O código d'honra e as altera es na prática de duelar em Portugal nos séculos XIX-XX

The history of private life is largely dependent on written sources. As it is anchored in materialsources, the research method is based on a material memory so as to reach an immaterial history,understanding the manner in which human beings sees themselves and behave with others. Thegentlemen’s duels of the 19th-20th centuries in Portugal, as a field of study on private life, possess this dynamicbetween material and immaterial. The need for a duel code from which ideas and rules were taken for duellingamong gentlemen that took place on the margins of State regulation, punishable by law but sociallyaccepted, was visible in the 19th century. Thus the Ponto de Honra (Point of Honour) appeared in the 20thcentury, in an act to officialise that which had been long practiced in the country. This paper intends toanalyse how this written code affected the ways of duelling, studying the cases before and after the code’sexistence, and determining the probable impact on the men of having an accessible national object on whichthey could justify a tradition.