Francisco Manoel de Nascimento - The Inquisition

The Inquisition

This was the happiest epoch of his life, but it did not last long. The accession of D. Maria I. inaugurated an era of reaction against the spirit and reforms of Pombal, and religious succeeded to political intolerance. In June 1778 Nascimento was denounced to the Portuguese Inquisition on the charge of having given vent to heterodox opinions and read the works of modern philosophers who follow natural reason. The tribunal held a secret inquiry, and without giving him an opportunity of defence issued an order for his arrest, which was to take place early in the morning of the 14th of July. He had received a warning, and succeeded in escaping to the house of a French merchant, Verdier, where he lay hid for eleven days, at the end of which his friend the Marquis of Marialva put him on board a French ship which carried him to Havre.

Nascimento took up his residence in Paris, and his first years there passed pleasantly enough. Soon, however, his circumstances changed for the worse. He received the news of the confiscation of his property by the Inquisition; and though he strove to support himself by teaching and writing he could hardly make ends meet.

In 1792 his admirer António de Araújo, afterwards Count of Barca, then Portuguese minister to Holland, offered the poet the hospitality of his house at the Hague, but neither the country, the people, nor the language were congenial, and when his host went to Paris on a diplomatic mission in 1797 Nascimento accompanied him, and spent the rest of his life in and near the French capital.