portuguese all the office all died in Goa in February 1773. We don’t know even the name of these three people, but we know that in 1773, three people were sentenced to death by the Inquisition.
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This harshness was also fueled by Charles Dellon, a French physician arrested in Daman and condemned in Goa in 1677. His book titled ‘The History of the Inquisition’, as it is exercised in Goa was first published in Leiden 1687 and contributed most towards blackening the name of the Inquisition. And his book would make it an issue widely debated by learned men throughout the 18th century Europe, so it is very interesting that this book that was the beginning of the creation of the ‘black legend’ of the Portuguese inquisition was written by someone who was rescued and tried in the Goa Inquisition.
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Dale Luis Menezes: You have again laid down a rich array of features that are unique to the Goa Inquisition. My next question deals with social discipline. We talked about the bishops, and the figure of the missionary inquisitor, and also the figure of the Naique. And, of course, these are persons who were involved in the control, in the running of the institution—the everyday business of the Inquisition.
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My next question is in relation to one of your books, ‘Baluartes da Fé e da Disciplina’ (or, Bastions of Faith and Discipline) if you translate it in English and it came out in 2011. You talk about how these various sections of the bishops, the clergy, and the Inquisitors worked together in creating the social control or discipline as you talk about it.
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Could you talk a little bit more about how this mechanism worked, of social control. Maybe we could start with what do you mean by social control and social discipline and then move on to how it worked?
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José Pedro Paiva: Well, basically I mean the control of the society, not only of the beliefs of people in religious matters, but also from the perspective of their daily behavior, especially their moral behavior, and this is, in fact, another key question: the cooperation between bishops, the clergy, especially the regular clergy, and the Inquisition, which was crucial in order to impose social discipline and strengthen church power and simultaneously the disciplining of population under the Portuguese secular rule.
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Well, first, I would say that we need some more research in order to give specific details about this cooperation between the bishops and the Inquisition in different parts of Asia. We should not forget that there were different bishops of the Portuguese Patronage [Padroado] in Asia, and they were many. You had a Bishop in Goa. Initially, you only have a Bishop in Goa but after the middle of the 16th century, you have another one in Cochin, another one in Malacca, another one in Mylapore, or another one in Macau, and even in Japan and China in the 17th century.
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Moreover, due to the lack of sources, we have some difficulties in knowing exactly the specific performance of some of these bishops, in different moments all over early modern period. Anyhow, I would say that in general, the pattern that served in Portugal was also applied in Asia, and, as I said, probably with more intensity due to the huge extension of the area that the Goa Inquisition had to cover. I mean, in Goa the inquisitors needed more support and the help of Bishops then in Portugal.
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And in fact, bishops and their officials executed orders in different areas, sent by the Tribunal that was centralized in Goa. They arrested prisoners, for instance, in the name of the Inquisition. They heard testimonies locally, that after they sent to the Goa Inquisition in Goa. They sent a large variety of information to the Goa inquisitors, for example, about people that are suspicious of the way of their beliefs and practice Christianity.
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And the Archbishops of Goa, for instance, for example, they also took part in the final decisions of the trials, together with the inquisitors. The final decision of a trial was done by a college of judges, and one of them in Goa was the usually the Archbishop of Goa, so a very direct presence in the decisions of the Inquisition. So, in general terms, I would say that this type of cooperation was very important, and definitely without the help of the local bishops, the Inquisition’s task would have been much more limited in Asia, then it really was.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Right and I take your point about more research needed and would that point also apply to say, the figure of the Naique? Do we need to know more about this person, are there sources to do it, is it possible to know more?
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José Pedro Paiva: Well, the bigger problem is that, and I will say a little bit more about this probably if we talk about the end of the Inquisition, the big problem is that the most part of the trials that were sentenced in Goa were burned when the Inquisition was abolished. So, we lost the most part of the information regarding the more or less 13,000 trials that the Inquisition of Goa sentenced. So, we lack, in fact, some information to know better about some agents or some officials, like the Naique, for example. It will be not very easy to know more about them based on inquisitorial sources.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Presumably, something else, that we need to find? Some other sources?
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José Pedro Paiva: …Local sources, some of them maybe not in Portuguese.
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Dale Luis Menezes: In Marathi or Konkani?
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José Pedro Paiva: Yes, in Marathi or other languages that could tell us more.
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Dale Luis Menezes: I want to shift our focus to the 18th century now, and this is towards the end of the Inquisitorial period, and you along with your co-author, write in the ‘História da Inquisição Portuguesa’, about the “asphyxiation” of Goa, which is a period, you portrayed especially severe. And over here, I want to return to your earlier point about the harshness and the violence of the Tribunal in Asia or in Goa. Why do you characterize it as asphyxiation? Could you elaborate on what you mean by that and give us a sense of what this asphyxiation was?
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José Pedro Paiva: It is true what you have said. Giuseppe Marcocci and I, we used the expression ‘asphyxiation of Goa’ to characterize the situation of the institution during the last decade of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. During that period, the Goa Inquisitors still sought to demonstrate their dedication to executing orders from the Inquisitor General and the Governor of India.
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And they accepted, according to their own words, as obedient and faithful servants, the decision to allow Hindus and Muslims freedom of worship in Daman. So, they received the order to allow freedom of worship to Hindus in Daman, for the public good of the State of India, as they say, and also to some extent for the preservation and the spiritual interests of religion and the Church.
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Why this? Because in 1801, a letter sent from Portugal ordered that that the public celebration of banquettes, dances, and ablutions, and other Hindu rituals should be still banned in Portuguese territories in Asia. But that requests from Naiques to accompany the bhats when they enter the Estado da Índia should be granted.
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The words of the Portuguese authorities in the metropolis reflected an underlying desire to contain, from a distance and with the usual restrictions which is implied, the potential excesses of the Inquisition in Asia. Portuguese authorities therefore patiently explained that the term ‘dogmatist’, and they explained this to inquisitors, the term dogmatists could not be applied to converts, who encourage, spread and teach others how to pray to idols, since being poor and ignorant they are only encouraging and teaching what they have heard and seen from others.
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And therefore, lacked the ‘refinement’, it’s the word they used, they lacked the refinement and scholarship which characterizes heretics and dogmatists. So, the conclusion was obvious, it was acceptable to combat heathenism but moderation was necessary to avoid making the Catholic religion odious in Asia, but, instead, it should be looked at as friendly to heathens, gently drawing them to it and encouraging them to embrace the Catholic religion.
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Well, according to this, in a certain way, we could say that the Goa Inquisition was losing enemies to pursue, so that’s why we think that the Goa Inquisition was under a process of asphyxiation that would lead to its end some years later. Moreover, the pressure of secular authorities intensified and, for example, in 1801, in the same year, the Portuguese Governor requested the Holy Office to be abolished and replaced by a Commissioner, since it is usually only involved in persecuting the most destitute people—since the Inquisition was also involved in persecuting destitute people.
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So, the Holy Office, which already appeared to be an outdated tool by this time, was no longer useful and its structure was becoming increasingly weak due to a shortage of Ministers, which is another side of these asphyxiation. They don’t have too many people working there, so, in a word, the Tribunal was in fact in a process of asphyxiation.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Does it strike you as a bit ironic that in a time, this is the late 18th century, the Enlightenment, Pombal’s reforms, the state is secularizing, quote unquote, or ‘laicizing’ as we would term it. In that sort of period, where the Inquisition is shrinking and it’s almost on his way out, but it starts to be harsher. So, one, is that ironic? But also another ironic thing is that does it get harsher over time? Is it harsh, but is it less harsh in an earlier period?
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José Pedro Paiva: I don’t know if it was harsher in the 18th century than in the beginning. That depends if you consider the context of the new rational and Illuministic [Enlightenment] ideas of the 18th century, of course condemned people in the end of the 18th century, in 1773 to death penalty because he believes in a way different to the one that the church teaches, well, for a rational, illuministic [enlightened person] this was, of course, very harsh.
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But the same type of penalties were applied since the beginning of the 16th century. I don’t know, I don’t notice a reduction or an increase of harshness in the procedures of the Inquisition all over time and until the end of the 18th century in Goa.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Which brings me to my final question, and this is relating to the abolition of the Inquisition, and in your book, you note that the Inquisition of Goa was abolished before the tribunals of Lisbon, or Évora, or even Coimbra. Could you explain why the Inquisition, the Goa Inquisition, was abolished earlier than the Portuguese tribunals and this process of abolition was…
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José Pedro Paiva: In a certain way, it was also linked with the explanations I gave in the previous…
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Dale Luis Menezes: The unique features
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José Pedro Paiva: …yeah, but in fact the Goa Inquisition had a very different story regarding its end in comparison to what happened in Portugal. Well, first of all, it was abolished twice. And this was unique.
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It was abolished first in 1774. And this was a decision of the inquisitor general justified in first place by the loss of almost all the Portuguese dominions in Asia, then reduced to the island of Goa and its provinces. Well after the conquests of the Dutch and of the other, now I am forgetting the name of the empire that in the 18th century conquered also lots of places from the Portuguese, well, but…
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Basically, in the late 18th century, the presence of the Portuguese in Asia was a lot reduced and the Inquisitor General compared Goa with other regions, which were clearly far more central to the Crowns plans for the empire, for example, Brazil. And he said that in Bahia and the Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which had huge territories, they only have commissaries to act for the Inquisition. They don’t have a trial [court] there.
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So, in the words of the inquisitor general, it would be “inconsistent” and “disproportionate”, were the words that were used, in the present circumstances, to maintain a tribunal in Goa for such a limited area mainly inhabited by heathens, infidels, and those who do not belong to the Church. The Crown approved the decision. The Crown approve the proposal for replacing the tribunal in Goa with a network of commissaries, as was being done in the captaincies of Brazil.
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Well, at the same time, the Marquis of Pombal, who was the most powerful Minister of the King at that time sent an official letter to the Governor in India and Captain General, informing him of the order to abolish the Goa Inquisition, and explaining and describing the inquisitors as, and I quote, people not accustomed to obedience but rather finding pretexts to evade orders from Portugal.
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For the Marquis of Pombal, this was intolerable, and he advised the Governor to warn the inquisitors that in the unlikely event that they showed any resistance, they should be treated as rebels and they should be the arrested. So, in 1774, due to these ideas, the Inquisition was closed.
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But 4 years later, it was restored due to the political changes in Portugal. In 1777, the King died, the Marquis of Pombal was put aside from the power and the new ruler, the Queen Dona Maria, decided to restore the Inquisition. So, it was restored, and it functioned again until 1812, when another order, this time from the King determined its definitive end.
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We should be aware that the Portuguese inquisition was only suppressed, or was suppressed, 10 years later, in 1821 after the liberal revolution, so the end of the Goan Inquisition proceeded the Portuguese one by 10 years. It was in 1802, the Napoleonic invasion in Portugal and the political consequences hastened the demise of the Goa Inquisition.
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Three years after the invasion of Portugal by the Napoleonic forces, a chapter of the Treaty of Alliance, signed between Portugal and England, for the purpose of curbing the French invasion in Portugal, established the obligation to allow tolerance of all cults and religions in Goa and its dependencies. Accordingly, so it was a decision imposed we could say by an international treaty of agreement between Portugal and England that determined the end of the Goa Inquisition.
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According to this to this Treaty, and pressed by the necessity of the British support, in June 1812, the Prince Regent, John VI of Portugal, informed the Portuguese Viceroy of India, of the order to abolish the Inquisition, and in the letter he used the expression “abolish the Inquisition forever”.
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And at the time, all the records of the Inquisition trials, held by the Indian tribunal during its 252 years of existence, were preserved. But this Viceroy, however, when he requested guidance from Lisbon on what to do with the archive of the Inquisition, he also presented his personal opinion about what should be done. And he said, and I quote from a letter he wrote, the right thing to do would be to burn all the documents.
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And in fact, in 1814 thousands of case files were consigned to the flames. This decision implied that the sources of countless stories went up in smoke. It was in fact a much more bitter fate, then the one reserved for the archives in Portugal, shortly afterwards which were preserved in the national archives until today, and are a very important source to preserve the memory of the atrocities committed by the Inquisition, that unfortunately we don’t possess for the case of Goa, due to this decision, I would say nowadays, a stupid decision of burning all those trials.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Right and we’ve covered a long arc from the foundation till its abolition and it seemed…I don’t know how to characterize the situation where all the records were burnt, because the Viceroy was worried that it would be revived again, and so the final act was to burn all the records and with it our ability to mine those sources for various kinds of historical explorations.
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Professor, my final question to you is a simple one, and I just wanted to know and for you to give our viewers a sense of what you’re working on, what can we expect from you in the in the next few years?
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José Pedro Paiva: Well, currently I’m not working with the Inquisition, well at least directly. I am the PI of a research project titled ‘Religion, Ecclesiastical Administration and Justice in the Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1514-1750’. And the goal of this project is to understand how the bishops and their network of agents as well as its administrative and judicial structures were formed, operated, and contributed to the process of shaping Christianity in the Portuguese empire.
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So, I would say that, together with these we have four more purposes: first, of reconstructing and then understanding the activities of the overseas episcopate in the evangelization process, a field in which the historiography has been monopolized by the actions of the regular clergy, the missionaries. And I think we must also look at the role of the Episcopal structures in this process, which are not very well known.
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Second understanding, from the perspectives of comparative history and connected history, how bishops following the model of the kingdom’s [Portugal’s] dioceses operated in areas as diverse as the Atlantic highlands, Brazil, Africa and Asia. So, this competitive perspective is also part of the project.
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Third, determining the bishops’ role in the process of confessionalization and assertion of Royal authority in the empire. In a certain way also the question of social disciplining and social control in the empire performed by the episcopal structures. And fourth, assessing how bishops and secular clergy interacted with populations and other agents responsible for the dissemination of Catholic orthodoxy, namely the Inquisition and the regular clergy, so this relation that we talked about is also in the core of the project. Well, in this project, I also coordinate a network of 16 scholars from Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, and Italy, and I hope that in the summer of 2022, that is next year, we will have a book ready with all the main conclusions of this process that started three years ago.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Well, that sounds very exciting and I for one will be watching out for it when it comes out next summer.
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José Pedro Paiva: I hope we could also publish it in English this time. I would also like to announce that ‘The History of the Portuguese Inquisition’ is quite ready for publication in English.
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Dale Luis Menezes: That’s fantastic! So, I just wanted to go over very quickly on some of the main points that you highlighted, and I think you’ve highlighted that it was a cluster of many causes that led to the foundation of the Inquisition, you spoke about the unique features, especially of the non-baptized people, the network of Bishops, clergy, ‘missionary inquisitors’ in Asia, particularly in Goa the figure of the Naique, who was kind of an interpreter or a go-between, you stressed the severity of the violence or harshness as you spoke about it and, finally, the process of abolition and how various interest groups and politics across institutions, political, religious and so on. So, you gave us a good sense of what were the thoughts in the mind so various individuals and various individuals who occupied these institutions. So, for all that I thank you very much for your time and…
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José Pedro Paiva: …no, I should thank you for the invitation and for this brilliant synthesis much better than…
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Dale Luis Menezes: I was taking good notes! So, thank you once again and to our viewers thanks for watching and thanks for your time as well, so thank you!
