B. Horto do Esposo - Universidade Aberta

Abstract
The study called «Pecados de Mulheres - a Cosmovisão Medieval: das Constituições
Sinodais e Livros de Penitenciais ao Horto do Esposo e Contos Populares e Lendas,
Coligidos por José Leite de Vasconcellos», aims to compare normative texts from the 13th
century to others from the 15th century with the work called Horto do Esposo (14th-15th
century) and also with Contos Populares e Lendas, collected by José Leite de Vasconcellos
(from the end of the19th century to the beginning of the 20th century) as far as women’s
sins are concerned.
At a first stage, constitutions from synods of Lisboa, Porto and Braga and also from Tratado
de Confissom and Libro de las Confesiones, from Martín Pérez, were studied, and different
sins of the flesh and of the spirit committed by women were recognized.
At a second moment, sins committed by women were examined in exempla in the work
Horto do Esposo and related to the sins found in the normative texts. Thanks to this
comparison, it was possible to find in the Horto do Esposo signs of a personal and
subjective point of view about women and their sins.
Finally, the study of Contos Populares e Lendas allowed us to verify that the sins of the
flesh and spirit analysed in normative texts and in the Horto still remained in the imaginary
popular universe. Regardeless this common base, it pointed out the valorisation of woman’s
sagacity /craft in the traditional texts, who therefore, managed to hide the sins of the flesh
and manipulated her husband in order to continue with her marriage. Frequently, the woman
that committed the sins of the spirit, also managed to avoid possible punishments. These
conclusions suggest that the sins studied are minimized as far as the popular tradition is
concerned. Therefore, medieval and traditional texts differ substantially. Besides the time
distance and the smoothing of customs/behaviours, it is also important to consider the
different point of view that separates normative texts written in a clerical environment from
popular texts, where a satiric and anti-clerical point of view is noticed.