O ato de interrogar sob a perspectiva dos inquisidores: entre a teoria e a prática

Abstract

The scope of the present thesis is analyse the role of inquisitors in the interrogation, in theory, through the inquisitorial manuals they have written to instruct the most incipient in the role, and, in practice, through the study of inquisitorial processes conducted by them. Therefore, after addressing the context of the emergence of inquisitorial manuals, defining who the inquisitors were and describing how the interrogation had taken place in the Inquisition, it has done an examination of a specific inquisitorial manual, whose was written in 1538, for use by the Tribunal do Santo Ofício de Lisbon and, with an emphasis on the interrogation models predisposed therein, its content was confronted with the interrogation of three members of a family, processed, in the same place and period, by cryptojudaism. Then, the interrogation was characterized as a ritual, composed of rules that, although correlated with the penitential system of the Catholic Church, gave it identity. The purpose is to demonstrate that the interrogation was the most important moment of the inquisitorial process and the performance of the inquisitors, who should be able to involve the defendant in the production of the real truth, through the questions they had formulated and directed to them, and how the manuals inquisitorial investigations were necessary for this purpose.