My Freemasonry | Freemason Information and Discussion Forum

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Brother John Coustos, A Most Worthy Freemason

Blake Bowden

Administrator
Staff Member
john.gif


Most Freemasons have probably never heard of Brother John Coustos, and that is not altogether surprising. Born almost 300 years ago in Switzerland, he was a quiet, simple, and unassuming man. He was not a captain of industry, a member of royalty or a great political leader. Brother Coustos was, however, a man of inestimable character, and a shining example of integrity for all Freemasons. If you are not familiar with his story, you may find the following to be quite enlightening.
The sufferings inflicted, in 1743, by the Inquisition at Lisbon, on John Coustos, a Freemason, and the Master of a Lodge in that city, and the fortitude with which he endured the severest tortures and most vile accusations, rather than betray his trusts and reveal the secrets that had been confided to him, constitute one of the most shocking episodes in the long history of Freemasonry.

In 1716, he moved from Switzerland to England with his father and became a naturalized citizen. In 1743, he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, and began the practice of his profession, which was that of a lapidary or dealer in precious stones.

Per the edict of Pope Clement XXII denouncing Freemasonry, the Lodges at Lisbon were not held at public houses, as was the custom in England, but in the private residences of its members. Coustos, a zealous and enthusiastic Freemason, was elected Master of one of these Lodges. A female neighbor known to be mentally unbalanced was aware of the existence of the Lodge over which Coustos presided and revealed its location to her papal confessor, declaring that, in her opinion, its members were "monsters of nature who perpetrated the most shocking crimes."

In consequence of this information, the Inquisition resolved that Coustos should be arrested and subjected to the "tender mercies" of the Holy See. He was, therefore, seized a few nights later in a public coffeehouse under the pretense that he was privy to the stealing of a valuable diamond. As a part of the Inquisition's grand scheme to eliminate Freemasonry, they had also falsely accused and arrested another jeweler who was a friend of Coustos as well as the Senior Warden of his Lodge.

Coustos was immediately taken Inquisition's prison, and after having been searched and deprived of all his money, papers, and other personal items, he was led to a lonely dungeon where he was confined and expressly forbidden to speak aloud or knock on the cell's walls. If he required anything, he was to beat with a padlock that hung on the outward door, and which he could only reach with great difficulty by thrusting his arm through the iron grate. "It was there," writes Bro. Coustos, "that, struck with the horrors of a place of which I had heard and read such baleful descriptions, I plunged at once into the blackest melancholy; especially when I reflected on the dire consequences with which my confinement might very possibly be attended." The dire consequences he spoke of included being burned alive at the stake after the most hideous and inhumane torture.

On the following day, he was taken before the President of the Inquisition and four Inquisitors. These priests, members of the Dominican Order, after having made him reply under oath to several questions regarding his name, parentage, place of birth, religion, and the time he had resided in Lisbon, exhorted him to make a full confession of all of the crimes he had ever committed during the entire course of his life. Totally incensed, Bro. Coustos indignantly refused to make any such confession, declaring that, from his infancy, he had been taught to confess not to man but to God. After the most vehement admonitions and threats by the Inquisitors, he was again thrown in a dungeon.

Three days later, he was again taken before the Inquisitors, and the relentless interrogations renewed. This was the first occasion where the subject of Freemasonry was introduced, and it was then that Bro. Coustos realized that he had really been arrested and imprisoned solely because of his connection with the "Forbidden Institution" described in Pope Clement's encyclical.

The result of this interrogation was that Coustos was taken to an even deeper dungeon, and remained in close confinement and total darkness for several weeks. During this period, he was taken three times before the Inquisitors. In the first of these interrogations, the Dominicans again introduced the subject of Freemasonry, and declared that, if Freemasonry was as virtuous as their prisoner contended, there was no valid reason for concealing its secrets. Bro. Coustos did not reply to this objection to the Inquisition's satisfaction, and he was again thrown into his dungeon, where, after a few days, he became extremely ill - almost to the point of death.

After a slight recovery, he was again taken before the Inquisitors and asked several new questions regarding the tenets of Freemasonry. The Dominicans were also particularly interested in knowing if he had initiated any Portuguese citizens into Freemasonry. He replied that he had not - which may or may not have been the case - but Bro. Coustos was unwilling to communicate anything about the Order or the names of its members.

When he was next brought before his papal tormentors, "They insisted," he writes, "upon my letting them into the secrets of Freemasonry; threatening me with death, in case I did not comply." Nevertheless, Coustos firmly and fearlessly refused to violate his sacred obligations.

After several other "interviews" in which every effort made to extort from him a renunciation of Freemasonry failed, he was subjected to unimaginable torture. He gives the following account:

"I was instantly conveyed to the torture-room, built in the form of a square tower, where no light appeared but what two candles gave; and to prevent the dreadful cries and shocking groans of the unhappy victims from reaching the ears of the other prisoners, the doors were lined with a sort of quilt.

"The reader will naturally suppose that I must be seized with horror, when, at my entering this infernal place, I saw myself, on a sudden, surrounded by six wretches, who, after preparing the tortures, stripped me naked, all to linen drawers, when, laying me on my back, they began to lay hold of every part of my body. First, they put around my neck an iron collar, which was fastened to the scaffold; they then fixed a ring to each foot; and this being done, they stretched my limbs with all their might. They next wound two ropes round each arm, and two round each thigh, which ropes passed under the scaffold, through holes made for that purpose, and were all drawn tight at the same time, by four men, upon a signal made for this purpose.

"The reader will believe that my pains must be intolerable when I solemnly declare that these ropes, which were of the size of one's little finger, pierced through my flesh to the bone, making the blood gush out at eight different places that were thus bound. As I persisted in refusing to reveal any more than what has been seen in the interrogatories above, the ropes were thus drawn together four different times. At my side stood a physician and a surgeon, who often felt my temples, to judge the danger I might be in. My tortures were suspended, at intervals, that I might have an opportunity of recovering myself a little.

"Whilst I was thus suffering, they were so barbarously unjust as to declare, that, were I to die under torture, I should be guilty, by my obstinacy, of self-murder. In fine, the last time the ropes were drawn tight, I grew so exceedingly weak, occasioned by the blood's circulation being stopped, and the pains I endured, that I fainted quite away.

"These insane barbarians, ending the tortures above described, could not extort any further discovery from me. But, the more they made me suffer, the more fervently I addressed my supplications, for patience, to heaven; they were so inhuman, six weeks thereafter, as to expose me to another kind of torture, even more grievous, if possible, than the former. They made me stretch my arms in such a manner that the palms of my hands were turned outward. When, by the help of a rope that fastened them together at the wrist, and which they turned by an engine, they drew them gently nearer to one another behind, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched, and stood exactly parallel one to another; whereby both my shoulders were dislocated, and a considerable quantity of blood issued from my mouth. This torture was repeated thrice; after which I was again taken to my dungeon, and put into the hands of physicians and surgeons, who, in setting my bones, put me to exquisite pain.

"Two months after, being a little recovered, I was again conveyed to the torture-room, and there made to undergo another kind of punishment twice. The reader may judge of its horror, from the following description thereof.

"The torturers turned twice around my body a thick iron chain, which, crossing upon my stomach, terminated afterwards at my wrists. They next set my back against a thick board, at each extremity whereof was a pulley, through which there ran a rope, which caught the ends of the chains at my wrists. The tormentors then stretched these ropes, by means of a roller, pressed or bruised my stomach, in proportion as the means were drawn tighter. They tortured me on this occasion to such a degree that my wrists and shoulders were put out of joint once again.

"The surgeons, however, set them presently after; but the barbarians not yet having satiated their cruelty, made me undergo this torture a second time, which I did with fresh pains, though with equal consistency and resolution. I was then remanded back to my dungeon, attended by the surgeons, who dressed my bruises; and here I remained until the next interrogation."

On that occasion, Bro. Coustos was sentenced to work as a galley slave for four years. Soon after commencing the degrading occupation of a galley slave, the injuries he received during his torture had so grievously impaired his health that he was unable to perform the harsh physical labor to which he had been condemned. He was, therefore, sent to an infirmary, where he remained until October 1744, when he was released upon the demand of the British Ambassador, also a Freemason, only after the threat of war with England. He was, however, ordered to leave the country. This, it may be supposed, he gladly did.

On his return to London, he published the account of his sufferings in a book entitled, "The Sufferings of John Coustos for Freemasonry, and for refusing to turn Roman Catholic, in the Inquisition at Lisbon" (London, 1746). His book, although no great literary masterpiece, is well worth reading. Bro. John Coustos did not, by his literary effort, add anything to the learning or science of our Ancient Order. However, by his fortitude, fidelity and nobleness of spirit under the severest torture, inflicted solely to exhort from him a knowledge of the Fraternity he was bound to conceal, he had shown that Freemasonry makes no idle boasts in declaring that its secrets are "locked up in the repository of faithful breasts."

Do we, Freemasons of the present day, have the same level of commitment to the solemn obligations we took while kneeling at Freemasonry's Sacred Altar as our hands rested upon the Volume of Sacred Law? Is there anything we can learn from Brother Coustos' commitment to and love of the Masonic Fraternity? Is he the type of Brother we should all humbly emulate as a most worthy example of "who can best work and best agree?"

You already know the answer to these questions, Brethren. Are you as worthy of the title of Freemason as was Brother Coustos? Are any of us?

Source: R.W. Phillip G. "Phil" Elam
 

DJGurkins

Floresville #515
Premium Member
If a man ever to question why Masonry is so secretive. You only have to read this or the stories of Masons under Hitler's rule and, in other dictatorship still around today. You never know what tomorrow might bring whether it be distress or excess.
 
Top