The Goa Inquisition (, ) was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in Portuguese India. Its objective was to enforce Catholic orthodoxy and allegiance to the Apostolic See.
The inquisition primarily focused on the New Christians accused of secretly practising their former religions, and Old Christians accused of involvement in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Also among the targets were those suspected of committing sodomy; they were given the second most harsh punishments. The inquisition was established in 1560, briefly stopped from 1774 to 1778, and was reconvened and continued until it was finally abolished in 1812.
Crypto-Hinduism practiced by the Goan Catholics was viewed as a challenge to the Church's doctrine. Those accused of such practices were often instructed to confess and realign with Catholic teachings. Imprisonment, torture, death penalties, and intimidating people into exile were used by the Inquisition to enforce Catholic religious control. The Inquisitors also seized and burned books written in Sanskrit, Dutch, English, or Konkani, as they were suspected of containing teachings that deviated from Catholic doctrine or promoted Protestant, Hindu or Muslim doctrine. The Inquisitors aimed to ensure Catholic teachings were absolutely enforced.
The aims of the Portuguese Empire in Asia were trading spices, spreading Christianity, and suppressing Islam (due to the Al-Andalus Islamic rule of Iberia which lasted 781 years). The Portuguese were motivated by both missionary fervor and economic incentive. Examples of this include the Madura Mission of Roberto de Nobili, the Jesuit mission to the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar, as well as the subjugation of the Malankara Church to the Latin Church at the Synod of Diamper in 1599.
In 1545, Francis Xavier wrote to King John III of Portugal requesting a Goan Inquisition. Between the Inquisition's beginning in 1561 and its temporary abolition in 1774, around 16,000 persons were brought to trial. Portuguese authorities sought to enforce Catholic doctrine in Goa. When the Inquisition ended in 1812, the majority of its records were destroyed by Portuguese officials, making it difficult to determine the exact figures of those prosecuted and the nature of their cases. However, the few records that remain indicate that approximately 57 individuals across the 249 year long inquisition were sentenced to execution for significant religious transgressions, while an additional 64 were symbolically condemned after they had died in custody. These numbers reflect the rarity of such punishments amid efforts to enforce compulsory Catholicism over many decades, partly because people avoided prosecution by fleeing Goa.
From the 1590s onwards, the Goan Inquisition was the most intense, as practices like offerings to local deities were perceived as witchcraft. This became the central focus of the Inquisition in the East in the 17th century.
In Goa, the Inquisition also prosecuted violators observing Hindu or Muslim rituals or festivals, and persons who interfered with Portuguese attempts to convert local Muslims and Hindus.
Background
thumb|Illustration of the ruins of the headquarters of the Goa Inquisition, from by [[Élisée Reclus (1905)]]
The Inquisition in Portugal
Ferdinand and Isabella were married in 1469, thereby uniting the Iberian kingdoms of Aragon and Castile into Spain. In 1492, they expelled the Jewish population of Spain, many of whom then moved to Portugal. One of the most notable New Christians was Garcia de Orta, who emigrated to Goa in 1534. He was posthumously convicted of Judaism. The Goa Inquisition enforced by the Portuguese Christians was not unusual, as similar tribunals operated in South American colonies during the same centuries such as the Lima Inquisition and the Brazil Inquisition under the Lisbon tribunal. Like the Goa Inquisition, these tribunals arrested suspects, interrogated and convicted them, and issued punishments for secretly practising religious beliefs different from Christianity.
Portuguese arrival and conquest
Goa was founded and built by ancient Hindu kingdoms and had served as a capital of the Kadamba dynasty. In the late 13th century, a Muslim invasion led to the plunder of Goa by Malik Kafur on behalf of Alauddin Khilji and an Islamic occupation. It became a part of the Bahmani Sultanate in the 15th century, and thereafter was under the rule of Sultan Adil Shah of Bijapur when Vasco da Gama reached Kozhekode (Calicut) in 1498. From 1515 onwards, Goa served as the centre of missionary efforts under Portugal's royal patronage (Padroado) to expand Catholic Christianity in Asia. Similarly, Portuguese king's involvement in setting up, financing and militarily supporting Catholic missionaries pre-dated Portuguese Goa by centuries. Similar were also issued by the Vatican in the favour of Spain and Portugal in South America in the 16th century. The mandated the building of churches and support for Catholic missions and evangelism activities in the new lands, and brought these under the religious jurisdiction of the Vatican. The Jesuits were the most active of the religious orders in Europe that participated under the mandate in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The establishment of the Portuguese on the Western coast of India was of particular interest to the New Christians population of Portugal who were suffering harshly under the Portuguese Inquisition. The crypto-Jewish targets of the Inquisition in Portugal began flocking to Goa, and their community reached considerable proportions. India was attractive for Jews who had been forcibly baptized in Portugal for a variety of reasons. One reason was that India was home to ancient, well-established Jewish communities. Jews who had been forcibly converted could approach these communities, and re-join their former faith if they chose to do so, without having to fear for their lives as these areas were beyond the scope of the Inquisition. Another reason was the opportunity to engage in trade (of spices, diamonds, etc.) from which New Christians in Portugal had been restricted at the onset of the Portuguese Inquisition. In his book, The Marrano Factory, Professor Antonio Saraiva of the University of Lisbon details the strength of the New Christians on the economic front by quoting a 1613 document written by attorney, Martin de Zellorigo. Zellorigo writes regarding "the Men of the Nation" (a term used for Jewish New Christians): "For in all of Portugal there is not a single merchant () who is not of this Nation. These people have their correspondents in all lands and domains of the king our lord. Those of Lisbon send kinsmen to the East Indies to establish trading-posts where they receive the exports from Portugal, which they barter for merchandise in demand back home. They have outposts in the Indian port cities of Goa and Cochin and in the interior. In Lisbon and in India nobody can handle the trade in merchandise except persons of this Nation. Without them, His Majesty will no longer be able to make a go of his Indian possessions, and will lose the 600,000 ducats a year in duties which finance the whole enterprise – from equipping the ships to paying the seamen and soldiers". The Portuguese reaction to the New Christians in India came in the form of bitter letters of complaint and polemics that were written, and sent to Portugal by secular and ecclesiastical authorities; these complaints were about trade practices, and the abandonment of Catholicism. In particular, the first archbishop of Goa Dom Gaspar de Leao Pereira, was extremely critical of the New Christian presence, and was highly influential in petitioning for the establishment of the Inquisition in Goa.
Portugal also sent missionaries to Goa, and its colonial government supported the Christian mission with incentives for baptizing Hindus and Muslims into Christians. A diocese was established in Goa in 1534.
The surviving records of missionaries from 16th to 17th century, states Délio de Mendonça, extensively stereotypes and criticizes the gentiles, a term that broadly referred to Hindus. To European missionaries, the Gentiles of India that were not outright hostile were superstitious, weak and greedy. The Portuguese accepted the caste system thereby attracting the elites of the local society, states Mendonça, because Europeans of the sixteenth century had their estate system and held that social divisions and hereditary royalty were divinely established. It was the festivals, syncretic religious practices and other traditional customs that were identified as heresy, relapses and shortcomings of the natives needing a preventative and punitive Inquisition.
He furthermore advocated for greater action by the Portuguese governor for the propagation of Christianity in Goa going as far as threatening the official with severe punishment in case of failure:
The inquisition was declared two decades after he left Goa, and the main laws were implemented in 1567, about 25 years after his departure and 8 years after his death. Around 472 years passed since his death and transfer of relics back to Old Goa.
Launch of the Inquisition in India
Even before the Inquisition was launched, the local government in Goa tried persons for religious crimes and punished those convicted, as well as targeted Judaizing. A Portuguese order to destroy Hindu temples along with the seizure of Hindu temple properties and their transfer to the Catholic missionaries is dated 30 June 1541. Prior to authorizing of the Inquisition office in Goa in 1560, King John III of Portugal issued an order, on 8 March 1546, to forbid Hinduism, destroy Hindu temples, prohibit the public celebration of Hindu feasts, expel Hindu priests and severely punish those who created any Hindu images in Portuguese possessions in India.
A special religious tax was imposed before 1550 on Muslim mosques within Portuguese territory. Records suggest that a New Christian was executed by the Portuguese in 1539 for the religious crime of "heretical utterances". A Jewish or Christian convert named Jeronimo Dias was garrotted and burnt at the stake in Goa by the Portuguese, for the religious heresy of Judaizing in 1543 before the Goa Inquisition tribunal was formed. The Goa Inquisition office was housed in the former palace of Sultan Adil Shah.
- Non-Christians were forbidden from occupying any public office, and only a Christian could hold such an office; According to Machado, in its two-and-a-half centuries of existence in Goa, the Inquisition burnt 57 people to death at the stake and 64 in effigy, of whom 105 were men and 16 were women.
Implementation and consequences
thumb|upright=1.25|The procession of the Inquisition at Goa. An annual event to publicly humiliate and punish the heretics, it shows the Chief Inquisitor, Dominican friars, Portuguese soldiers, as well as religious criminals condemned to be burnt in the procession.
An appeal to start the Inquisition in the Indian colonies of Portugal was sent by Vicar General Miguel Vaz. According to Indo-Portuguese historian Teotonio R. de Souza, the original requests targeted the "Moors" (Muslims), New Christian, Jews and those Hindus involved in propagating 'Gentility' and heresy, and it made Goa a centre of persecution operated by the Portuguese.
The colonial administration under demands of the Jesuits and Church Provincial Council of Goa in 1567 enacted anti-Hindu laws to end what the Catholics considered to be heretical conduct and to encourage conversions to Christianity. Laws were passed banning Christians from keeping Hindus in their employ, and the public worship of Hindus was deemed unlawful. Hindus were forced to assemble periodically in churches to listen to the Christian doctrine or to the criticism of their religion. Hindu books in Sanskrit and Marathi were burnt by the Goan Inquisition. It also forbade Hindu priests from entering Goa to officiate Hindu weddings. Violations resulted in various forms of punishment to non-Catholics such as fines, public flogging, banishment to Mozambique, imprisonment, execution, burning at stakes or burning in effigy under the orders of the Christian Portuguese prosecutors at the .
The inquisition forced Hindus to flee Goa in large numbers The Hindus responded to the destruction of their temples by recovering the images from the ruins of their older temples and using them to build new temples just outside the borders of the Portuguese controlled territories. In some cases where the Portuguese built churches on the spot the destroyed temples were, Hindus started annual processions that carry their gods and goddesses linking their newer temples to the site where the churches stand, after Portuguese colonial era ended.
Persecution of Goan Catholics
The Inquisition considered those Hindus who had converted to Catholicism, but continued to observe their former Hindu customs and cultural practices, as heretics. The Catholic missionaries aimed to eradicate indigenous languages such as Konkani and cultural practices such as ceremonies, fasts, growing of the tulsi plant in front of the house, the use of flowers and leaves for ceremony or ornament.
There were other far reaching changes that took place during the Portuguese occupation, these changes included the prohibition of traditional musical instruments and the prohibition of the singing of celebratory verses, which were replaced with Western music.
People were renamed when they converted and they were not permitted to use their original Hindu names. Alcohol was introduced and dietary habits changed dramatically so that foods which were once taboo, such as pork which is shunned by Muslims and beef which is shunned by Hindus, became part of the Goan diet. Most records of the nearly 250 years of Inquisition trials were burnt by the Portuguese after the Inquisition had been abolished. Those that have survived, such as those between 1782 and 1800, state that people continued to be tried and punished.
As the persecution increased, missionaries complained that the Bamonns (Brahmins) continued to perform the Hindu religious rites and Hindus defiantly increased their public religious ceremonies. This defiance by the Hindus, alleged the missionaries, motivated the recently converted Goan Catholics to participate in Hindu ceremonies and relapse into Hinduism. In addition, states Délio de Mendonça, there was a hypocritical difference between the preaching and the practices of the Portuguese who were living in Goa. The Portuguese Christians and many clergymen were gambling, spending extravagantly, practicing public concubinage, extorting money from the Indians, and engaging in sodomy and adultery. The "bad examples" of Portuguese Catholics were not universal and there were also "good examples" in which some Portuguese Catholics offered medical care to the Goan Catholics who were sick. However, the "good examples" were not strong enough when they were contrasted with the "bad examples", and the Portuguese betrayed their belief in their cultural superiority and their assumptions that "Hindus, Muslims, barbarians and pagans did not possess virtues and goodness", states Mendonça. The use of Portuguese was enforced, and Konkani became a language of marginal peoples.
Urged by the Franciscans, the Portuguese viceroy forbade the use of Konkani on 27 June 1684 and he also decreed that within three years, the local people would generally speak the Portuguese tongue. They would be required to use it in all of their contacts and they would also be required to use it in all contracts which were made in Portuguese territories. The penalty for violations of this law would be imprisonment. The decree was confirmed by the king on 17 March 1687. With the fall of the Province of the North (which included Bassein, Chaul and Salsette) to the Marathas in 1739, the Portuguese renewed their assault on Konkani. while the Hindu and Catholic elites turned to Marathi and Portuguese, respectively. Since India annexed Goa in 1961, Konkani has become the cement that binds all Goans across caste, religion and class; it is affectionately termed Konkani Mai (Mother Konkani).
Persecution of St Thomas Christians
thumb|An 18th century French sketch showing a man condemned to be burnt alive by the Goa Inquisition. The stake is behind him to his left, the punishment is sketched on his shirt. It was inspired by Charles Dellon's persecution.
In 1599 under Aleixo de Menezes, the Synod of Diamper forcefully converted the East Syriac Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis) of Kerala to the Catholic Church. He stated that they needed to be converted to Catholicism because they were practicing Nestorianism, a Christological position which was declared heretical by the Council of Ephesus. The synod imposed severe restrictions on their practice of their faith and it also imposed severe restrictions on their practice of using Syriac/Aramaic. They were politically disfranchised and their Metropolitanate status was discontinued by the blocking of bishops from the East. Charles Dellon, the 18th-century French physician, was another Christian who was arrested and tortured by the Goa Inquisition because he questioned Portuguese missionary practices in India. For five years, Dellon was imprisoned by the Goa Inquisition and he was not released until France demanded it. Dellon described, states Klaus Klostermaier, the horrors of life and death at the Catholic Palace of the Inquisition that managed the prison and deployed a rich assortment of torture instruments per recommendations of the Church tribunals.
There were assassination attempts against Archdeacon George, so as to subjugate the entire Church under Rome. The common prayer book was not spared. Books were burnt and any priest who was professing independence was imprisoned. Some altars were pulled down to make way for altars which were conforming to Catholic criteria.
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|+ Victims of the Goa Inquisition<br />(1782–1800 trials)