Entre missionários e bispos: confissão e catequese na Amazônia Colonial Portuguesa 1686-1747

Abstract

Among Missionaries and Bishops, from 1686 to 1747, is a work that sought to understand the practice of confession promoted by the religious figures who worked in Portuguese America. By tracing the practice of this sacrament, we were able to observe that the development of the missionary work had very specific characteristics, especially regarding communication with indigenous populations through the Lingua Brasílica. On the other hand, the creation of the Bishopric of Pará (1719) marked new ways of dealing with the conversion of indigenous people and represented another form of institutionalization of control through the figure of bishops. Within the process of maintaining control and exercising power over indigenous populations lay the best way to exploit the region and acquire wealth. In this context, through religious action, we observe the intertwining of this introduction of faith with the exercise of dominion over indigenous populations in the Amazônia Colonial. Religious practices, with catechism and sacraments, demonstrate the deepening of this power through the internalization of the control sought by the colonizers. The thesis demonstrates a path created by the religious figures to achieve these objectives, which were constituted throughout the colonization, beginning with physical control and expanding into the spiritual realm through conversion.