Between the whip and the bonfire: slavery and portuguese Inquisition between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Abstract

The Holy Office of the Inquisition of Portugal judged and sentenced a number of deviations from heresy and different types of defendants. Among the persecuted profiles, attention was directed mainly to the dissidents committed by the New-Christians, which did not exclude the concern about other types of accused: clerics, fidalgos, peões, Africans and their descendants. Those, if were not the main target of denunciations, formed a considerable part of the cases recorded in the documents of the Inquisitorial Tribunal. Carrying Bolsas de Mandinga, witchcraft practices, forms of curandeirismo, actions of malefícios, blasphemy and various behaviors against morality (sodomy, bigamy, molícies) are some examples of the crimes persecuted by the Inquisition and, variably, committed by the population of African origin. In considering all these aspects, also related to the initial doctoral research, the present BEPE project intends to observe and analyze, from the sources of the Portuguese Holy Office available in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo and in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, in Lisbon , the citations and proceedings against Africans that demonstrate more particular details about the daily interactions of the captivity. Processos-crime, Cadernos do Promotor, Cadernos de Nefandos, Listas de Autos-de-fé, Denúncias e Confissões are documents that, allocated in the Portuguese archives, become indispensable for the development of the research and for the understanding about the relationship between Inquisition and slavery. Therefore, in addition to conducting a survey of classical and recent works at the Centro de História da Universidade de Lisboa, this project intends to undertake the transcription and interpretation of the documents available in the archives to develop the central objective of the research: the analysis and understanding of customs and practices around the owners-slave relationship present in the inquisitorial sources and the possible intrusion of this Court in the slavery.