Entre la gracia y la regulación: los privilegios de la Inquisición en Portugal (siglos XVI-XVIII)

Abstract

This article examines the granting, practical enforcement, and regulation of privileges conferred on the servants of the Portuguese Inquisition between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Treating privilege as an instrument of royal governance and institutional organization, it analyses the range of prerogatives granted to familiars and officials of the Holy Office and their role in recruiting agents and in consolidating the Inquisition’s symbolic standing. The study argues that, although the expansion of the privileged network raised fiscal and administrative concerns within the monarchy, the regulatory measures adopted from the late seventeenth century onward did not seek to dismantle the system but rather to rationalize it. The creation of the category of the familiares do número aimed to reconcile institutional efficiency, royal control, and the preservation of privilege’s social value, confirming the Inquisition’s central place in the early modern “market” of social distinctions.