Imperfect Sodomy: The Lisbon Inquisition and the Repression of Heterosexual Anal Intercourse in Portugal, 1580–1800

Abstract: While 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 article 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 analyze what the sources reveal about the reactions and responses that it evoked among those involved. This paper discusses and analyzes 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 study seeks to find trends in the cultural attitudes that lay behind these sources.