On Gentilidade as a Religious Offence: A Specificity of the Portuguese Inquisition in Asia?

Abstract

The transfer of the Iberian Inquisitions to the overseas territories of Portugal and Spain in 1560 and 1569–71 impacted the functioning of these tribunals in ways that were by no means superficial—to the extent that this institution was challenged by problems that it had not anticipated and for which it was only minimally prepared. Despite being an institution that was intended to be uniform in its organization and procedures, in African, American, and Asian contexts, the Inquisition was forced to adjust its models of surveillance as they were practiced in the Iberian Peninsula. The territories where the Crown—and by extension, the Holy Office— claimed jurisdiction encompassed large geographies that contrasted with the Iberian/European background that provided the social and religious matrix on which the jurisprudence practiced by the inquisitorial courts was based. Modern Inquisitions were heirs to a centuries-old process of adapting, employing, and defining the vocabulary relating to transgression and orthodoxy. Drawing from different social settings of Greek-Roman society, early Christian authors employed terms such as “sect”, “heresy”, or “superstition” to structure the basic discourse on faith and religion.1 The theological sophistication that ensued from the need to differentiate Christian orthodoxy from other groups claiming doctrinal authority also fostered a heresiological discourse that named, classified, and defined religious dissention to the point that it resulted in the production of handbooks on heresies, while Roman courts were making use of their own terminology to address charges of religious dissention.2 Thus, the