Thread by @FJSoyer

1/ The Portuguese #Inquisition and Female Homosexuality [Thread].
In Portugal, the legal authorities began to pay attention to female
homosexuality only at the end of the 15th century.

2/ The first royal edict to explicitly target female homosexuality was promulgated on 20 December 1499, during the reign of Manuel I (1495–1521).

3/ The Portuguese monarch, having received advice from his councilors and
lawyers, decreed that convicted female homosexuals were to suffer the same
sentence as male homosexuals, namely the death penalty.

4/ Interestingly, however, The first reference to female homosexuality appears not in a legal document but rather in the 1489 Tratado de Confissom, a manual for confessors and also the first book to have been printed in vernacular Portuguese.

5/ The Tratado refers to women and their use of dildos and advises
confessors to assign appropriate penances to “the woman who climaxes
with another woman using an instrument [of the kind] that women tend to
use.”

6/ Confessors were also advised to issue harsher penances to the “active”
woman (who handled the dildo) rather than the “passive” one (whose vagina
was penetrated by the dildo.

7/ To date, there is only very limited documentary evidence that the death penalty decreed by King Manuel I was ever implemented.

8/ A year or two before 1551, a resident of Lisbon named Branca Freire who had been convicted of having eloped with another woman, named Joana Fernandes, was condemned to a sentence of seven years of exile in one of the Portuguese outposts in North Africa.

9/ Branca Freire claimed after her arrest to have been deceived by her lover and accused Joana Fernandes, whom she blamed for having “seduced” her and who she claimed was a “bad woman” (maa molher), a witch and a sorceress.

10/ On the basis of these claims, Branca Freire received her sentence of exile while Joana Fernandes appears (although this is, unfortunately, not explicitly specified) to have been burnt.

11/ On appeal, King João III (1521–1557) reduced the sentence of Branca Freire and eventually limited it to the payment of a fine.

12/ At the very least, the decree of King Manuel certainly demonstrates
that lawyers and jurists, while initially perplexed by female homosexuality,
decided to classify it as a crime in the same legal category as male
homosexuality.

13/ The decree was later incorporated into the legal compilation
(Ordenações) of King Manuel, and the sentence imposed on female
homosexuals was officially to be death by burning at the stake...

14/ ... the scattering of their ashes, as well as the confiscation and division of their property for the benefit of the Crown and those who denounced them.

15/ After Portugal came under Habsburg rule in 1580, these laws were incorporated into the Ordenações Filipinas...

16/ ... which specified that female homosexuals were to be burnt like male homosexuals since those women “commit a sin contra natura with others and in the same way that [homosexual] men do.”

17/ The only change was that the burden of proof to secure a conviction
for all tribunals, including the Inquisition, was set at a minimum of
two witnesses offering testimony regarding two separate homosexual acts
(Ordenações Filipinas, libro V, título 13).

18/ It is important to note, however, that none of these royal decrees sought to define with a greater degree of exactitude what constituted “female sodomy” and how such a crime could be committed without a penis.

19/ The attitude of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal toward the
prosecution of female homosexuals was far from clear until the middle of the
17th century.

20/ In 1555, the inquisitorial tribunal of Lisbon prosecuted a young mulata washerwoman named Clara Fernandes, who was married and a resident of Lisbon, for having engaged in “the sin of sodomy” (peccado de sodomia) with a younger teenage woman.

21/ According to the transcript of her trial, the two women
kissed, hugged, and Clara “placed herself on top on the other woman like
a man places himself on top of a woman” (em cyma da outra como hum
homen em cyma de huma mulher).

22/ Clara Fernandes defended herself by claiming not to possess a penis (and thus unable to commit “sodomy”) but was eventually condemned by the inquisitors to suffer a lashing, the loss of her property, and life imprisonment

23/ Her trial, A.N.T.T., Inquisição de Lisboa, processo n◦. 12,418, has been digitized and is available thanks to the Portuguese National Archives:
digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=231…
digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=2312…

24/ Although the Inquisition does not appear to have shown much any interest in
prosecuting female homosexuals, the issue of whether or not it should even
do so was debated toward the end of 1644 and the beginning of 1645...

25/... , when a query from the inquisitors of the tribunal based in Goa in Portuguese India arrived in Lisbon.

26/ The Goan inquisitors inquired from the General Council
of the Portuguese Inquisition whether the prosecution of women who had
vaginal or anal intercourse with other women, including instances when
a dildo was used, fell within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.

27/ In a clear sign that the Portuguese Inquisition had no established procedure regarding female homosexuals, the members of the General Council convened a
group of three inquisitors and four theologians to consider the question.

28/ After conducting an extensive survey of the existing literature and citing
no fewer than 15 respected authorities, the group recommended that the
Portuguese Inquisition should not conduct any further investigations into
cases of purported female homosexuality...

29/ ... unless the papacy issued a new decree on the subject. They neatly summed up their argument by stating that the whole business “was dubious” (sendo a materia duvidosa).

30/ Cases of "female sodomy" were limited to cases of heterosexual anal intercourse.

31 and final/ If you interested in this topic see the bibliography of works by Portuguese and Brazilian authors listed in my article: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…