seduction , rape and marriage in the eighteenth century: discovering the women of colonial paraíba

The study of the Colonial Law in order to understand its operation requires a diffe- rent way of thinking, quite far from the way the Law works nowadays. In the colonial pe- riod, during the Antigo Regime, we had three coexisting jurisdictions, the Catholic Chur- ch, the State and the Inquisition. This outset is essential to the study of Portuguese and Brazilian Law in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The religious powers that came from institutions associated to the beliefs and ideological thinking allowed the access to indivi- dual and collective political bodies of private and public life of people in society. Among the immensity of articles from the ordinances, laws, alvarás, regulations, monitórios and synodical constitutions we will focus on analyzing two cases occurred in captaincy of Paraíba in the middle of the 18th century. Both cases deal with seduction, kidnapping and rape, concepts that need to be understood in comparison with the standard and the expected act, desired and recommended to all women as a model: the marriage.