The Portuguese Inquisition’s Goa Confessions of Sorcery

Record summary

Records of the Goa Inquisition include prosecutions and denunciations involving divination, healing, spirit practices, Hindu ritual, and alleged demonic magic. Although Goa is outside Latin America and the Caribbean, these files provide a valuable comparative colonial corpus for examining how Portuguese Catholic institutions classified non-European practices. They can be compared with Brazil and Atlantic cases involving enslaved and Indigenous practitioners. The material is uneven and institutionally shaped; categories such as “sorcery” may reflect inquisitorial translation rather than stable local religious concepts.