Wittenberg, in the hope of bringing them back to the Church. He was at Louvain in 1538, and after fighting on the side of Flanders and being for two years a prisoner of war, he at length returned to Portugal in 1545. He was almost immediately denounced to the Inquisition, but as the charges were vague and the Inquisitor-General his friend, he was set free, and soon after was appointed royal archivist and historiographer. In 1550 a second denunciation was made by Simäo Rodrigues, a Jesuit who had known him in Italy; it was more precise and therefore more dangerous, but although he was vehemently suspected the charges fell through. More than twenty years later, however, the charges were again disinterred. He was brought before the judge Diogo da Fonseca, on April 4, 1571, and remanded; and the old man of seventy remained in prison for twenty months while the charges were being investigated. He frankly confessed that he had been remiss in the performance of his religious duties, and that he had held certain points of doctrine which were then held by many great theologians, and were only subsequently made unlawful by the Council of Trent. This, he said, was between 1531 and 1537; and against it he set more than thirty years of blameless life. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Here the King interfered, commuted the punishment, and sent him on December 16, 1572, to perform his penance in the monastery of Batalha. We do not know when he returned to his own home; but he died there not long afterwards of an accident-a judgment, as people said.
Such then was the work of the Portuguese Inquisition during this period in its relation to heresy. It was founded for reasons ostensibly religious, but actually fiscal; and although when once established it made Protestantism impossible in Portugal, there is nothing to suggest that the movement for Reform would have found many adherents there had there been no Inquisition.
