Subsídios para o estudo da criminalidade na região de Coimbra no século XIX: alguns exemplos de «crimes contra a religião»(e outros delitos) no período de 1850-1870

Abstract

The main aspect of this study refers the criminality occurred in the Coimbra region in religious matters during the period of 1850- -1870. The documents used for this purpose are taken from administrative sources. Beside the specific «crime against the religion» (one should remember that the Catholic religion benefits of a favoured status in the different consitutional texts of Portuguese Liberalism) other delicts more os less related have been considered: offence to the public morals (when committed in sacred places); different kinds of attempts on clergymen; different crimes which took place in churches and/or during religious ceremonies. In a region (and in a country) where at the time was predominant the crime against persons (succeeded by the crime against property) the delicts we deal of only have a minute expression in statistics. With the valuation of these events (which in the present case are frequently of minor importance and very often almost anecdoctic) one aims in a general way to achieve new conclusive data referred to the theme of delinquency (concerning the social history in the field of behaviour and the mentality) and specifically point out some various elements of the religious and moral universe and, by means of this, possible approaches or distances between the «sacred and the profane». One should point out that a great number of these documented facts suggests at the end an intimate relation between the religious and the temporal sphere.