Koebel (W. H.)

Works: Madeira old and new; London, 1909.

On p. 5 of this work we read the following: it should be noted that the notes to Frutuoso’s work published in 1873 by Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo are immensely useful to all who wish to study that old manuscript. Dr Azevedo was a lawyer in Madeira, a scholar and a freethinker, and this last circumstance brought him into disfavour with the local clergy. The most intransigent members of that body began a campaign against his way of life, promising him a dog’s funeral (a dog's funeral) after his death. When he died, however, the clergy suffered the bitterest of disappointments. Documents left by Dr Azevedo showed that he had obtained a papal bull guaranteeing him the greatest number of funeral rites that the Church had the power to grant. He therefore received all these rites, but the clergy who took part in them earned nothing for their services, since everything had been paid for in advance in Rome. Could one conceive of a livelier display of posthumous irony?’

What Mr Koebel relates about the papal bull obtained by Dr Azevedo is nothing but a mere fabrication. On his death this distinguished professor received the funeral rites customarily granted to all Catholics, and there is nothing strange in that, since he had been reconciled with the Church in the last 10 or 15 years of his life. Dr Azevedo was always a grave and serious man, and therefore incapable of staging the ‘display of posthumous irony’ that Mr Koebel sought to attribute to him. The assertions of this British subject enjoyed not the slightest credit.