Note 845 — Chapter I · JEWS. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 5442 (Lib. 9).
The Inquisition of Portugal continued active. For the years 1721 to 1794, the last recorded, the statistics are (Historia dos principaes Actos, pp. 280-91, 306-11, 332-9):—
Relaxed
In person.In effigy.Penanced.
Lisbon131171543
Evora83735
Coimbra 1210
139 20 3488
In this the superior energy and ferocity of the Lisbon tribunal is noteworthy; it relaxed no less than 66 persons in the years 1732-42. The last burning was of the unfortunate Padre Malagrida, in 1761 but, as late as 1760, Evora burnt four culprits.
As far as can be ascertained the total record of the Portuguese Inquisition, up to 1794, is 1175 relaxed in person, 633 in effigy and 29,590 penanced. The proportion of New Christians among these is impossible of ascertainment, but towards the last it diminished considerably, and, as in Spain, the jurisdiction included superstitious sorcery, blasphemy, bigamy, etc.
Under the ministry of the Marquis of Pombal, Dom José, April 8, 1768, deprived the Inquisition of censorship and, by successive edicts of May 2, 1768, June 16, 1773 and December, 1774, all distinctions between Old and New Christians were removed. An order of February 10, 1774, abolished the Inquisition of Goa, but the death of Dom José, in 1777, and the succession of Maria I drove Pombal from power, and it was revived in 1779, to be finally suppressed in 1812 (Vicente d’Abreu, pp. 6-7, 267-72, 274). In Portugal it was extinguished by the revolution of 1820.
In 1774 a new Regimento was issued by the inquisitor-general, Cardinal da Cunha, in the preface of which the Jesuits are accused of having perverted the forms of procedure, causing all the evils with which it had afflicted the land. The new code removed many of the abuses of the old and King José, in the decree approving it, repeated the accusation of the Jesuits, holding them responsible for the ferocious and sanguinary corruptions, incompatible with the principles of natural reason and religion, which had rendered the Inquisition a horror to all Europe and had created within the monarchy an independent and autocratic body of ecclesiastics.—Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquisição, pp. 3 sqq. 31, 37, 39, 42, 55, 62-3, 71, 89, 144-5, 149, 154-5. (Lisboa, 1774).
English versions of both Regimentos—that of 1640 and that of 1774—are given by da Costa Pereira Furtado de Mendonça in the Narrative of his Persecutions (London, 1811). He lay for three years, 1802 to 1805, in the prison of the Lisbon tribunal and, if his account is to be relied upon, the reforms of Pombal had already become obsolete.