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Encyclopaedia Judaica

Persecution of the Jews: The Inquisition of the church against the Jews 1481-1834

How criminal Catholic "Christian" church and the criminal Pope justified anonymous allegations against the Jews and New Christians with torture, degradation, and burning - and confiscation of the property

from: Inquisition; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, vol. 8

presented by Michael Palomino (2007)

The Inquisition in the Portuguese Colonies

10. Inquisition in the colonies of Portugal: Goa 1546-1812

The Inquisition in the Portuguese Possessions.

[Inquisition at Goa 1546-1774 and 1777-1812: 82 autos-da-fé]

GOA. It had not been long before Conversos, attracted by the greater security as well as the economic opportunities offered by the Spanish and Portuguese possessions overseas, in the discovery and development of which they had taken a notable part, began to flock there in some numbers. The Inquisition followed close at their heels. Thus there was a branch of the Portuguese Inquisition at Goa, in India, where as early as 1543, a certain Dr. Jeronimo Dias had been burned for maintaining heretical opinions, although the Inquisition proper was not formally introduced until some years later.

In 1546, the formal establishment of the Inquisition was petitioned by St. Francis Xavier, but his wishes were complied with only in 1560. The first auto-da-fé took place on Sept. 27, 1563, two Judaizers figuring among the four victims. The subsequent activities became greater and greater. Autos-da-fé of particular violence took place under the zealous inquisitor Bartholomew da Fonseca in 1575 and 1578. In each of these 17 Judaizers lost their lives, a couple of Lutherans also suffering in the first. With the return of Fonseca to Portugal, the fury abated, so that from 1590 to 1597 no death sentences were pronounced.

Simultaneously, the number of Judaizers, terrified by the former outburst of activity, diminished, only two figuring among the 20 victims from 1597 to 1623. In 1618, however, the brothers Isaac and Abraham *Almosnino, members of a famous Jewish family of Fez, were tried on a charge of having uttered blasphemies against the Christian faith in the house of the Persian ambassador at Cochin. Isaac, a physician, was released only in 1621. Up to the end of the first quarter of the 17th century, no less than 3,800 cases had been tried by the Goa tribunal and 37 autos-da-fé held a number which by 1773 had risen to 82. As in Portugal, the tribunal was abolished on Feb. 10, 1774, witnessed an innocuous revival after the fall of Pombal in 1777, and was finally suppressed in 1812. (col. 1391)

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