identified two of the horsemen, and they were arrested and tortured. Their confessions implicated the Marquis and Marquise of Távora. By December he had uncovered what he believed to be a plot to assassinate the King and replace him with the Duke of Aveiro. Malagrida, who had returned from exile, was arrested and tried for his alleged involvement in the plot. Gabriel Malagrida was declared guilty of high treason, but, as a priest, could not be executed without the consent of the Inquisition. He was imprisoned in the dungeon beneath Belém Tower with other Jesuits who were also implicated. When the Inquisition could find no proof of guilt, Carvalho had his own brother replace the head inquisitor. Under the harsh conditions of his two-and-a-half years imprisonment, Malagrida went mad. He was found guilty of heresy based upon two transcripts of visions it was claimed he experienced. The first was on the Anti-Christ, and the second was entitled The Heroic And Wonderful Life of the Glorious Saint Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary, Dictated By This Saint, Assisted By And with the Approbation And Help of This Most August Sovereign, And Her Most Holy Son. His authorship of these treatises has never been proved. Finding the works attributed to Malagrida as heretical, he was sentenced to death. On 21 September 1761, he was strangled at the garrotte in Rossio Square. His corpse was then burned on a bonfire and the ashes were thrown into the Tagus river. A monument in his honour was erected in 1887 in the parochial church of Menaggio. Cultural trace Stendhal (1783–1842) mistakenly ascribed to Malagrida the maxim "Words have been given to men in order to hide their thoughts" (The Red and the Black, Part 1, XXII, epigraph), which go back to a remark by a capon made in a fable/dialogue written by Voltaire in 1763, often mistakenly attributed to Talleyrand. Notes References Mury, Histoire de Gabriel Malagrida (Paris, 1884; 2nd ed., Strasburg, 1899; Ger. trans., Salzburg, 1890); Un monumento al P. Malagrida in La Civilità Cattolica, IX, series XIII (Rome, 1888), 30–43, 414–30, 658–79; Juizo da verdadeira do terremoto, que padeceo a corte de Lisboa (1756). 1689 births 1761 deaths 18th-century Italian Jesuits 18th-century executions by Portugal Italian Roman Catholic missionaries People executed by the Portuguese Inquisition People executed for blasphemy People executed for heresy People from Menaggio Jesuit missionaries in Brazil Italian people executed