The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c7.s8.83

c7.s8.83

The jealous and rigorous system of the Portuguese in matters of religion may be pretty well understood from the above extracts. Yet there is one more fact to be noticed which shows in an even stronger light the pressure under which their native subjects lived. It has been already mentioned that the Dominicans sent missionaries to India before the Jesuits did, and it must be noticed that between these two orders there was always a great jealousy, and that while the Jesuits were particularly given to the work of conversion, the work of the Inquisition was chiefly done by the Dominicans. “In India and China the Inquisition and the Jesuits could the less easily agree because their action was entirely different. The Jesuits thought it expedient to pursue a policy of extreme concession, surrendering the distinctive truths of Christianity and keeping out of sight the discipline and ritual of their own church, if they could thereby win over the heathen to their side rather than lead them to Christ. The Inquisitors on the other hand pretended perfect orthodoxy, assumed an air of intense anxiety to preserve the integrity of the Romish faith, and so far as the power of Portugal extended and they could avail themselves of military force, they had the power of life and death in their hands, and could impress the natives with dread, and overawe their own clergy too. Hence it came to pass that not only the Jesuits but the bishops and the priests regarded them with dread and jealousy and appealed to Rome against their violence.” In 1673 Clement X. ordered that all Vicars Apostolic and their missioners in the East were to be altogether free from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition of Goa in those regions which were not under the temporal government of the king of Portugal.¹ But this of course did not touch their power in the Konkan, and it is pretty certain that between the Jesuits who armed with all the power of the State sought to convert the heathen, and the Inquisitors who so carefully guarded the faith of the new converts, the native subjects of the Portuguese must have had a hard time of it. The absence of high-caste Hindus in the Bassein district at the time of its conquest by the Maráthás is ascribed to these severities.² And it is even said that the expulsion of the Portuguese from the Konkan was chiefly due to the tyranny of the Jesuits and the Inquisition.³ It is also a significant fact that the Inquisition in India was abolished by the king of Portugal in 1775, that is just at the time that it was decided to make a great effort for the recovery of the Portuguese power on this coast. But in 1779 the Inquisition was re-established.