This week we continue the series of posts on life in Algiers drawn from Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, (The Relation of the Captivity and Liberation of Emanuel d’Aranda).
This week’s excerpt focuses on a Portuguese nobleman and involves dueling, wine, and… a woman.
A nobleman of one of the most illustrious families of Portugal, whom we shall here call Dom Oenophilo, had engaged in many disputes and duels. Despite his superior station in life, he had twice been sentenced to death in Lisbon, and yet by the intercession of that powerful advocate, Monseigneur Money, who interprets the laws as he pleases, and with the assistance of his powerful friends, Dom Oenophilo was twice pardoned.
In the year 1637, he was further accused of murder, and, to avoid the rigor of the law, he embarked in the night with his wife for the Indies, the common sanctuary of Portuguese malefactors.
After some days at sea, the ship was taken by Turkish pirates. Dom Oenophilo and his wife were sold to a Moor named Cagarino. Dom Oenophilo agreed with his new patron [owner] for the ransoming of himself and his wife, on condition that he should remain as a hostage, and that his wife should return home, at liberty to send over the ransom.
His wife was sent away, and he devoutly expected the money. Since he was not obliged to work as the other slaves were, idleness found him something to do, for he fell in love with his patroness [his new owner’s wife], and not daring at first to reveal his passion, he waited in hopes of a convenient time to do so.
It so happened that Dom Oenophilo had made the acquaintance of two Knights of Malta, who were French-men, and slaves. These men, observing in Dom Oenophilo a great judgement, noble education, and an extraordinary natural eloquence, felt such a heightened sense of friendship for him that they invited Dom Oenophilo to drink a glass of wine with them, and then pressed him to take a greater dose of it than he was wont to do in Portugal.
Having his head full of wine, and his mind of love, he returned home and began to court his patroness. His patron coming in, and surprising him at it, fell upon him and gave him two or three good cuffs about the ears. Dom Oenophilo, who was no more circumspect in his slavery then he had been when he was at liberty, returned the blows in the same coin, together with the interest.
His patron, incensed upon a double account, as well for the blows he had received as for what had passed between Dom Oenophilo and his wife, and being mad to be revenged for that double affront, ran straight to the Pasha’s Palace and made his complaints, demanding that, according to Turkish Law, Dom Oenophilo should be burnt alive.
Order was given to the Sauses (who are the Officers of Justice) to bring the criminal before the Tribunal to answer for himself. Dom Oenophilo was brought before the Pasha [the Ottoman Governor of Algiers], who said to him, “You are accused of having beaten a Turk, and, which is worse, your patron. According to the laws of this country, you must either renounce the Christian religion or to be burnt alive.”
Dom Oenophilo denied the accusation leveled against him, alleging that he had only been defending himself from the blows, and he brought in a Turk for a witness, who spoke on his behalf. But the Pasha would not admit of his excuses, accounting the patron’s accusation a sufficient proof. He pronounced the sentence without any further solemnity, that Dom Oenophilo should take his choice, either to renounce or be burnt alive.
The unfortunate man, finding himself so put to it, answered as a good Christian and resolute knight: that he would not renounce. Whereupon the sentence was pronounced that Dom Oenophilo should be burnt alive.
All things were prepared, and the Sauses conducted the criminal to his place of punishment.
However, at the last instant, the Pasha commanded that the execution be suspended till further order.
The Pasha, being mindful of his own concerns above all things, found a way to take advantage of Dom Oenophilo’s offence and sentencing and proposed the following to those of his Council who had supported the sentence. “If this Offender,” said he to them, “had killed another slave, his patron would have been obliged to make satisfaction for the dead slave, or to resign the delinquent to be disposed of to the advantage of the deceased slave’s patron.
“This offender hath beaten a Turk, which is a greater crime then to have killed a Christian, and upon the insistence of his own patron, we have condemned him to death. By this condemnation, his patron hath lost the propriety he had in him. Consequently, that property devolves upon me, as representing the person of the Grand Seignior [the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul]. Having therefore the power to pardon such as are condemned, I give this miscreant slave his life, and so, as a consequent, he now belongs to me.”
This reasoning was approved by all the Agas, who are his Council, and Dom Oenophilo was declared the Pasha’s slave by the Council of the Agas. As a result, Dom Oenophilo’s patron, having lost ownership of his slave, and having received a beating to boot, got also the reputation of being cuckolded by him.
Dom Oenophilo was sent among the slaves of the Pasha, having on each leg a garter of a hundredweight of iron.
When I came to Algiers, he was living in the Pasha’s stables, where I became well acquainted with him and found him a person full of moral virtues. In that miserable slavery, by his prudence and noble demeanor, he knew so well how to oblige all people that he was continually visited, and his countrymen supplied him with all things necessary.
When I left Algiers in the year 1642. I left him in that same condition, loaded down with irons.
I know not what has become of him since.
For those who may be interested…
This excerpt can be found in “Relation Twenty: None so cautious but Wine and Women may betray,” in the seventeenth century English translation of d’Aranda’s Relation, 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, pp. 168-172.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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