This week we continue the series of posts on life in Algiers drawn from a book titled Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, (The Relation of the Captivity of Emanuel d’Aranda), written by Emanual d’Aranda.
Last week, we began the story of Domingo, the desperate Spaniard, who, along with his wife and children, had been captured by Algerine corsairs. He managed to arrange for his family to be ransomed, but he was left behind in Algiers, enslaved.
We pick up the story from there.
It takes an unexpected twist, though.
Some little time after the departure of his wife and children, Domingo fell in love with an English slave, a very beautiful woman, in his patron’s house.
The mistress of the house, however, was so watchful that he could not have his desires of her. Yet so great was the desire he had for her, that he found out a way to deceive both his mistress and the English slave.
He told the English woman that his wife was dead, and that if she would marry him, he would ransom her, and that there was an order newly arrived for him to receive three thousand gold ducats, which sum would suffice for the ransoming of both of them.
The English woman, whether she was actually in love with him or not, accepted the offer. Whereupon Domingo, to achieve his design, went to an old woman, a Moor, one very well known for her wealth and covetousness, and said to her, “Madam, the hope I have of receiving a good reward caused me to come hither, to give you notice of a commodity, by which you may gain at least two thousand ducats.”
The covetous Woman immediately asked him what kind of commodity it was, promising him a great recompense. “There is,” said he, “at my Master’s house, an English woman slave, well descended, which my master knows nothing of. And besides, there is a secret order come to the city for her redemption, though she should cost three thousand ducats. If you can keep your own counsel, you may buy her from my Master for four or five hundred ducats.”
This proposal pleased the covetous old woman so well that she wanted immediately to be further informed concerning the English slave. She went to see the wife of Saban Gallan [Domingo’s owner] and asked her whether she would sell her English slave. When Saban’s wife answered that she was not in need of money, the old woman replied, “Set what rate you please on her. I would fain have her.”
After a little haggling, they agreed to five hundred ducats, and the English slave was delivered to the old woman, who received her with great satisfaction.
The poor English woman, finding herself sold and delivered, and the price paid, imagined that all was done with Domingo’s money, and thence happily inferred that she was now at Liberty and was content that she had (as she thought) met with such good fortune.
In the meantime, Domingo was perpetually soliciting her, calling God and Heaven as his witness, and swearing thousands of oaths to assure her of the sincerity of his affection. He cajoled her for so long that she eventually agreed to do whatever he asked, expecting that she would be delivered from Algiers and taken to some part of Christendom.
The old Woman, meanwhile, fully expected to receive the promised three thousand ducats.
Domingo kept them both a long time in blindness, so that the one knew nothing of the other. At last the English woman proved with child, and, when her time came, gave birth to twins—which proved a good booty for the covetous old woman instead of the three thousand ducats.
At this time, Domingo’s deceptions were discovered and, what was worse, his master, coming to hear of the business and thinking him an absolute rogue and impostor, would have sent him as a slave to row on the galleys, for Domingo had promised his master a considerable ransom.
To avoid the mischief threatened him by his master, Domingo devised a new expedient. He came to one of the baths [i.e., one of the prisons that housed slaves], where the churches of the Catholics are, desiring to say mass, that he might live upon alms, as those priests who are slaves commonly do.
The Spaniards and Portuguese who knew Domingo and his wife, opposed it, saying he was a rascal, and married to boot.
“I must acknowledge,” said he, “that I am married, but that marriage is null, because I am and was a religious man and a priest before I married and so am still a priest.”
Those who had the oversight of the church and altars thought fit to write concerning this business to the Bishop of Ceuta, for Algiers is included within his Diocese. The Bishop, having received that account of him, forbad Domingo to celebrate mass, upon pain of excommunication. On being informed of this, Domingo replied, “I am a religious man under my Portuguese Provincial, subject to his command, and therefore the Bishop hath no power over me.”
The difficulty was too great to be decided by the Christian slaves, and so the case was sent to Rome.
Not long after there came to Algiers a Capucine monk, an Italian born, sent expressly from Rome in a Ship of Marseilles under the pretense of redeeming some Christians, though he also carried letters from the King of France concerning some private business. This honest Father heard the reasons of Domingo on the one side, and on the other, what the Christians said of him, and he thereupon ordered that Domingo could not say mass, but that he might frequent the churches, which the Portugues would not have permitted.
I afterwards saw him singing in that Church, as he still did at the time I left Algiers. For all I know, having no means to redeem himself, he is still there.
Next week, we’ll start some new tales from Emanuel d’Aranda’s Relation.
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For those who may be interested…
The story of Domingo, the desperate Spaniard, can be found in “Relation One: The History of a Religious Man, a Spaniard, a Slave in Algiers,” in the 1666 English translation of d’Aranda’s Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda.
That English translation is titled: The history of Algiers and it’s slavery with many remarkable particularities of Africk / written by the Sieur Emanuel D’Aranda, sometime a slave there ; English’d by John Davies. “Relation One” can be found on pages 109-115. I have lightly edited the original seventeenth century English text to make it more easily readable.
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