The history of the Inquisition, as it is exercised at Goa written in French, by the ingenious Monsieur Dellon, who laboured five years under those severities ; with an account of his deliverance ; translated into English.

CHAP. XV. (Book 15)

Wherein is farther treated of the Formalities which are observed in the Inquisition.

IT is easie to know by what hath been already said in the precedent Chapter, that these miserable Victims of the Inquisition mutually accuse one another; and that a man may by this means be very inno∣cent, although he hath fifty Witnesses against him, and yet this man as innocent as he is, for want of accusing himself, or of guessing well, is de∣livered to the Executioners as sufficiently convicted; which would never happen, or at least very seldom, if they took care to confront the accu∣••ers, witnesses, and accused persons.

All which is practised against persons suspected, of Judaism, and all which hath been hitherto said, is to be understood also of persons be∣come

suspected of Sorcery; because they are supposed to have been pre∣sent at those superstitious assemblies which I before mentioned. And here the difficulty of naming their pretended complices and accuses is much greater, because they are not as the New Christians, to seek their witnesses, and their complices, in a certain species of men. But it is ne∣cessary that they find thrm at a venture, and indifferently, among their whole acquaitance, friends, kindred, enemies, neuters of all professi∣ons, which takes in many more innocents into these fortuitous and for∣ced accusations; because they must name a greater number, so to meet in this multitude of innocents with the witnesses, concerning whom they are asked.

The Goods both of those who are punished with Death, and of those who avoid it by their confession, are equally confiscated; because they are reputed guilty. And as the Inquisitors desire not so much their Lives as their Goods, and that according to the Laws of the Tribunal, they deliver none over to the Secular Arm but relapsed persons, and those who will not subscribe to their Accusations; these Judges use all possible Arts to induce the Prisoners to confess, not forgetting to rack them, to force them to it. They are also so merciful as to Rack these accused persons in a most violent manner, for to save their Lives in for∣cing them to confess the Crimes whereof they are accused; but the true reason which makes them so passionately desire that one should accuse himself, is that a man having confessed himself guilty, the World hath no longer any reason to doubt that his Goods were justly confiscated. And because remitting the punishment of Death to these pretended Cri∣minals, they dazle the eyes of the Simple with an apparant Goodness and Justice, which contributes, not a little, to preserve the Idea commonly entertained of the holiness and gentleness of this Tribunal; without which Artifice, it could not any long time subsist. It will not be amiss here to let the Reader know, that those who have thus escaped the fire by their forced Confession, when they are out of the Prison of the Holy Office, are strictly obliged to publish that they were treated with much goodness and clemency, since their life was preserved to them, which they had justly forfeited. For if a man who having confessed himself guilty, should afterwards presume to justifie himself after his enlarge∣ment, he would be immediately accused, arrested, and burnt at the first Act of Faith, without any hope of pardon.