A bull of Clement VII laid the foundations of the longest and most obsessive persecution of consciences that human history has known, and which took place in a country called Portugal. After analyzing three centuries of procedures of the Holy Office, it is concluded that it did not reverse or apologize. The slanderous denunciation and the testimonies of the same kind, even of those convicted in the ordinary courts and without direct access to the targets of the denunciation, marked the guiding thread of the investigation, from the beginning to the end of the process, no matter how much the evidence obtained or the change in circumstances required an abrupt change of path. Even if the defendant was able to prove his innocence, which was almost impossible, he would always have to be fined a certain sum so that it would not be said that he had been persecuted for no reason.
The accused was summoned, accused, detained, stripped of the goods he brought with him, his house searched, his personal belongings that could favor the denunciation were seized, and part of his assets inventoried and confiscated to guarantee the costs of the process and the fines to which he could be sentenced. Spouse and children, suddenly deprived of sustenance without any remedy, knew that even if one day the defendant were to get rid of the Inquisition, he would be ruined in the same way.
The "news of crime" came from secret denunciation, espionage or voluntary accusation. The language of the anonymous, handwritten denunciations demonstrated primarism and murderous will. However, these seditious papers were part of the process as if they were serious things, and in fact they were, since they allegedly constituted the "news". Likewise, the elasticity of meanings given to the word "crime" far exceeded the precise definitions that the law stipulated. The attack on the supposed "true faith" was blamed on thousands of citizens who limited themselves to performing acts proper to all cultures or who had simply speculated on philosophical propositions. The spiritual and personal lives of the targets were investigated until their youth. It was not enough for the defendant to say who he was, but also who he had been, when he had changed and why. The suspicion embraced all their past life, and that of their family, and the persecution process dragged on for endless years.
The "sufficient indications" of crime provided for in the inquisitorial laws were vitiated by the will of the inquisitors. Once the focus was placed on an unfortunate person, years of agony were promised to him, with crude evidence in the sense of his persecution, never of his defense, and even if related to generic facts, to pure generalities, coming from the pen and from the mouths of those who had hatred and desire to hurt and disqualify their targets. The suitability of the complainants, nor of the witnesses indicated by them, nor their low moral condition, nor their real access to the facts, nor their thirst for revenge or any other grudge present in their hearts, were not ascertained. On the contrary, the courage to slander others was promoted. The slanderers soon reversed their social status, often passing from condemned to punishers.
In the Manual of the Inquisitors, by Nicolau Emeritus, there is a good summary of the social quality of the deponents in the Portuguese Inquisition: "To give testimony in cases of heresy in favor of the faith, the excommunicated, the infamous, the guilty of a crime, whatever it may be, and the heretics who are against the accused, but never in his favor."
The commonest people were used against people of superior value. Anyone, no matter how innocent and honorable, ran the risk of being targeted by the Inquisition, including nobles and religious figures, whether Jews or Catholics. Everyone had their portion. The most unworthy citizens were given the possibility of being equal to themselves and, once the defendants were charged, their language became even more unrestrained, due to the sinister enchantment that the situation provided them. People angry with the defendants swore that they had seen and heard the greatest follies, even if they did not know them personally or had not been in private with them in recent years. Thus were born the alleged "sufficient evidence" against the accused.
The word of society's rabble was deemed convenient for the initiation or maintenance of investigations that did not cease to invade the conscience of the defendant, and of family or friends, all obliged to hand over everything that could testify against him. Presumptions was enough to launch trawling aimed at discovering something infamous and in any case destroying the target by force.
Another type of whistleblower existed as well. Many lawsuits related to Judaizing heresies were born from denunciations by well-reputed Catholics in society or even by radicalized New Christians who for whatever reason intended to take revenge on the greatest among their flock, a common situation in a people very divided since Mount Sinai.
In cases where the evidence was absolutely meagre and scarce, the process was kept on the back burner for the necessary time, until new facts appeared and witnesses were excited about the misfortune that had befallen the defendant. It was always inquisitorial tactics to compensate for the defect with a large number of documents and people against the one who was intended to be punished, even if they did not know him at all.
The process was oriented to prove the veracity of the initial suspicions, to prove a presumption of guilt. The suspect was always so until the end. If it came with appeals and suspicions, the officials and ministers of the Holy Office were allowed not to receive them if they found them "frivolous", proceeding in the cause "onwards as seems justice to them". Everything was considered a malicious demand to stop the inquisitorial nerve, in processes permanently fed with the inclusion of new suspicions, with the records remaining secret for as long as possible. For months and years, the names of the complainants, the witnesses and the matter investigated were hidden from the accused, forcing the victims to guess the accusations and to say everything they knew in order to try to avoid a formal accusation that would otherwise be certain anyway. The lawyers themselves did not have access to the complete records, but to the vague version.
For the defendant, a full justification was never possible, unless the inquisitors revolted against the complainants and witnesses they used. It never happened. They were almost sacred. When the defendant had the good fortune to know them, years later, and rebelled against them, he was punished as harshly as if he had offended the officers and ministers of the Holy Office.
In the name of the moral conscience of Europe, Mostesquieu cried out against the iniquitous officers and ministers of the Inquisition: "They consider men evil, but on the other hand they have such a good opinion of them that they do not consider them capable of lying, even if they are capital enemies of the accused or exercise an infamous profession. Those who wear the sulphur shirt are told that they are very distressed that they have been condemned. And then, in order to console themselves, they confiscate for their benefit the goods of those unfortunates" (Lettres Persanes, XXIX).
The inquisitorial process began. There was nothing slower. Many defendants died of old age or illness without seeing their cause decided. Called to the table, the defendants were asked about their genealogy, as far back as possible, as if they were guilty of it. They mentioned that they had no sin. No one else wanted to hear them. They signed the term and returned to prison, accompanied by guards who did not stop pressuring them to confess guilt they did not have and to denounce third parties, the only way to get rid of the process. Frightened by this blackmail, many asked for a new hearing before the table. But when it was not intended to confess, they were violently beaten for such daring.
The defendant's baptism was always mentioned. He was suspected of violating the obligations that the sacrament imposed on him. The prosecutor's libel could be heard: "It will prove that, being a baptized Christian, the defendant has departed from our holy faith." And after the report of banalities, as a rule it was concluded as follows: "Request receipt, and fulfillment of the Law, and if it is proven enough, that the defendant be relaxed to secular justice, as an apostate of our holy faith, and a heretic."
In the next procedural phase, with the presence of a scholar in clothes unworthy of a lawyer, the testimonies of the complainants and witnesses were read. The "crimes" were always pathetic and the circumstances of time in which they would have occurred difficult to pinpoint. Allegedly the defendant had prevaricated in a determined way ten years ago. He was given the floor. Everything depended on this moment, since, once the contradictions were set, the dice were cast. If he did not confess right there, he signed the term and returned to the dungeon, where many committed suicide by headbutting the walls.
From then on, sometimes after years, they called the defendant to the table to appoint witnesses, contradicted and coarcted. This phase was worthless. Invariably, the witnesses he indicated were considered "defective and disapproved in law", in other words, unworthy of credit and often co-authors of the same infraction that was imputed to him, in which case they would also be prosecuted.
Next was the torture room. We spare the reader this description, as well as the conditions in which the defendant lived in the prison. As a rule, he confessed. He wanted to leave. In exchange for the freedom she so loved, he did whatever it took. But he did not leave there without shame, but with a candle in his hand, and it is certain that, with such a confession, his relatives were forever linked to the crime of Judaism.
For posterity, the inquisitorial work based on tens of thousands of written processes with an almost clinical precision and detail remained. This was the Holy Office for Portuguese lands, a penitential court for quantifying guilt for matters of faith and for stirring up the worst that exists in the human heart. The social context was favorable. The crime of faith was equivalent to the crime of corruption in modernity. The burning of New Christians was followed by dances and tournaments to celebrate the event. Cheerful and excited crowds, like the scum and the political newspapers of today, always animated by purifying society through the "scrutiny" of public morals, supported the work of the inquisitors and never ceased to nourish them with new denunciations, invariably integrated into the process.
There were five laws to guide the work of the Inquisition: those of 1552, 1570, 1613, 1640 and 1774, the last of which tried to humanize the previous ones a little, since it was already known that dozens of rich Old Christians of impeccable Catholic rigor had been falsely denounced and punished for being Judaizers. Due to its importance for the analysis of the subject that will be dealt with throughout this book, it is important to spend a few words on this law passed in the eighteenth century.
The law of 1774 put an end to anonymous complaints for the initiation of investigation and demanded that "the most exact and rigorous information about the life, customs, credit, probity and reputation of the complainants and witnesses" be taken and that it be investigated "whether between them [complainant and accused] there was enmity or discord, and which", in which case "information of a person of a character of known probity, zeal and integrity" were necessary. "If the denunciations were given by enemies, who conjured up witnesses against the accused, for the purpose of oppressing and vexing them, [the process] will not proceed with the said denunciations, and the aforesaid complainants and witnesses referred to by them will be immediately arrested, to proceed against all as forgers" (Title I).
Not limiting itself to vaguely referring to the expression "indications of crime", but connecting it with qualifiers such as the "quality and vehemence" of the same (Title X), the new Rules of Procedure stated that "Any person who testifies falsely at the Board of the Holy Office shall be publicly flogged and degraded to the Galley for a period of ten years" (Title XXI). And in fact, the country would witness something unheard of until then. Witnesses who had sworn false were punished and had their testimonies solemnly burned.
In addition, through the new Rules, the terms under which complaints would have to be made, always in person and before officials of the Holy Office, were detailed: a "testimony with great detail", "time and place where the crime was committed", "other circumstances necessary to assess the credit [of the complaint]", "as much as is convenient to have full knowledge", "reasons that lead him [the complainant] to denounce", "all examined with great consideration". (Title I).
Having briefly analysed the history of the Inquisition in Portugal, it is important to portray what happened concretely in the city of Porto, and with about a thousand people born in this city, whose names are exhibited in the current Jewish Museum of the city. The victims, aged between 10 and 110, who included numerous members of the Spinoza family, who ended up heading for Amsterdam, experienced the persecution of their consciences and, more than that, saw how the Holy Office functioned as a spy network within the New Christian community. The investigation and indictment of the supposed "villains" among the members of that community always served to know how the New Christians lived and to destroy what was then left of collective Jewish identity.
In the city of Porto, as in others, men of letters or goods, the successful in general, have always been the favorite targets of whistleblowers and the established powers. An example of this happened during an inquisitorial visitation in 1618. It was the month of April when more than a hundred people were the target of denunciations by their greatest enemies and all this resulted in an equal number of arrests, mass emigration of those who escaped from prisons and, as stated in official documents of the City Council, the total destruction of the city's economy.
After the abolition of the Inquisition in 1821, the country redeemed itself and several times called for the return of the Jews. However, the following two centuries showed that the evil that came from behind was not over, especially in Porto, where in the past Jews once paid 38% of the city's taxes and still played a leading role in international trade. The "Victory" zone (of Christians over Jews in 1497) has remained a living symbol for the local Jewish community from its official foundation in the twentieth century to the present day.
In the 1930s, the leader of the newly founded Jewish Community of Porto, a Portuguese named Barros Basto, who was an army captain, was the target of a criminal case based on anonymous complaints of sadistic creatures who could not confront him directly. The denunciations were based on the lowest mediocrities, murderous envy and false accusations of violent behavior and embezzlement of donations that foreign Jewish organizations sent to Porto for the Community's projects. Significantly, the false crimes that were imputed to him were the then fashionable crimes, of a sexual nature. These crimes were totally denied in a court case that for two years dragged the target through its corridors.
Individuals of low moral status and with interests at stake, who would never be admitted as whistleblowers and witnesses by the Inquisitorial Law of 1774, were called to testify against the captain and he saw his entire life investigated. Despite being acquitted of any criminal offense, the person concerned did not escape a disciplinary penalty of dismissal from the army, due to the participation he had in the circumcision of his students. Thus was born "the Portuguese Dreyfus case" and, in between, the Community he presided over, already owning the largest synagogue in the country, a monument with 2000 m2 including the surrounding enclosure, was destroyed.
The Community was not part of the love affairs of the powers established in Lisbon, quite the contrary. The great synagogue in Porto had been built with donations from the Sephardic diaspora, including billionaires with such prominent names as Edmond Rothschild and Ely Kadoorie, and was accused by the capital's press of giving shelter to "Bolsheviks" from the East, a fact that would worsen with the arrival of the first refugees from Nazism after 1933.
Civil slanderers, and state officials, all those who, between 1934 and 1937, promoted and carried out the judicial persecution of Barros Basto knew, from the beginning, that they would affect the Community, and reduce it to anonymity for decades, because the other members, all foreigners, did not have the charisma, culture, resourcefulness and vigor of the disgraced leader. So it was. Porto's Jewish life suffered a severe blow when the captain was forced to take off his uniform, to endure the regime's newspapers belittling his Jewish faith (calling him "pantheistic") and to put up with the constant police invasions of his home. In order for her children not to be confused by the constant police presence in a quiet family home, their mother told them that "those gentlemen were some friends of their father who had gone there to get some documents that did not exist after all".
In the 21st century, the Jewish Community of Porto was reborn, with the willpower of the granddaughter of the wronged soldier, the oldest members of the organization and new driving forces, even becoming one of the strongest Jewish organizations in Europe in cultural terms. The result was predictable: the city's central synagogue and the very residence of the granddaughter of the "Portuguese Dreyfus" were invaded by the Lisbon police.
Criminal case no. 183/22.9T9LSB, of 2022, against the Jewish Community of Porto and its legitimate representatives began from a generic complaint by the socialist government and was framed in its destructive action against a law in favor of Jews of Sephardic origin. The thread of the investigation that would follow was based on that government appeal – complaining about the content of an article in a newspaper that the government itself had planted – and also on the convenient combination of slanderous anonymous accusations from a convicted of defamation. All the synagogues and institutions in the world would be invaded by the local authorities if the will of the executive power and anonymous denunciations of some troubled person were enough to do so.
As a result, the Attorney General's Office issued devastating public statements that defamed the Jews of Porto. It promoted hatred and violence against the Community. It conducted a dirty and endless process in which it deceived ignorant judges of the Jewish world with piles of stolen paper in illegal searches and new theories that were being invented under the pressure of failure. It kept the process secret for as long as possible, well beyond the legal limits. It disregarded all the claims of the Community and its employees, even when they complained about the mental health of the main witness, of robberies committed by professional thieves and of the sabotage of a car that almost took the life of a young French Jewish student and his wife.
The Lisbon prosecutor's office knew that it was acting against the law and that the Lew of the Holy Office of 1774 would order the harsh punishment of that whistleblower. It never apologized or backtracked. Its objective was from the first day to try to kill the Jewish Community of Porto in all its facets, organization, leaderships, leading families, cultural base, knowledge of the Jewish world, even seeking to revise its history. It failed.
