O Signo do diabo em forma de mulher: a inquisição na Bahia de Todos os Santos 1591-1699

Abstract

The imagery of the witch and sorceress woman took hundreds of women to the Tribunal of the Holy Office during her existence. This imaginary is strengthened by religious elites in order to discipline and domesticate female bodies. In the search for morality and good behavior of its faithful, the Church, together with the Portuguese Inquisition, pursued practices considered heretics in an attempt to root out these types of transgressions from the kingdom and its overseas territories. Based on nine complaints from the Prosecutor's Notebook, but also on civil and manual codes, we have several accused men and women, white, black and indigenous. We will seek to understand in this work how gender roles were imposed on women with a demonizing and stigmatizing character, which circulated in colony Brazil. We want to map which stereotypes were attributed to these subjects considered agents of the Devil and what impact they had on the maintenance and propagation of their rites in a society that called itself strictly Christian.