On 5 February 1821, at the session of the General and Constituent Courts of the Portuguese Nation, which had been held since 26 January in Palácio das Necessidades, member Francisco Simões Margiochi put forward various proposals with a view to abolishing the tributos vis taxes and the Juízo da Inconfidência (Court of Indiscretion), opening prisons, limiting police authority and bringing an end to the Tribunal of the Inquisition. As well as preparing the new Constitution, the Courts approved various laws aimed at eliminating practices and institutions of absolutism, regarded as incompatible with the new order they wanted to build. Francisco Margiochi (1774-1838), a graduate in Mathematics from the University of Coimbra (1789) and an army officer, member of the General and Constituent Courts of the Portuguese Nation (1821-1822) and later the Ordinary Courts (1822), was exiled twice, fought in the Civil War as part of the liberal army, and was named Permanent Counsellor of State, Peer of the Realm, Minister of the Navy (1833), Reader of the Naval Academy and Vice-President of the Superior Council of Public Instruction, as well as being the author of a significant scientific work.
Margiochi’s plan for the abolition of the Tribunal of the Inquisition included the following:
“1. The Tribunals of the Inquisition are ended in the Kingdom of Portugal, as they have been for some time in other Portuguese territories.
2. Their spiritual authority is, as it should be, an Episcopal matter.
3. Their Registers shall be sent to the Manuscripts Room of Lisbon Public Library.
4. Their assets will be administered, or transferred, as National assets.
5. Their Employees will keep half of their salaries”.
The project was discussed by the Courts at the session of 24 March and approved unanimously. Taking part in the debate were Borges Carneiro, with a more radical outlook, António Teixeira Girão, João Martins Soares Castelo Branco (member of the General Council of the Holy Office) – who justified the Inquisition’s cruelty with the mentality of the period, but was in favour of it being brought to an end – Alexandre Morais Sarmento, Francisco Morais Pessanha, Francisco Soares Franco and José Joaquim Ferreira de Moura.
On 31 March, a decree was published which, in its Article 1, ended the Inquisition:
“1. The General Council of the Holy Office, the Inquisitions, the Courts of the Treasury, and all their branches, are abolished in the Kingdom of Portugal. All information relating to pending processes, which in the future shall be formed around spiritual and merely ecclesiastical causes, returns to Episcopal jurisdiction. Information relating to any other causes known by the aforementioned Tribunal, and Inquisitions, belongs to Secular Ministers, such as that relating to ordinary crimes, to be decided in accordance with existing Laws”.
The rest of the article set out the revoking of Regulations, Laws and Ordinances relating to the existence of the Tribunal and Inquisitions; that the assets and incomes belonging to said establishments were to be provisionally administered by the National Treasury; that the documents of the Registers of the Tribunal and Inquisitions should be sent to Lisbon Public Library to be conserved and inventoried; that the salaries of all employees of the Tribunal and Inquisitions were to be safeguarded.
Instituted in Portugal by the bull of Pope Paul III, Cum ad nihil magis, on 23 May 1536, and having lost the vitality it once had in the time of the Marquis of Pombal, the Tribunal of the Holy Office had now been brought to an end, never to be restored, not even during the reign of King Miguel.
