On the conviction of Tiradentes

Abstract

The text comments on the Judgment of April 18, 1792, which sentenced Tiradentes to hanging, quartering, and a declaration of infamy extending to his descendants, examining it as a summary of the cruel and defaming punishments then in force under the Philippine Ordinances. Drawing on the history of Luso-Brazilian criminal law and on authors such as Foucault, Marcello Caetano, and Augusto Thompson, the author describes corporal punishments, the rope and public proclamation, and the modes of cruel, atrocious, and simple death, situating the ordeal as an instrument of sovereign power. He contrasts this regime of punitive terror with the contemporary Enlightenment declarations of rights and with Mello Freire's Criminal Code Project, concluding that the 1824 Constitution and the Imperial Criminal Code abolished flogging, torture, and confiscation, thereby banishing that brutal face of criminal law.