As crianças e as leis: as representações das crianças no Concílio de Trento e nas Ordenações do Reino de Portugal

Abstract

This article analyzes the representations of children in three important legislations for the Portuguese Empire in the Modern Age, namely: the Council of Trent, the major law of the Catholic Church during that period, the Manueline Ordinances, and the Philippine Ordinances, both royal codes applied to secular law. In order to do so, it assesses the historiographical trajectory and the analysis of sources parameterized by the field of Cultural History studies. Thus, by approaching these legislations as sources, the aim is to theoretically connect them to the cultural games of representations, appropriations, and practices that permeated the daily life of those societies and the new social position to be defined and occupied by children in that period.