Na Primeira República, praticar espiritismo era cometer um crime indígena

Abstract

The article intends to bring to the discussion the receptivity of the Penal Code of 1890 legislated by João Baptista Pereira in the Brazilian juridical environment, especially the understandings related to Article 157, which curtailed the religious freedom of the spiritists. Through analysis of historical sources, we will analyze the antecedents to the promulgation of the republican penal norm that replaced the Criminal Code of 1830 and the derogatory deployments among the magistrates of the country before the rejection of the new legislation, which came with lack of dialogue in several controversial points. In his attempts to avoid the substitution of the criminal norm, Baptista Pereira reaffirmed the need to keep the code legislated by him and ratified the indispensability of spiritism to be a criminal offense with prison punishment for being an "indigenous crime" by, in its consideration, reporting delays and incivility.