ABSTRACT
Imprisonment, destitution, hunger and disease were aspects of the same reality for a long time in Portugal and in many other countries in Europe. The difficulties the poor encountered in negotiating the twists and turns of the law prolonged the time they spent in noxious conditions, which only aggravated the state of degradation in which prisoners lived. These two circumstances, the physical and the legal, are the facets that have attracted most attention from specialist historiographers. As mentioned previously, relief for poor prisoners was the focus of action for the new confraternities that arose in the late fifteenth century in Portugal. Yet much research is still needed, despite everything that has been written about the misericórdias. The prison world in the early modern period still lacks a systematic approach relating it to social history in order to address the phenomena of violence, criminality and repression. 1
