the spiritual adviser of Marianne of Austria, the Queen of Portugal. In Lisbon he ac quired a great reputation for austerity and piety. He lived on bread and beans, starv ing himself through his frequent fasts, ap plied the scourge to his bare shoulders, and only allowed himself a few hours' sleep on a plank on the ground. In 1750 the reigning king died (in Malagrida's arms), and Uom Joseph ascended the throne. The Jesuits had then far too com manding an influence in the state, and the Marquis de Pombal, the able and long-sighted politician whom the new king called to his counsels, made a resolute endeavor to cur tail it by measures which had the misfortune to excite the hostility of the nobles as well. The Jesuits denounced him from their pul pits. He got them expelled from the palace, induced the king to take a Franciscan for a confessor, and persuaded the Pope to pro hibit them by " bull " from making slaves of the American Indians. While this contro versy was raging and waxing hotter, the famous earthquake of Lisbon occurred (1st November, 1755). It was at once claimed by the Jesuits as a portent on their side, and the king himself in fear and trembling asked Pombal what was to be done? " Bury the dead and feed the living," was the Portu guese statesman's reply; and the success in attaining the latter object completely re established his position in the confidence of the king. The Jesuits endeavored to produce a diversion in their favor by predicting a second earthquake and even venturing to fix the date of its occurrence. But the event did not come off, and the ridicule in which this ill-omened prophecy involved the Holy Fathers drove them and the nobles in to rebellion. On the night of 3rd September, 1758, as the king was returning from the house of his mistress in a carriage, an attempt was made upon his life. He was merely wounded, and the Marquis of Pombal slowly but surely arrested the conspirators. Malagrida was
among the number. The evidence against him consisted principally of letters which he had written predicting that the king would not survive September, 1758. There was some difficulty in bringing him to trial be fore a secular tribunal, and accordingly he was handed over to the Inquisition on a charge of heresy. The writings on which this charge was based savored strongly of insanity. They were contained in two works : " The heroic and wonderful life of St. Anne, mother of the Holy Virgin Mary," and " The life and empire of Antichrist." In the latter Malagrida announced that there were to be three antichrists — a father, son, and nephew; the last of these personages was to be born at Milan in 1920, the child of a nun and a monk, and was to take as his wife, Proserpine, one of the infernal furies. The Inquisitors found Malagrida guilty of heresy, deposed and degraded him from his order, and delivered him up, with a gag, the cap of infamy and the label of arch-heretic, to secular justice, " praying earnestly " (with the hypocritical prayer common to such tribunals) "that the said criminal maybe treated with kindness and indulgence, with out pronouncing against him sentence of death or effusion of blood." Malagrida was sentenced to be strangled and burned, and he suffered this cruel death in the seventythird year of his age at an auto-da-fe in the Placa da Rocio at Lisbon, on the 2 1st of September, 1761. Dressed in a tiara and a long robe decorated with devils, the old priest was led forth, in the midst of a pro cession of recreant Jews, sailors convicted of bigamy, and two pietist nuns, to meet his fate. A crier preceded him and announced his iniquities. Before his death he is said to have made the following declaration : "I confess that I am a sinner, and as to my revelations, it is not expedient to say what I think of them." There is little doubt that this unfortunate man suffered from delusional insanity, and whether we do or do not hold it to have been of a character which ought
