School of HASS Research Seminar

Whilst the legal persecution of homosexuals in early modern Europe has now received considerable scholarly attention, the legal prosecution of cases of "imperfect sodomy", heterosexual anal intercourse, remains largely unstudied. This seminar paper focuses on surviving records from the archives of the inquisitorial tribunal of Lisbon in Portugal between 1580 and 1800 to shed light on the prosecution of heterosexual sodomy in early modern Portugal but also to analyse what the sources reveal about the reactions and responses that it evoked among those involved. This paper discusses and analyses the body of evidence that can be derived not just from the handful of extent inquisitorial trials but also from the much wider evidence preserved in the confessions and denunciations in the Cadernos de Nefandos: files containing thousands of denunciations. Drawing upon the confessions of, and denunciations against, over a hundred women, this section seeks to find trends in the cultural attitudes that lay behind these sources.

François Soyer is Associate Professor of History at the University of New England. He is the author of seven books, including 'The ‘Catalan Hermaphrodite’ and the Inquisition: Early Modern Sex and Gender on Trial' (2023), 'Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World' (2019), and 'Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal' (2012). He is also the co-editor of 'Emotions in Europe 1517–1914' (2021) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

For Zoom link contact Sandy Boucher aboucher@une.edu.au