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 tells the story of a Dominican friar who was enslaved in Algiers in the 1640s.
Father Joseph, a Dominican friar, lived for some years in the West Indies. When returning to his home (Valentia, in Spain), he was captured by the pirates of Algiers. After he had been sold, his new patron [owner] told him that if he would pay a good ransom, he would set him at liberty.
Father Joseph, being a person of a cheerful humor and a pleasing disposition (as shall be seen), agreed, but on the condition that he would be kindly and fairly treated, have a mattress to sleep on, and not have to work. Upon those terms, he pledged to pay six thousand ducats for his ransom. His patron, thinking he had the 6,000 ducats already in his money chest, treated Father Joseph according to the agreement.
A year passed, during which Father Joseph received the treatment he had asked for.
By then, having seen no sign of the promised ransom funds, Father Joseph’s patron commanded another slave of his, a Spaniard, to bestow a hundred blows with a cudgel on the soles of Father Joseph’s feet (an ordinary punishment in Barbary). The poor man was fastened in an instrument fit for that purpose, which in the Turkish language is called a falaca.
Father Joseph, seeing the Spaniard coming towards him, said to him, “Have a care, Christian, consider what you do. You know that I am a Priest, and if you touch me, you will be excommunicated.”
At this, the honest Spaniard said to his patron, “I am a Christian, and your slave. Beat me as much as you please, but I will not be excommunicated.” The patron called out another of his slaves, a Portuguese, who was glad to execute such a commission upon a Spaniard, laughing at the excommunication.
After Father Joseph had recovered from those blows and became able to go abroad into the streets again, some other slaves who were his friends took occasion to bewail his misfortune. He, however, said to them, laughing, “Is there any one among you who would not endure a hundred bangs with a cudgel in order to fare well for a whole year, and to deceive a dog of a Turk?”
Meanwhile, his patron despairing of ever receiving the ransom, sold Father Joseph, very much at a loss; for he was looked upon as a cheat. His new patron sent him to reside at the Bath of the Duana [one of the city’s slave prisons/barracks], where there is one of the four Christian Churches which are at Algiers. Most of the priests live at the baths where the Christian Churches are, and they are supported by the alms they receive from the slaves. From these alms, they ordinarily pay their patrons three patacoons a month and are exempted from working.
In the year 1640, I encountered Father Joseph at that Bath of the Duana. Most of the slaves there being Portuguese, there was constant fractiousness between them and Father Joseph, since he was a Spaniard. Eventually, Father Joseph’s patron was forced to permit him to come and live at Alli Pegelin’s bath, where I became well acquainted with him.
Every Sunday, when I was exempted from working, I heard his sermons, which were full of learning and eloquence. He was a lover of good cheer and had a great veneration for the patriarch Noah, for his excellent invention of planting the vine [i.e., grapes. i.e., wine]. One day we took him to a tavern where, for want of wine glasses, we made use of a church lamp, which was made of blown glass. Father Joseph, thinking the wine so much the better out of that, drank off three lamps of it, each containing a quart or better and, so loaded, went on his way very much our friend.
Shortly after that, I was set at liberty. Father Joseph continued there, however, until the year 1645. Seeing no likelihood of ever recovering his liberty, or perhaps being drawn in by the licentious life allowed by the Koran, he forgot himself so far as to renounce the Christian faith and became a Mohammedan [i.e., a Muslim]. The Moors and Turks set him on horseback with a dart in his hand and, with extraordinary acclamations, conducted him through all the streets of the city, as it were in triumph.
To abuse the Christians, they said to them as he went along, “Behold your great Papas, (so the Turks call the Christian Priests) whom you esteemed so highly.”
This event extremely troubled the Christians, both Catholics and Protestants.
Now it happened, through God’s permission, that at that time there were at Algiers two Fathers, one a Jesuit, the other a Discalceate Carmelite, a Genoese named Frater Angeli, a man of exemplary virtue. These two Fathers were extremely troubled at the miscarriage of Father Joseph, as also for the scandal which the Christians had received thereby, and they resolved to make clear to him how badly he had scandalized so many Christian slaves, who had endured a thousand times more misery then he had, and yet persevered with so much constancy and patience in the Christian faith.
By these and other similar remonstrances, Father Joseph (who was now called Isouf) was so stirred, that he promised the two Fathers that he would forsake the pernicious Mohammedan religion and be reconciled to the Holy Church. To that end, he desired to make his confession and to receive the blessed sacrament of the altar. This he did that same night very secretly, for if the Turks had known that those two Fathers had concerned themselves in the conversion of a renegado, they would hardly have escaped being burnt alive.
The next day, Isouf appeared in the streets clothed as a Christian. At this, the whole city was astonished. He was taken and carried before the Duana, that is, the Tribunal [the governing body of Algiers]. They asked him why he had changed the habit of his religion. He resolutely answered that he was a Christian, a priest, and of a religious order, and that he would die a Christian. And as to what had passed [his conversion to Islam], he proclaimed that he had done it by the suggestion of the devil. Upon this answer, the Judges thought fit to order him to be cudgeled on the soles of the feet, to drive those scruples out of his mind.
That sentence was executed, but to no purpose, for he preserved and said he would die a Christian.
They then threatened him with death, but seeing at last that all their menaces prevailed not upon him, they condemned him to be burnt alive with a gentle fire. The Sauses (the Officers of Justice) led him out through the Baboloet-Gate and got an anchor. Having set it with the teeth into the ground, they bound Father Joseph to it. He made the best advantage he could of the short remainder of his life; for he begged pardon of God, and of the Christians, who were present in great numbers, exhorting them to continue constant in the Christian faith.
In the meantime, wood was brought, which was set at a five-foot distance all about him. Being set on fire, the flame augmented the courage of that holy martyr, who louder and louder begged forgiveness of God for the scandal he had given to the Christians, exhorting them to persevere in the Christian religion. At last, smothered by the smoke, he succumbed, leaving to all the Christian slaves an example of a true Religious man, and a most penitent Christian.
For those who may be interested…
This excerpts can be found in “Relation Thirty-Two: Of a Religious Man, a Slave at Algiers, who out of weakness renounced the Christian Religion, and afterwards repenting, suffered Martyrdom,” 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. 196-200.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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