Irmãs do Rosário de Santo Antônio: Gênero, Cotidiano e Sociabilidade em Recife (1750-1800)

Abstract

This study aims to draw a profile of female participation in lay brotherhoods at Recife, in the second half of 18th century, especially in the Rosary of the Black Brotherhood of St. Anthony, from the clash between the ideal type of woman built and distributed by Tridentine Catholic Church and the reality experienced by women in Portuguese America in that period. The brotherhoods were formed in Brazil since the beginning of colonization, from the consensual union of religious and lay people from ethnic groups or professionals, around the devotion to a holly protector. These associations were shaped as an important area of exercise of religion, sociability and assistance. Having significant influence on daily life of its members and on the place’s social life where they were established, they appear as a favorable space to the study of the relationships built between men and women, because through them we can visualize the applicability of the Catholic’s discourse surrounded by the delegated powers of both genders. For this purpose, we use the genre as a category of analysis, since it allows the study of power relations between male and female figure. We put this research in the field of socio-cultural history, which consists in examining the relations between social groups from the prevailing culture, in this case, the transplanted baroque culture of the Iberian Peninsula and modified by contact with native and African cultural nuances. We will use to do this study commitments statutes of brotherhood, its administrative documents, the Anais Pernambucanos, the First Constitutions of Archbishop of Bahia and educational manuals and behavior. We aim, for this way, to help to broaden the knowledge of regional historiography about the subject proposal.