Original Article: Goa Inquisition — Was St. Francis Xavier a saint or a religious terrorist?
Navrang IndiaMarch 15, 2018
The very purpose of religion is to train a man to lead a disciplined life in all spheres of day-to-day social activities. All religions highlight love, compassion and care for others irrespective of caste, creed, religion and country. There is no room for violence or hatred. Nor is there a space for advocating terror and intimidation to spread religion and its tenets. When the fundamental purpose of a religion is defeated, there will be anarchy and chaos. Goa Inquisition, initiated by St. Francis Xavier is suppressed from Indian history; here the casualty is transparency. The undeniable fact is it is one of the darkest chapters in Indian history under foreign occupation and many school History textbooks do not mention it. Unfortunately, many Indian historical events either do not get the needed exposure or purposely get distorted and stunted. The truth must be told as it is, if not, history does not carry any relevance at all.
In the matter of religious policy of the Portuguese in Goa, the missionary work of St. Francis Xavier, was worthy of mention — not in the right sense, but in terms of its perversion and misuse on the Indian soil. He is one of the most over-hyped “Christian Saints” ever projected by the Catholic higher authorities.
In 1538, King John III, of Portugal expressed his keen desire to send missionaries to the Orient and sought the advice of Ignatius de Loyola in Rome. Francis Xavier was chosen for the task and sent to Portugal in 1541. In the history of Christianity, we have come across a handful of preachers who used violence and torture as the main tools to spread Christianity across the continents. Some historians view that such politically motivated Inquisition by the government, using the religious institutions is a stern warning to those who may challenge the government’s power. If people get killed in the name of the Government, this will invite protests and resistance from the people. On the other hand, if they get killed in the name of God, there will be less resistance and the government may get away with it. Mixing government and religion is conducive to bad governance.
St. Francis Xavier statue (1506 –3 déc.1552)iconographie chrétienne
Above image: In a letter dated 16 May 1546, Francis Xavier requested the ruler of Portugal, King John III to launch the Goa Inquisition in May 1546. His suggestion was implemented in 1560, eight years after Xavier’s death. Jesuit missionaries felt there was a serious threat to the purity of Catholic Christian belief and pressed for the Inquisition to punish the Crypto-Hindus, Crypto-Muslims and Crypto-Jews, ……………………………
It was St. Francis Xavier who, for the first time, brought torture, violence, intimidation and terror to Goa to harass the peace-loving Indian natives and force them to become Catholic Christians against their wish. Not knowing Indian history and the intellectual capacity of the Indians and their solid contribution to Astronomy, Maths, Arts and Science, temple architecture, languages, etc., he thought Indians were heretics and Pagans and worshipped Devils and Demons in idol forms, and intellectually inferior. He wanted them to follow Western religion and Western culture and shun vegetarianism and their native religion which has been around for centuries. Instead, he wanted them to eat beef, pork and the meat of other slaughtered animals and behave like Europeans with poise and decorum. In simple words he expected the “Indians to ape Europeans” and their way of life, food and drinking habits including music, in particular, Portuguese.
Francis Xavier landed in Goa backed by his earlier participation in the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal where he had gained first-hand experience of persecuting thousands of Jews and Muslims, using torture, violence and terror. On May 16, 1545, anxious as he was about the spread of Christianity in the new land of Goa, he requested the King of Portugal to establish an Inquisition in Goa. He mentioned, “The second necessity for the Christians is that Your Majesty establishes the Holy Inquisition in Goa because there are many who live according to the Jewish Law and according to the Mohammedan Sect, without any fear of God or Shame of the World. And since there are many Hindus who are spread all over the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition, and of many preaches, Your Majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and faithful subjects in India”.
However, St. Xavier did not see his wish fulfilled on the soil of Goa. But he knew the role of torture and brutality in the Inquisition. Driven by religious zeal, in the year 1560 the King of Portugal sent the first Official inquisitors Aleixo Dias Falcfo and Francisco Marques, to India and they established the Inquisition in Goa. This Inquisition was finally abolished only in 1812. The files relating to several crimes committed by the Jesuits in Goa were kept there first and later taken to Lisbon, apparently to tamper them. It is difficult to gather the true severity of the savagery and torture committed by the Jesuits.
Almost all of the Goa Inquisition’s records were burnt by the Portuguese when the Inquisition was abolished in 1820. However, some records left by the French physician Charles Dellon (also a victim of the Goan Inquisition), and others, point out that nearly 70% of those found guilty of Crypto-Hinduism were executed and many prisoners starved to death. The surviving records of missionaries from the 16th to 17th century, states Délio de Mendonça, extensively stereotypes and criticizes the Gentiles, a term that broadly referred to Jews, Hindus and Muslims. Goa Inquisition proceeding, it is recorded, displayed prejudice and racial discrimination against Indians in their motherland by the invaded Europeans. More than 2000 Indian Christians were murdered during this period and a big chunk of Indian Christians moved over to South Canara in Karnataka and settled down there.
Goa Inquisition sketch(1560–1820). en.wikipedia.org
Above image: A version of the historic Portuguese Inquisition banner in Goa. The dog sketch varies………………………
On the advice of Cardinal Henrique of Portugal Aleixo Díaz Falcão as the first inquisitor established the first tribunal. The holy council began their official basic Inquisition work in a palace called the Holy House in 1560. Portuguese called it Orlem Goro or Big House,
The palatial office of Goa Inquisition.en.wikipedia.org
Above image: The Goa Inquisition office was housed in the former palace of Sultan Adil Shah of Bijapur (Karnataka)……..
with two hundred cells for the infidels. Earlier it was the residence of the Portuguese Governors of Goa till 1554. For the express purpose of the Inquisition and its successful implementation, the government made certain suitable modifications including a Chapel. Added to the palace were confinements, and torture chambers with the latest and improvised gadgets for the heathens and infidels.
The Strappado was used as public punishment,
Above image: The Strappado, also known as Corda, is a form of torture wherein the victim’s hands are tied behind his or her back and suspended by a rope attached to the wrists, typically resulting in dislocated shoulders. Weights may be added to the body to intensify the effect and increase the pain. This kind of torture would generally not last more than an hour, without rest, as it would likely result in death (Wikipedia)…………………………….
An array of torture gadgets would reveal how cruel and mean the frenzied religious heads whose main purpose was to banish paganism for good in Goa and to introduce the true religion of Jesus Christ among the natives. The so-called torture
Christian torture device “Rack” in Art America
Above image: “Rack” is a rectangular, usually wooden frame, slightly raised from the ground, with a roller at one or both ends. The most commonly known torture device from the Middle Ages.
The victim’s hands and feet were tied to each end and the rollers would be turned, stretching the victim’s body to uncomfortable lengths. As the interrogation continues, a handle and ratchet mechanism attached to the top roller are used to gradually increase the tension on the chains, inducing excruciating pain. One fearsome aspect of being stretched too far on the rack is the loud popping noises made by snapping cartilage, ligaments or bones………………………….
device ‘Rack’- a system of Pulleys designed to tear the limbs of Hindus apart, described in contemporary accounts is a valid proof of the ingenuity of these inquisitors. To break the legs and knees of the heretics and pagans, no device was more suitable than the ‘Strappado’ used by Goa Inquisitors. The holy men did not leave the Indian women alone. They came up with a special horror house device to make them scream which would blow the room. The ingenious torture device is called ‘Breast-Ripper’, an iron vice that was heated red-hot and used to tear out breasts. Thanks to St. Francis, he had no mercy on women; he never excluded women from torture.
St. Francis Xavier’s mortal remains in Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa Wikimedia Commons
Above image: An 18th-century French sketch showing a man condemned to be burnt alive by the Goa Inquisition. The stake is behind to his left, the punishment sketched on his shirt. It was inspired by Charles Dellon’s persecution………………………
An instrument with sharp spikes was used to cut the ears of the pagans. The purported Holy House (of Christ) was cruelty, barbarism and wickedness personified and run by fools and vicious savages just out of uncivilized society. The corrupt and nauseating religious orders gave a run on Goa and her people. Inquisition, which was introduced in 1560 lasted until the year 1812, a long span of 252 years of horror and terror in the name of Christ to destroy paganism and introduce the true religion of Christ. The Inquisition in Goa, in terms of its brutality and savagery, was tagged as ‘’the worst of the existing inquisitions in the catholic orb of the five parts of the world,’’ as felt unanimously by national and foreign writers.
Christian terror gadget. Goa Inquisition owlcation.com/
Above image: Yet another model of “Strappado”. The victim is suspended in the air by a rope attached to his hands that are tied behind his back……………………………
Christian terror gadget Breast -ripper. en.Wikipedia org
Above image: Brest-ripper for honourable women. The instrument, made from iron, was designed to rip the breasts from a woman and was usually heated during torture. They were designed to shred or tear off the breasts of the victim. If the woman did not die, she would be disfigured for the rest of her life. It was used on women who were accused of adultery or self-performed abortion. In the Goa Inquisition, Christian preachers used these painful torture instruments on Indian women for conversion purposes. St. Francis was aware of this device meant for women. It was used in Spanish Inquisition………
Saint Francis Xavier, S.J. (7 April 1506–3 December 1552), was a Navarrese Basque Roman Catholic missionary, born in Javier (Xavier in Navarro-Aragonese or Xavier in Basque), Kingdom of Navarre (present-day Spain), and a co-founder of the Society of Jesus was a companion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven prominent Jesuits
The pathetic fact is this Jesuit who propagated violence and torture as a means to popularize Christianity and who played a pivotal role in Spain and Goa Inquisition was beatified by Pope Paul V on 25 October 1619 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. In 1624, he was made co-patron of Navarre alongside Santiago and was one of the greatest missionaries since Saint Paul. He converted a lot of people across the globe not through love and humility but through displaying torture gadgets and humiliation — a total departure from what Christ had preached. Christ took upon himself the sins committed by people, but contrary to Christ’s preaching, St Francis and his pseudo-Christian missionaries behaved much worse than the “Devils in Hades”. Several of my Christian friends had no idea about the Goa Inquisition and its impact on Hindus, Muslims, Jews and even Syrian Christians of India. Nor are they aware that St. Francis Xavier was one the most cruel and despicable Christian Evangelists in the annals of modern Christian history. In India, there are many well-known institutions, including Management Schools, carrying St. Francis Xavier’s name and the people there extol him and his virtues. I wonder whether they are aware of his major role in killing and maiming thousands of innocent non-Hindus and native Christians on the soil of Goa during the Inquisition introduced by him. In terms of savagery and butchery with no room for compassion and mercy, there was no difference between St. Francis Xavier and the early 20th-century American Mafiosi of “The Prohibition Era” whose lives were interwoven with violence, extortion, torture, murder, etc.
By 1567, over 300 Hindu temples over the Konkan Coast had been reduced to rubble. Wiped out across the face of Goa are the time-honoured art, sculpture, and tradition that has been there for a pretty long time.
Francis Xavier, having left Lisbon on 7 April 1541, his thirty-fifth birthday, along with two other Jesuits and the new viceroy Martim Afonso de Sousa, on board the Santiago arrived in Goa (then capital of Portuguese India) on 6 May 1542. Being a hard-core Catholic, an anti-reformist, anti-Brahman, he was one of the six preachers who founded the Society of Jesus on 15th August 1534. He landed in Goa with a strong resolve to stamp out paganism from Indian soil and impart the nuances of Christian faith in its place. To achieve it, he proposed persecution and oppression of the Hindus and other faiths. Hindu temple destruction and other places of worship, fraudulent and forceful conversions (sometimes with enticements), all were undertaken with missionary zeal under his expert guidance and advice. No mercy was shown to the Pagans, non-Christians and native Christians who were not true to their faith. Christian compassion and understanding marked by unsurpassed nobility took precedence over native faiths. His grunge for the Brahmins may be borne out from the following statement made by Xavier to the ruler,
“There is in these parts among the pagans a class of men called Brahmans If it were not for the Brahmans, we should have all the heathens embracing our faith”. (Goel,St Francis Xavier p.10)
St. Francis opined, “Hindus are an unholy race. They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. Their idols are black — as black as black can be — ugly and horrible to look at, smeared with oil and smell in an evil manner.
So, Fr. Francis thought conversion was the only option to civilize these idolaters. He needed trained missionaries to cover a vast population, so he was solely responsible for founding St.Paul’s College to train native missionaries to expand Christianity in foreign lands, particularly, in the East. Concerning evangelism practised by St. Xavier, Hector mentions: In the matter of conversion Xavier held exceedingly crude ideas. His great aim was to get hold of the younger portion of the population. Tens of thousands of defiant Hindus were murdered or worked to death in mines, ships, and factories- often starved or beaten to death by Christian supervisors Simple practice of Hinduism or even suspicion was enough to punish the Hindus and others.
Every year the feast of Saint Francis Xavier is celebrated on the 3rd of December with a lot of joy and gaiety in Goa and lots of people cutting across religious castes, etc. visit the Old Goa Church — the basilica of Bom Jesus where the mortal remains of St.Francis Xavier are kept. They actively participate in the feast of this Saint. Unfortunately, none of them is aware that Xavier was the one who introduced the Inquisition in India and terrorized Hindus, Muslims, Jews and others by using torture. Thus he destroyed the fabric of Goa — its culture, tradition, religion and native language. He did not even spare the native Christians, in particular St. Thomas Christians either.
Under Aleixo de Menezes, the Synod of Diamper in 1599 under duress converted the East Syriac Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis) of Kerala to the Roman Catholic Church. Reason: They allegedly practiced the Nestorian heresy (meaning: the human and divine persons of Christ are separate). The persecution went on till the Coonan Cross oath and Nasrani rebellion in 1653. When the Dutch took over Fort Kochi in 1663, it resulted in the expulsion of the Portuguese from Malabar. Historian Alfredo de Mello describes the performers of the Goan Inquisition as ……………” nefarious, fiendish, lustful, corrupt religious orders which pounced on Goa to destroy paganism (i.e. Hinduism) and introduce the true religion of Christ.
Many accounts point out that Xavier was an extremely racist person and hated Indians, their native cultures and traditions. Many historians point out the suppression of the true history of Goa under the Portuguese and the feasts celebrated in Xavier’s name mean “glorifying a perverted saint who took to violence to spread the Gospel of Love in Goa and elsewhere”. A section of Indian Christians in Karnataka even wanted his mortal remains in a Goa church to be sent to Spain or Portugal.
Francis Xavier, conscientious people would say, was not at all a saint like St. Thomas as he was instrumental in creating one of the bloodiest chapters in Indian history in the 16th and 17th centuries. Even if Christ were alive today, he wouldn’t accept Xavier as a saint. Since violence was his forte, if St. Francis were alive today, his right place would be Palermo, Sicily where he would be enjoying the patronage of Cosa Nostra, a dreaded group of Sicilian Mafiosi (the mob).
To Note:
The Portuguese inquisition of Goa is an often forgotten and unspoken event by the ‘secular’ circles of Indian historians, despite various historical records exposing the gross exodus of not just Hindus, but also Jews that had escaped Medieval Europe to take refuge in India.
The Portuguese inquisition of Goa started when Vasco Da Gama returned to Portugal after he discovered the route to India via Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. Upon his return to Portugal in 1510, Gama told the Portuguese royals about the undiscovered route to India, which gave the Portuguese an opportunity to colonise the Western coast of India and particularly Goa.
Pope Nicholas V soon issued a diktat which gave the kingdom of Portugal a monopoly on forcing Christianity upon the locals of the newly discovered areas (and mainly India), along with the monopoly to trade on behalf of the Roman Catholic Empire in Asia. Soon after, the Portuguese sent its troops to capture a portion of Goa and set up a colony in the coastal city.
Aghast by the local traditions followed by Hindus, the Portuguese were angered by the locals following a religion other than Christianity and ordered all temples within the colony to be shut; this marked the beginning of the bloody Goan inquisition that comprised of gross human rights violations and mass executions of the local Hindu, Jew and Muslim populations.
In 1541, idol worship was forbidden in the Portuguese colony of Goa and over 350 temples were destroyed by the Portuguese soldiers. It had been officially declared that being a believer of any religion other than Roman Catholicism was forbidden for residents of Goa.
The infamous Francis Xaviers and Martin Alfonso were sent to Goa by King John III of Portugal in 1542 to initiate the process of converting Goan residents to Roman Catholicism. On their arrival in Goa, they were enraged by the New Christians of Goa secretly practising their previous religions (either Judaism, Hinduism or Islam), while also upholding their Hindu values and traditions. A disturbed Francis Xavier wrote to King John III of Portugal on 16th May 1546 to impose an inquisition on Goa in an attempt to ‘discipline’ the residents and make them follow Catholicism.
The Inquisition banned the apostasy of Roman Catholics to Hinduism, Judaism or Islam, and banned the sale of books in the Konkani, Marathi, Sanskrit and Arabic languages. The use of Konkani was forbidden in the colony of Goa.
The Inquisition particularly affected the New Christians of Europe from the Jewish community, who had fled to India during the Spanish Inquisition in an attempt to escape the imposition of Christianity and live amongst the Jewish community in India. They had come in search of a life of dignity where they could practise Judaism openly and not in hiding while pretending to be Christian. India was the only country in the world where Jews were given absolute freedom to practise their faith, especially under Hindu kingdoms.
Sources:
Délio de Mendonça (2002). Conversions and Citizenry: Goa Under Portugal, 1510–1610. Concept. pp. 382–385. ISBN 978–81–7022–960–5.
All these history and the Christian PR stunt:
Read More About the Goa Inquisition
- Papacy: Its Doctrine and History — Sita Ram Goel
- The Goa Inquisition: The Terrible Tribunal for The East — A.K. Priolkar
- An Account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India — M. Dellon
- Fr. Francis Gonsalves tries to sell the Jesuit brand to Indians — Ishwar Sharan
- Letter from India to the Society of Jesus at Rome (1543) — Francis Xavier
