THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE OF HABEAS CORPUS IN PORTUGUESE CANON LAW

Portuguese insurance letters are increasingly considered as one of the oldest legislative-legal traditions of the constitutional principle of habeas corpus and simultaneously a cusp of the Portuguese legal culture. During the five centuries of its effective validity they ramified into two typologies: civil insurance letters, under the aegis of monarchical Civil Justice, and canonical insurance letters, under the aegis of the ecclesiastical Justice of the church. In respect to the latter, this study intends to leave here a first approach and simple support, mainly from the legislative treatment provided by the various Portuguese Synodal Constitutions, which was compared with the concordant civil legislation.