Black Book of Catholicism – 100 top Crimes of the Church
The following passage of the chapter “Criminal No 63: PROCES JOHN COUSTOSA (1743)” comes from the book Black Book of Catholicism – 100 top Crimes of the Churchwhich premiered July 1, 2026.
JOHN COUSTOS PROCESS (1743)
Victims: John Coustos, Portuguese freethinkers, victims of inquisition repression against freedom of conscience and association
I've been so tortured, I can't think of them without shaking.
John Coustos
In 1743, in Lisbon, the Portuguese Inquisition arrested John Coustos, a Swiss-English jeweler settled in the city, accusing him of participating in the Masonry, considered a secret and dangerous association. It is simply a supra-national ethical and social movement that, utilizing an abstract ritual referring to construction, strives to morally improve the individual and advance the thought of brotherhood independently of spiritual differences. These assumptions made masonry 1 of the main aims of repression by institutions seeking a spiritual and world-view monopoly.
In 1738 Pope Clement XII issued a bull In eminenti apostolatus, which officially prohibited Catholics from belonging to free-mulcer beds under the punishment of excommunication. The Portuguese Inquisition, very closely linked to the state authority, viewed this as the basis for persecution. Investigators demanded Coustos to disclose the names of the lodge members, the content of rituals and contacts. erstwhile he refused to cooperate, he was subjected to violent interrogations accompanied by torture: pulling out the joints with ropes and breaking them with metallic hoops. Inquisition records discovered many years later revealed that the tortured 1 actually capitulated and revealed Masonic secrets he promised to protect. After months of suffering, he was sentenced to public humiliation during auto-da-fé and to galleys, however, he was yet freed by the intervention of the British minister in Lisbon. The Coustos case has become 1 of the best documented examples of the usage of the ecclesiastical apparatus of force against people guilty of nothing but convictions, social contacts and independent thinking.
Liability: The Patriarch of Lisbon Tomás de Almeida was the highest ecclesiastical hierarch of the kingdom, while Cardinal Nuno da Cunha e Ataíde was a large Inquisitor of Portugal. It was under their authority that a strategy operated that declared free association and independent from the Church of the fraternity a threat to spiritual control of society. The Coustos trial showed that in the 18th century the church's force device continued to act with full force.
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