Origem e constituição histórica das devoções santeiras em Minas Gerais

Abstract

Abstract: It is common understanding that Brazilian society is predominantly Catholic. This Catholicism, however, is historically marked by two subsystems that dispute spaces of power and influence: an institutional, centered in the sacraments and in the mediation from the clergy; and other popular, devotional, centered on the cult of saints. These saint devotions resulted from the action of the colonizers who came to Brazil bringing their faith, beliefs, saints of devotion, religious celebrations, penances and promises. Far from institutional Catholicism and Vatican regulations, these religious practices were already varied depending on the colonizers origins and became even more diversified when it merged with religious elements of Indians and Africans. In Minas Gerais, the religious orders were forbidden to be installed throughout the eighteenth century, as a consequence of this prohibition people created third orders, fraternities and religious associations of all kinds. Thereat, in Minas Gerais, more than any other Brazilian state, fructified a Catholic lay or popular Catholicism that Vatican tried to frame, especially from the late nineteenth century, a process that became known as "Romanization of Catholicism."