In the medieval Portuguese society, the practice of clerical concubinage represented a threat to celibacy and religious marriages. These were fundamental institutions to the social ordination project defended by the Church and the monarchy. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the civil laws defined clerical concubinage as crime. However, there was the possibility of acquittal or sentence reduction by means of Letters of Pardon, an important legal tool to understand the gender representations that have mediated the eye of justice, forging the image of concubines as sinners and criminals.
Celibacy; Marriage; Clerical Concubinage; Gender Relations