Abstract EN:

Public authorities have always fought against the criminal world and, in order to achieve a harmonious society (at least theoretically), have organised judiciary systems that were strong and coercive. These were considered by their magistrates as essentially necessary for the defences of community. The practice of excluding undesirables from a community by arresting and condemning them to banishment has always existed in human society. The history of banishment in Portugal acquired new angles with the maritime expansion of the 15th 16th centuries and the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. Who were the people condemned? Was the exclusion of undesirable elements from the community used by the holy-office both as a means of achieving social normalisation and of populating recently discovered lands? By studying the royal laws and inquisitorial regulations, one perceives that most of the banished were punished for crimes against morals and religion. They were new Christians, witches, blasphemers, visionaries, sodomites, bigamists, immoral and false priests. . . For the inquisition, banishment functioned as a necessary religious and social defence against heterodox infection, while at the same time serving as a mystical procedure for the purification of sins ministers of the holy-office used as many castigations and banishments as possible to insure proper purification. Both social normalisation and the expiation of sins fit perfectly in the practice of banishment.