Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile, Un catholicisme colonial. Le mariage des Indiens et des esclaves au Brésil, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (original) (raw)

2022, Annali Trento: https://aro-isig.fbk.eu/issues/latest/

The marriage of the native Brazilian (free or enslaved people) and African slaves is, in the analysis of Charlotte de Castelnau-L'Estoile, the central element of the Brazilian pro-slave society and one of the main subjects of discussion between the local (or Brazilian) and the central (or Roman) Catholicism. Conversion and marriage were the two ways, on the one hand, imposed by the colonial authorities and, on the other hand, used by natives of America and Africa to build and became part of the colonial society, the white Catholic Brazilian society (p. 19). The point of view of the French historian is the history of the evangelization and religion of a colonial society, between the incorporation of the natives and the maintenance of their subordination. A wide range of sources have been taken into consideration as basis of this monography: juridical documents from the Brazilian archives collecting controversies on marriages; theological treaties; reports and doubts presented to the Roman Papal archives (at the Congregations of the Holy Office and de Propaganda Fide); but also travels reports, chronicles of geography, official history of the Portuguese Empire, letters between missionaries and superiors of the Society of Jesus and, in minor part, of the Capuchins between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. The author collects information on the local wedding custom too, through the missionary ethnology, as well as she presents the most important canonical decisions, established by the Papacy, changing the traditional position on the marriage of the unfaithful newly converted, called, as she says, eternal neophytes («éternels neophytes»). When the sources suggest the connection, the situation of native Americans and enslaved Africans in Brazil is compared with the doubts and debate dedicated to the Christian neophytes in Japan, Spanish America, and Congo.