O Iluminismo e o código criminal do Império: os debates legislativos sobre a pena de morte e a modernidade da reforma penal (1826 – 1830)

Abstract

On December 16, 1830, the Criminal Code of the Empire of Brazil was sanctioned. In that moment, the political class received the new criminal legislation with great enthusiasm, as this legal instrument represented a civilizational advance for the nation. In addition, it also revoked Book V of the Philippine Ordinances, which ruled the criminal legal order until that moment, but was seen as outdated, barbaric, violent and cruel by the political elite. Such ideas and motivations seem to be based on the Enlightenment movement, which circulated widely in Europe. The present work aims to analyze the presence of such intellectual and cultural movement in the legislative debates on the Criminal Code of 1830. It also analyzes the likely consequences that such ideas had on the code and whether it should be categorized as “modern”. For this, it was used the digitized Annals of the Câmara dos Deputados (equivalent to the House of Representatives), where it was possible to analyze the speeches of legislators on the death penalty and compare them with the theories of classic authors of the Enlightenment. The two initial drafts of the code were also compared with the final text, in the part that corresponded to the death penalty. It is concluded that, despite the visible Illuminist interference throughout the legislative process in the Câmara dos Deputados, these were not the only sources present in the formation of the code, and even the interference of ideas that the Enlightenment itself tried to combat, making it difficult, thus, that the Criminal Code of the Empire can be classified purely as “modern”.