The Goa Inquisition between the 18th and 19th centuries: Ministers, organization and procedures.

Abstract

The proposed research has as its main objective to study the relations between the ministers (prosecuters, deputies and inquisitors) who worked on the Goa Inquisition and the overall evolution of the tribunal's internal organization and its procedures. The elected timespan of the project begins in 1707, when D. Nuno da Cunha becomes the general-inquisitor of the portuguese Inquisition, and ends in 1812, when the tribunal was permanently shut down. During this period the institution faced great changes both in the local sphere, the Estado da Índia, and in the wider sphere of the Portuguese Empire, with the enlightened reforms put forth during the Marquês de Pombal rule deeply affecting the institution. Our sources are the correspondence between the General Counsil of the Holy Office and the Goa inquisitorial tribunal, currently held at the Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, and at the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, in Portugal. We also intend to use the habilitation processes of the ministers, held at the ANTT. In short, we wish to better understand the Inquisition's activity in Goa in its final century, and for that we intend to analyse the internal workings and transformations of the institution, be that in the general profile of the acting ministers, in the ways of proceedings against the crimes of inquisitorial concern or even in the actual structure and organization of the tribunal.