Goa Inquisition Quotes

“Wikipedia: Goa Inquisition”

“In 1560, the year the Inquisition was set up, 13,092 Hindus were forcibly converted. In 1578, the… missionaries pulled down 350 temples and converted 100,000 people.”

“Goa is sadly famous for its inquisition, equally contrary to humanity and commerce. The Portuguese monks made us believe that the people worshiped the devil, and it is they who have served him.”

“There also took place in this year the destruction of the Hindu temples which existed in the territories of Your Majesty, of which none remains, for the priests of St. Francis also razed out f memory all those which existed in Bardez.”

“In the principal market was raised an engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a pulley …which unhinges a man’s joints, a cruel torture... Portuguese also inaugurated slave trade by seizing able-bodied men and women in the neighbouring Indian territory and selling them. They opened a slave market in Goa.”

“In 1534 Goa was made a bishopric with authority extending over the entire Far East. Special instructions were issued to the Portuguese Viceroy to root out the infidels. Hindu temples in Goa were destroyed and their property distributed to religious orders (like the Franciscans) in 1540 . The Inquisition was established in 1560.”

“Every word of theirs was a sentence of death and at their slightest nod were moved to terror the vast populations spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands, and who, on the most frivolous pretext could be clapped for all time in the deepest dungeon or strangled or offered as food for the flames of the pyre.”

“Apparently this market not only served the export trade but was in much demand by the local Portuguese whose lifestyle was extravagant and profligate. But we are also told that there was a lively trade in Kaffirs, a derogatory term for the natives of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The girls, who, we are told, were very much in demand, were paraded for sale in the nude.”

“Uruguay-based Alfredo de Mello, a Goan born historian, in his Memoirs of Goa (2003) writes how in a span of 252 years, the inquisition held sway in Goa “with a power that Stalin and other tyrants would have liked to hold.” Referring to the dreaded Goan Inquisition de Mello calls it “the worst of the existing inquisitions in the Catholic orb of the five parts of the world”.”

“As to the torture itself, it combined all that the ferocity of savages and the ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented. Besides the ordinary rack, thumb-screws, and leg crushers or Spanish boots, there were spiked wheels over which the victims were drawn with weights on their feet; boiling oil was poured over their legs, burning sulphur dropped on their bodies, and lighted candles held beneath their armpits.”

“In 1567 the Captain of Rachol Fort in South Goa bragged to his Portuguese king back home, “For nights and nights went on the demolishing, demolishing, demolishing of 280 Hindu temples. Not one remained in the happy lands of our division.” Jesuit historian Francisco de Souza jubilantly praised the feat, “It is incredible–the sentiment that the gentile were seized of when they saw their respective temple burning.””

“The Inquisition was an infamous tribunal at all places. But the infamy never reached greater depths, nor was more vile, more black, and more completely determined by mundane interests than at the tribunal of Goa, by irony called the Holy Office. Here the Inquisitors went to the length of imprisoning in its jails women who resisted their advances, and after having satisfied their bestial instincts there, ordering that they be burnt as heretics.”

“The Portuguese in this matter as in others followed the custom of the country: Linschoten recorded that they (Portuguese in Goa) never worked, but employed slaves, who were sold daily in the market like beasts, and della Valle notes that the ‘greatest part’ of people in Goa were slaves.”

“Goa was divested of its hallowed sites during the period of Portuguese political ascendancy. A letter by Andre Corsali, dated 6th January 1515, mentioned an early instance of violation,
In this island of Goa and of the whole of India there are innumerable ancient edifices of the gentiles and in a little neighbouring island that is called Divari, the Portuguese in order to build the land (town) of Goa, have destroyed an ancient temple called a pagoda which was built with wonderful skill, with ancient figures of a certain black stone worked with very great perfection...”

“The papers which comprised the archive of that tribunal were found to be a vast mass. I am informed that in them exist papers relating to all the suits tried by the Holy Office since its inception, and if they are not guarded with all care, therein would be found motives to defame, even falsely, all the families in the state and these would provide occasions to feed the enmities and intrigues which so abound in this country. ... As I am persuade that it is not expedient that they should be seen by any person it appears meet to me that it would be appropriate to burn them.”

“In 1545, the Vicar General, Fr. Minguel Vaz with Diogo Borba prepared a 41-point plan to effect the conversion ofnatives. Point No. 3 stated,
Since idolatry is so great an offence against God, as is manifest to all, it is just that Your Majesty (king of Portugal) should not permit it within your territories, and an order should be promulgated in Goa to the effect that in the whole island there should not be any temple public or secret, contravention whereof should entail grave penalties; that no official should make idols in any form, neither of stone, nor of wood, nor of copper, nor of any other metal; and that no Hindu festival should be publicly celebrated in the whole island...”

“In its two and a half centuries of existence at Goa, the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and 64 in effigy. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046. The people who were converted but still continued secretly to perform Hindu rituals were treated even more harshly… The manner in which the Church enriched itself was just scandalous. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols went to the Church…The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an impressive scale. The open performances of Hindu ceremonies were replaced by great public processions on Christian feast days. One of the worst criminals was Francis Xavier, later to be made into a saint.”

“The cruelties which in the name of the religion of peace and love this tribunal practiced in Europe, were carried to even greater excesses in India, where the Inquisitors, surrounded by luxuries which could stand comparison with the regal magnificence of the great potentates of Asia, saw with pride the Archbishop as well as the viceroy submitted to their power. Every word of theirs was a sentence of death and at their slightest nod were removed to terror the vast populations spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands, and who, on the most frivolous pretext could be clapped for all time in the deepest dungeon or strangled or offered as food for the flames of the pyre.”

“And, above all, don't let us forget India, the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to the monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Mahmud the Ghaznevid of cursed memory down to Aureng Zeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese Christians have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto da fe of the inquisition at Goa.”

“Around the territories of the neighbours of Goa, there exist in that island temples in which status of the enemy of the Cross are worshipped and every year their festivals are celebrated. These are attended by many Christians, both Europeans and natives, which is very wrong in that it promotes idolatry. It will be service to God if these temples in the island of Goa are destroyed and in their stead churches with saints are erected, and it is ordered that whosoever desires to live in this island and have house and lands there should become a Christian, and if he does not wish to be one should go out of the island. I assure Your Majesty that there would be no individual who did not turn to the faith of Our Lord Christ, because if exiled from this island he will have no means of livelihood.”