Amores e desventuras : as relações clandestinas e o combate aos casamentos costumeiros na cidade do Recife (1850-1891)

Abstract

Since the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church seeks to combat clandestine relationships, the bigamias, adulteries, the concubines/amasiamentos, kidnapping and a whole range of sexual relationships that were not sheltered in private. Therefore, the Church made use of a large body of laws aimed at regulating the live-house, watching the steps, the moral and sexual behaviors and even thoughts, the Church was present in Recife daily life, however, such monitoring does not departed the company said the crime of prostitution sin, committed by individuals who do not put into practice the sacraments, particularly marriage. The Catholic goal was to finally ditch that separated men and women, immersed in his daily chores of the sacraments. In this endeavor, clerical procedures were also put into question, revealing the deviations of some parish priests and vicars, who did not meet the expectations tridentine differentiation and decorum ducts. Many of the complaints, the correspondences between the parishes and the Vicar General, pointing to the failure of the canonical laws by prelates part, which opened gaps in the ecclesiastical norms regarding the establishment of irregular marriages. The issues of honor also joined the church staff as a constitutive element of social structure itself and part of sexual politics. In this perspective, the notions of honor acquire a social boundary, moving away from its purely biologizing elements, and virginity. Be honored in the nineteenth Recife, was, above all , meet the woman model created by a misogynistic society that understand the female figure only as a daughter, wife and mother, and all of them, submissive, honest and devout. However, not all women are passively shaped the social norms and brought many social, moral and sexual conflicts, indulging in men who had promised marriage, abandoning them deflowered and, most often, pregnant. Deviations of women's behaviors, which left deflower under promises of marriage, and defloradores men paved the way for the institutions of social control such as the Church and the State, enter therein the sacred precincts of home, making private events public quarrels it should be penalized mediated and not to become commonplace. So many men were required to repay the honor of deflowered women through marriage, but not all were worthy of such benefit. Only those who attended the social and moral expectations were honored by the presumed benevolence of mediators, who understood the refund honor these women as an act of justice, morality, and to underpin the sacrament of marriage, avoiding the conception of illegitimate children.