Church and State

Revista Brasileira de História ISSN 1806-9347

Church and State

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Indexing data bases: Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge, ABC-CLIO, Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) Revista Brasileira de História – Official Organ of the National Association of History. São Paulo, ANPUH, vol. 32, no 63, jan.-jun. 2012. Semiannual ISSN: 1806-9347 CODEN: 0151/RBHIEL

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Revista Brasileira de História

Church and State

ANPUH

Revista Brasileira de História no 63 Founder: Alice P. Canabrava August 2011 – July 2013 Editor of RBH Marieta de Moraes Ferreira – FGV / UFRJ

Assistant Editors of RBH Alexandre Fortes – UFRRJ Ana Teresa Marques Gonçalves – UFG Carla Simone Rodeghero – UFRGS Cláudia Maria Ribeiro Viscardi – UFJF Fátima Martins Lopes – UFRN Frederico de Castro Neves – UFCE George Evergton Sales Souza – UFBA Hebe Maria da Costa Mattos Gomes de Castro – UFF Julio Cesar Pimentel Pinto Filho – USP Lucília de Almeida Neves Delgado – UnB Marcelo Cândido da Silva – USP Marluza Marques Harres – Unisinos Regina Beatriz Guimarães Neto – UFPE Selva Guimarães Fonseca – UFU Tania Regina de Luca – Unesp

Advisory Board of RBH Adilson José Francisco – ANPUH-MT Altemar da Costa Muniz – ANPUH-CE Célia Costa Cardoso – ANPUH-SE Claudio Umpierre Carlan – ANPUH-MG Edilza Joana Fontes – ANPUH-PA Élio Chaves Flores – ANPUH-PB Eurelino Coelho – ANPUH-BA Fabiana de Souza Fredrigo – ANPUH-GO Hélio Sochodolak – ANPUH-PR Hideraldo Lima da Costa – ANPUH-AM Jaime de Almeida – ANPUH-DF João Batista Bitencourt – ANPUH-MA Luís Augusto Ebling Farinatti – ANPUH-RS Luzia Margareth Rago – ANPUH-SP Maria Augusta de Castilho – ANPUH-MS Maria Teresa Santos Cunha – ANPUH-SC Osvaldo Batista Acioly Maciel – ANPUH-AL ANPUH and the Revista Brasileira de História are not responsible for the opinions present at the published articles.

The Revista Brasileira de História publishes original articles in tune with the advances of contemporary historiographical production. It aims to act as a vehicle of promotion of historical research, writing and teaching practices. http://www.anpuh.org/revistabrasileira/publichttp://www.anpuh.org/ revistabrasileira/public

CONTENTS

Foreword 7

Dossier: Church and State

The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint in Jesuit writings and rites, c.1585 15 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso

Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão 39 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz

In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines 59 Fernando Lobo Lemes

“Your grace in our feelings”: devotion to the Virgin as a guarantee of salvation of the souls in an eighteenth century manual of devotion 83 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann

Politician priests and their solidarity networks: an analysis of the role of priests in the ‘sertão’ of Minas Gerais (1822 and 1831) 119 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva

Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil: the relationship between State and Church in the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930) 145 Maurício de Aquino

Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ 173 Christiane Jalles de Paula

Churches and State 197 Olivier Abel

The time of sanctity: reflections on a concept 209 Igor Salomão Teixeira

The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher: Vincent of Beauvais and the concept of Christian kingship in the 13th century 227 André Luis Pereira Miatello

Articles The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit 251 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos

Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy 283 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman

A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic: Revista Americana and the building of a new continental vision 303 Fernando Vale Castro

Civism, the Republic and textbooks 327 Cleber Santos Vieira

Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century: diversity in size, location and services provided 345 Lucília Siqueira

When the dragon takes the horse’s place: a post-colonial character in Xul Solar’s criollo piece 365 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores

Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties in 1950s Belém 385 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa

“One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) 407 Raquel Varela

Reviews Ferreira, Jorge. João Goulart: uma biografia 433 Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta

De Luca, Tania R. Leituras, projetos e (Re)vista(s) do Brasil (1916-1944) 437 Livia Lopes Neves

Souza, Laura de Mello e. Cláudio Manuel da Costa: o letrado dividido 441 Cristina Ferreira

Nora, Pierre. Présent, nation, mémoire 445 Luciana Fernandes Boeira

Foreword

The Revista Brasileira de História, launched in 1981 in order to provide an outlet for the dissemination of works by Brazilian professors and historians, is proud to release issue 63. Beginning with issue 59, RBH, which is published on a semiannual basis, became entirely digital and began offering an English translation of the magazine. The purpose of these innovations was to broaden periodical’s range of circulation, allowing a reading public unfamiliar with Portuguese to have access to our work, while streamlining consultations of new and old issues. A tally of the Internet hits for the last ten issues of RBH has demonstrated the scale and scope that our publication can reach online. There were over 20,000 hits per month (more than 240,000 per year) for these last ten issues, a level of penetration that would be unthinkable for the printed magazine, confirming the importance the Internet as a precious tool that allows us to disseminate the contents of the magazine and increase access to historiography produced in and about Brazil. For this issue, the Editorial Board chose the theme of “Church and State” for the dossier, which has been significantly expanded. In the past, RBH presented a dossier with approximately five or six articles and a miscellaneous section with a similar number of articles. However, there has been a growing interest in publishing works in the magazine from within the community of historians and social scientists, and each issue has seen the number of submissions steadily rise. For our two most recent issues, we received more than two hundred articles, many of which were peer reviewed, which led us to expand not only the dossier, but also the quantity of miscellaneous articles. The desire to publish Brazilian historiographical work in outlets capable of reaching an international audience is a welcome change, yet it also presents many challenges for RBH, indicating a need to not only increase the size of our issues,

June 2012 7 F oreword but also the frequency of our publication. As such, this issue contains a total of 18 articles.

Ten articles were selected for this dossier, focused mainly on religious issues in Portuguese America. There are also three articles set in Independent Brazil (Empire and Republic) and articles focused on conceptual and historiographical discussions. We begin with the text by Vinicius Miranda Cardoso, “The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint in Jesuit writings and rites, c.1585”, which analyzes the Jesuit’s ceremonial practices and discourses relating to the arrival in Rio de Janeiro of a relic of St. Sebastian, within the context of a Jesuit visit that took place between 1584 and 1585. Based on several sources, it also focuses on the collective and sacramental remembrance of St. Sebastian’s protection of the founders Rio de Janeiro and the consecration of the saint, who is commonly depicted being shot through with arrows, as the city’s patron saint. In “Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão”, Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz examines eighteenth century jurisdictional conflicts between the Church and state, when the Marquis of Pombal came into power with a regalist policy that increasingly sought to secularize the Portuguese state. The author accompanies the conflicts and motives behind this jurisdictional dispute and analyzes the contempt with which ecclesiastical immunities were treated in Maranhão. In his article “In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines”, Fernando Lobo Lemes analyzes the conflicts and clashes between secular and ecclesiastical authorities in that region of Brazil. In the text ““Your Grace in our feelings”: devotion to the Virgin as a guarantee of salvation of souls in an eighteenth century devotion manual”, Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann analyze the manual Mestre da Vida que ensina a viver e morrer santamente, published during the first half of the eighteenth century. The main focus of the article is an analysis of the orientations that the believers should follow in their worship and devotional practices. The analysis includes recent historiographical discussions regarding reading practices, including the many forms of appropriation and reception of texts, inserted in their contexts of production and circulation. Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva’s “Politician

8 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Foreword priests and their solidarity networks: an analysis of role of priests in the ‘sertão’ of Minas Gerais (1822 and 1831)” examines the profile of Brazilian priests who uniquely allied their pastoral and intellectual formation with political action in favor of their private interests, seeking to take advantage of their social networks in order to resist the norms imposed by the state following its declaration of independence in 1822. The next article, “Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil: the relationship between state and Church in the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930)” by Maurício de Aquino, deals with the effects of the Proclamation of the Republic and the end of the padroado, which led to the implementation of a process of ecclesiastical reform and reorganization whose core consisted of the creation of dioceses and similar jurisdictions, which could be referred to as diocesanization. In “Gustavo Corção: guardian of the ‘linha-dura’”, Christiane Jalles de Paula aims to analyze the participation of lay persons from the Catholic Church in the legitimization of the military coup of 1964. The author seeks to show how the arguments of Gustavo Corção sought to legitimize the anti- democratic foundations of the military regime’s “democracy.” The second group of articles in the “Church and State” dossier features reflections on the concept of holiness and Christian royalty in the Middle Ages, as well as analysis of the relationship between these two spheres. Igor Salomão Teixeira’s “Time of sanctity: reflections on a concept” presents an analysis of the canonization of Thomas Aquinas (1323-1274). The author explains how the concept of sanctity, as it is presented, becomes a collectively constructed social phenomenon. In “The king and the kingdom under the eye of the preacher: Vincent of Beauvais and the concept of Christian kingship in the 13th century”, André Luis Pereira Miatello uses Vincent of Beauvais’s De morali principis institutione to discuss the criteria, the institution and the social function of Christian kingship in the thirteenth century. The aim is to contrast the ancient figure of the royal pastorate with the idea of reasons of state. Writing his treatise for the Capetian King Louis IX, Vincent of Beauvais contrasted the ordinary situation of the political and historical government to the social model called ecclesia, a supernatural reality. Finally, in “Churches and State”, Olivier Abel provides the reader with a bibliographic overview that includes different situations and different authors related to the relationship between these two powers.

June 2012 9 Foreword

The miscellaneous section includes eight articles. In “Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit”, Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos explores the intercultural experience between Portugal and Brazil, during the early nineteenth century, of two families from the landed gentry of northern Portugal, with particular attention paid to the intercultural journey of the women involved. The work articulates the concrete contexts and clearly situates its object of study, in order to build an understanding of different historical moments, rationalities and worldviews. Eduardo Munhoz Svartman’s “Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy” analyzes the first stage of the professional training given to Brazilian Army officers who began their careers in the 1920s. Focused on an institution that aimed to train ‘apolitical’ officers, the author calls attention to the creation of a politicizing space within the school. In “A Cultural Diplomacy Project for the Republic: Revista Americana and the building of a new continental vision”, Fernando Vale Castro seeks to analyze the publication as an tool of Itamaraty’s strategy to draw Brazil and the rest of South America closer together, highlighting the role of diplomacy in the recently proclaimed Republic. Cleber Santos Vieira’s “Civism, the Republic and textbooks” analyzes aspects of civility at the dawn of the Brazilian Republic, with particular attention paid to two school textbooks: História do Brasil ensinada pela biografia de seus heróis, by Silvio Romero (1890), and A História de São Paulo pela biografia de seus nomes mais notáveis (1895), published by Tancredo Amaral. On the one hand, the article shows the nuances of Historia Magistra Vitae present in these objects of material culture; on the other, it highlights the extent to which these history books were punctuated by disagreements about education or civic instruction, the affirmation of regional civism, as well as being the site of conflicts between the protagonists of São Paulo republicanism. Lucília Siqueira’s “Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century: diversity in their size, location and services” analyzes three hotel establishments of different sizes, highlighting their heterogeneity. Using the post-mortem inventories of the hotel owners, the article displays the variety of equipment and services available at the time, as well as the diversity of people who owned such establishments. In the text “When the dragon takes the horse’s place: a post-colonial character in Xul Solar’s criollo painting”, Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores analyzes how this artist, who represented the vanguard in Argentina, developed the belief that

10 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Foreword

America, with its myths and belief systems, revealed a spiritual space in which a new humanity would develop, using the dragon to subvert the flow of colonization in the New World. Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa’s “Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties in 1950s Belém” discusses the use symbolic references, from memories and printed periodicals, ascribed to the socio-spatial context of orchestral and sonoro balls in Belém, at the so- called ‘social clubs’ and ‘suburban clubs.’ Raquel Varela’s ““One, two, three MFA...”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA)” analyzes the April 25, 1974 military coup that put an end to 48 years of the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal. It seeks to explain the rise and fall of this movement of Army officers, how it won popular support and the reasons behind its collapse. This issue also includes four reviews: Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta analyzes João Goulart: uma biografia, by Jorge Ferreira; Lívia Lopes Neves discusses Leituras, projetos e (re)vista(s) do Brasil (1916-1944), by Tania Regina de Luca; Cristina Ferreira reviews Cláudio Manuel da Costa: o letrado dividido, by Laura de Mello e Souza, and Luciana Fernandes Boeira examines Présent, nation, mémoire, by Pierre Nora. Once again, we invite our readers to consult the Anpuh and SciELO web- sites and download to their computers or digital readers the articles of interest to them.

Marieta de Moraes Ferreira

June 2012 11

The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint in Jesuit writings and rites, c.1585 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso*

Resumo Abstract Neste artigo discutem-se os usos e dis- In this article, we discuss the Jesuit cursos jesuíticos relacionados com ceri- practices and discourses related to the monial de recebimento de uma relíquia ceremonial reception of a relic of St. de são Sebastião no Rio de Janeiro, no Sebastian in Rio de Janeiro, in the con- contexto de uma visitação inaciana ocor- text of an official Jesuit visit, which took rida entre 1584 e 1585. Particularmente, place between 1584 and 1585, with par- no tocante à reafirmação local da lider- ticular focus on the local reaffirmation ança religiosa da Companhia de Jesus, à of Society of Jesus’ religious leadership, imagem idealizada da missão em tempos the idealized image of the mission in de dificuldades e ao simbolismo alegóri- times of difficulties and the allegorical co relacionado com a construção da ci- symbolism related to the construction dade por portugueses, jesuítas e índios. of the city by Portuguese, Jesuits and Com base na Narrativa epistolar, de Indians. Based on the Narrativa episto- Fernão Cardim, no auto Na festa de São lar, by Fernão Cardim, on the dramatic Lourenço, atribuído a José de Anchieta, e theatrical work Na festa de São Lourenço em outras fontes ou indícios pertinentes, theater, attributed to José de Anchieta, também se destacam a rememoração co- and other pertinent sources or evidence, letiva e sacramental da proteção de são this also highlights the sacramental and Sebastião aos fundadores do Rio de collective remembrance of the protec- Janeiro e a consagração do santo flecha- tion provided by St. Sebastian to the do como padroeiro da cidade. founders of Rio de Janeiro and the con- Palavras-chave: jesuítas; são Sebastião; secration of the saint as holy patron of Rio de Janeiro. the city. Keywords: Jesuits; St. Sebastian; Rio de Janeiro.

* Masters in History. ICHS – Instituto de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Depto. de História, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. Rodovia BR 465, km 7. 23890-000 Seropédica – RJ – Brasil. [email protected]

June 2012 Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 15-38 - 201215 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso

An illustrious feast

On December 20, 1584, a visitor from the Society of Jesus, Cristóvão de Gouvêa, docked at the city of St. Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro. The Jesuit had embarked from Portugal the previous year in order to bring the center of the order of St. Ignatius closer to its Brazilian periphery, and provide consolation to the priests working in the ‘barren vineyard’ of Brazil. In addition to providing comfort, the visit also had a normative aspect, which resulted in the 1586 regimentation of Jesuit villages.1 The month of January was approaching, during which the Church would celebrate the feast of the martyr St. Sebastian, of whom the visitors brought a relic:

We brought aboard the ship a relic of the glorious Sebastian, encased in a sil- ver arm. It remained aboard the ship so that the residents and students could celebrate it as they wished, as this city bears his name and he is its patron saint and protector...2

Serving as the narrator and official communicator for the visit by Cristóvão de Gouvêa, father Fernão Cardim goes on to provide a report, albeit brief, of the ceremony that marked the relic’s arrival from Europe. In this capacity, he writes as a ‘resourceful craftsman’ who makes use of ‘rhetorical, theological and political models that are authorized by custom and that spec- ify the orthodox meaning of the representations at the local events.’ The recipients of the message – be they indigenous peoples, settlers or the Jesuits themselves, participating in the festivities, or reading or listening to the report – become ‘witnesses to the authority being represented.’ Not simply in the Jesuit sense, but also in the temporal sense, in accordance with the idea of a mystical/political body. The hierarchy of this body must be recognized through the ‘appropriate technical precepts,’ used for both the festivities and the written report, because it was based on a conception of the world that was simultaneously theological, political and rhetorical/poetical. As such, based on the descriptions provided by Father Cardim, it is possible to see many different aspects of the feast, which, taken together, form the deep orthodox and technical meaning produced by the Jesuits, who were responsible for delivering the relic and its future guardians. It is also possible to say that both the celebration and the written report of the feast can only be analyzed through the ‘filter’ of representation that is present in both. The description of the event duplicates

16 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint

The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint the physical and metaphysical routes planned in the processions, while the different stages of the festivities comprise the emblematic allegories, which are the images related to the discourses. As João Adolfo Hansen explains, “the colonial feast has the structure of a book of emblems broken down into several parts that are put in motion, as if the procession were turning pages containing the images and discourses...”3 Let’s take a closer look. The ‘authorized spokesperson’ for the visit begins his report in the following manner:

On one afternoon during the octaves, an illustrious feast was held. The gover- nor and other Portuguese citizens carried out a lustrous infantry muster, and together with their drums, fifes and flags, they went to the beach. Together with the visiting priest, the governor and the local leaders, we took a large boat, filled with flags and bouquets, in which they installed an altar and covered the quarter deck with a moquette cloak upon which they placed a predella; we were accompanied twenty well-equipped canoes, some of them painted, others curved, with oars of various colors. Among them was Martim Afonso, a servant of Christ, longtime abaetê (friend) and moçacara (a position of honor) to the Indians, a great and valiant horseman, who greatly assisted the Portuguese in the taking of this Rio. There was a major celebration, with a naval battle simulation, with drums, fifes and flutes, with shouts and celebration from the Indians; and the Portuguese on land with their infantry and also those in the fortress fired some pieces of heavy artillery and with this feast we set sail upwind and the holy relic remained at the altar, inside of a rich rotunda, with a great display of lighted candles, songs played on the organ, etc. Upon landing we embarked in procession to Misericórdia…

The ‘illustrious feast’ reported by Cardim thus begins with the ceremonial transfer of St. Sebastian’s arm from the ship to the mainland, using a barge that slid across the waters of the bay. The prelude to the event is a ‘lustrous infantry muster’ with shots from the harquebus announcing the parade that, armed with fifes and drums, arrives at the beach with its flags wielded. From among the group, the narrator highlights the governor, Salvador Correia de Sá, the elder (1547-1631, grandfather of Salvador Correia de Sá e Benevides, famous for the retaking of Angola); the Jesuit visitor Cristóvão de Gouvêa, assisted by Cardim and other priests; and the ‘local leaders,’ which refers to the families who exercised power within the municipal assembly. The secular and

June 2012 17 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso

Jesuit authorities boarded a barge festooned with flags and bouquets, where the quarter deck was covered with a moquette cloak and the predella. As the relic traveled through Guanabara Bay in a rich barrow (‘rotunda’) that rested on the improvised alter, adorned with copious amounts of candles and honored with music played on an organ, the attention turned to the inlets of the bay. There, it was not only Europeans who took part in the spectacle. The local indigenous population was symptomatically integrated into the celebration, coloring and decorating their canoes and oars with feathers, in order to take part in a simulated naval battle as part of the scenic representation in the surrounding waters. Martim Afonso Arariboia himself, with all of his prestige as an abaetê and moçacara, as well as allegedly being a member of the Order of Christ, took part in one of the canoes. There were plenty of musical instruments, such as drums and flutes, ‘with shouts and celebration from the Indians’ of the village, coupled with the Portuguese harquebus and cannons. This was the first part of the ‘feast’ involving the city and the surrounding villages of São Lourenço, without question, and, perhaps, São Barnabé. Combat was simulated among the igara canoes as the relic headed towards land amidst the breezes of the Guanabara Bay. When the high temporal and spiritual dignitaries landed – it is not spec- ified where – the relic of the patron saint is brought in procession to the clearing in front of the Santa Casa de Misericórdia, for the second part of the ceremony, now on land. It was up to the local officials to hold the poles of the predella that protected the relic of St. Sebastian, the city’s patron saint:

Upon landing we embarked in procession to Misericórdia, which is next to the beach, with the relic under the predella; the poles were taken by the members of the assembly, leading citizens and the conquerors of that land.

Cardim’s report goes on to tell that a ‘theater’ was mounted at the door to Misericórdia, under a makeshift shelter made from a boat’s sail. There, the relic rested under a ‘rich altar.’ The pause in the procession was an invitation to engage the entire city in the staging of the martyrdom of their patron, St. Sebastian, whose presence was made palpable with the relic. Cardim, while writing of the consolation, emphasizes the ‘many tears of devotion and joy’ spilled by ‘the entire city’ upon seeing the representation of the arrows being fired into the young man who played the saint, in a devout dialogue. According to the description, during this third act of the relic’s arrival, all of the inhabit-

18 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint ants of the city and its surrounding areas drew in closer to the dramatization of the holy suffering:

There was a theater at the door of Misericórdia, sheltered with a sail, and the holy relic was placed upon a rich altar as a devout dialogue was performed of the saint’s martyrdom, with choirs and many richly dressed figures. A young man tied to a post was shot through with arrows, which caused many tears of devotion and joy among the entire city – there was nary a woman absent from the feast – as he provided a very lifelike representation of the saint….

According to Cardim’s epistolary narrative, after the ‘dialogue’ – with choirs and sumptuously dressed characters, capable of drawing and moving ‘the entire city,’ at least according to the discourse – Cardim introduces a sermon to the mixed audience. The sermon was carried out at the same location, because the Jesuit church was too small to hold all of the people, as he goes on to recount:

when the dialogue was complete, and since our church was too small, I preached in the same theater of the miracles and mercies they had received from the glorious martyr in the taking of this city. When done, the visiting priest allowed all of the people to kiss the relic and then we continued in procession and dance to our church…

When he finished his sermon, Father Cristóvão made the relic of St. Sebastian available to the veneration of ‘all of the people,’ who then approached to kiss the illustrious ‘arm’ of the patron saint. Next, the final part of the ceremony begins, when the central object is brought up Morro do Castelo (Castelo Hill), which no longer exists, to the site of the Cathedral of St. Sebastian, the fort baptized under the same name as the patron saint and the Jesuit complex, which included a rudimentary church and the partially-built school building. During the procession, the ‘dance’ was one of the highlights: in addition to the participation of indigenous villagers, with feathers, decorations, melodies, canoes, ‘shouts’ and the ‘major celebration with a naval battle simulation,’ at the end of there was a dance performed by indigenous children. Dressed in an earthly manner, which is to say, ‘naked,’ painted and adorned according to indigenous customs, the young indigenous performers entranced the Jesuit narrator. Finally, Fernão Cardim concludes his description of the feast by reporting that “close to the church [of the Jesuits, on the hill], the holy relic was placed

June 2012 19 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso in the tabernacle to provide consolation to the residents, who had so requested.” Later, he says:

The priests here have the best site in the city … the church is small, made of old mud. Now, a new one is being built with stone and lime, with good orna- mentation … a bust of the 11,000 virgins, the arm of St. Sebastian and other relics…

Based on the information of Jesuit historian Serafim Leite, it is possible that this same relic was later preserved in a statue of the saint, housed in a private chapel of the Jesuit school.4

The triumph of the city

The festivities to welcome this divine gift to Rio de Janeiro can be examined from various angles. First, in a more general sense, they were celebrating the consolidation of the village itself. The memoirist Vieira Fazenda understood the ceremony not just as a tribute to the patron saint, but also as a commemoration of the transfer of the urban center to Morro do Castelo, in 1567, and as a tribute to the victories of the past against the French and the Tamoios, during its conquest.5 As Mem de Sá reported in his official correspondence with King Sebastian I of Portugal, since the location where Estácio de Sá had founded the city (close to Sugarloaf Mountain, in 1565) could no longer be defended in times of war, in 1567 the third governor general had transferred the village to a ‘more appropriate’ location, in order to ‘build the city of St. Sebastian.’ The new location was “Morro do Descanso,” later called by other names, the last of which was “Morro do Castelo,” prior to its removal in 1922. Among other buildings, such as the ‘assembly house’ the ‘jail’ and the “Church of the Priests [of the Society] of Jesus,” Mem de Sá states that they had built a “cathedral as large as three ships,”6 the parish church dedicated to the city’s patron saint, St. Sebastian. Sé’s project halted after Salvador de Sá, the elder, left city government, in 1568. After he returned to his post in 1578, the Cathedral of St. Sebastian was finally completed in 1583 – just one year prior to the arrival of the relic of the city’s patron saint. Several vestments of the old chapel would be transported to the new parish church of the patron saint, built on Estácio’s orders within the ‘old city,’ close to Sugarloaf Mountain. The mortal remains of Estácio de Sá himself would also be transferred, bringing his coffin once again into the

20 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint city, under “the roof of the church that he founded in devotion to St. Sebastian.”7 Salvador de Sá, while handling the coffin of the first Captain- major, who was a relative, updated his memorial and, at the same time, included it in the memory of the city, preserving his name and the reasons for this initiative in the grave that holds his remains to this day.8 The memory of the Captain-major of the expedition of 1565 would join with that of Salvador de Sá and that of the patron saint of the city; all of them cultivated in the nave of the Cathedral of St. Sebastian, raised to the summit of the Morro do Descanso, the city’s preeminent sacred space. One year after the inauguration of the new temple, the moment, the place and the proper motives came together for an urban reconciliation, under the auspices of Providence and the sponsorship of city authorities. Without question, the commemorative and memorialist context of the survival, transfer and consolidation of the city, subject to the uses of local power, became intertwined with the ceremonial reception of the arm of St. Sebastian, patron saint of that land. The festivities were conducive to that. And the Jesuits, the self-proclaimed interpreters of the Divine, would skillfully arrange all of the involved theological/political discourse and symbolisms. Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, it was mainly the bishops who sponsored the worship of saints, becoming, much like the invisible patrons, the visible patrons of the flock, with all of the inherent political/ religious consequences. As the promoters (impresarios, in Latin) of the worship of the Christian ‘invisible companions,’ the church leaders accumulated and fostered the recognition of their authority and their status. They positioned themselves as the benefactors of the community, conceding the benefits at- tained through the patron saints, expecting, in return, the respect and affection of their fellow citizens. The very idea of the patron saint of a city is inseparable from these episcopal theological efforts and the promotion, by the church leaders, of the worship of martyrs as patrons that would, symptomatically, quickly occupy altars as urban patron saints throughout the West during the Middle Ages.9 In the Portuguese America of the late-sixteenth century, however, the local secular clergy was still meager and fragile. It was the Jesuits who had called for the establishment of an episcopal see in Portuguese America, denouncing the excessive liberties and bad habits of the clergy. The first bishopric in Brazil was introduced in Salvador in 1554, whose first bishop was the ill-fated Pero Fernandes Sardinha. A prelature was established in St. Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro by papal brief on July 19, 1575, giving more ecclesiastical

June 2012 21 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso autonomy to the region, while submitting it to the general authority of the bishopric of Salvador. But the prelature did not achieve good relations with the local noble elites: the first prelate, Father Bartolomeu Simões Pereira, would perish, possibly having been poisoned, in 1598. His successors would be persecuted, suffer attempts on their lives or would recuse themselves from taking the position. The presence of the prelates represented a threat to lax behaviors and the enslavement of indigenous peoples, widely practiced by the settlers. In this context, even though the Jesuits might have had problems with the settlers, they were well-established locally and supported by metropolitan authorities. Thus, with the transfer of the arm of St. Sebastian and his reiteration as the local patron saint, the Jesuits allowed a glimpse of 1) their rivalry – healthy or not – with a secular clergy considered insufficient or inoperative, by taking upon themselves the role of protagonist in conducting the worship of the city’s patron saint, traditionally an episcopal or municipal duty; 2) the use of ceremony, of the relic and of the veneration for the protecting martyr as an attempt to impose a reality and a shared meaning, i.e., appropriating the event as symbolic capital that might have (or tended to) strengthen their symbolic power. If, during Late Antiquity, the bishops were the impresarios and perhaps the main beneficiaries of the worship of patron saints, in the early days of Rio de Janeiro, it was the Jesuits, much more than the secular prelates, who played that role. This can be seen in the fact that the delivery of the relic and the direction of the ceremonies are related to Gouvêa’s visit, registered by Cardim; and the artifact was held for safekeeping at the Jesuit school. Cardim’s report proves this: the arm is brought to the top of the city’s main hill on its way to the priests’ compound and it is placed in the tabernacle of the Jesuit church, and most likely subsequently preserved within a statue of St. Sebastian, as was already noted. As the carriers and keepers of the relic of the patron saint, the Jesuits upgraded their self-image as privileged agents, capable of providing the city with the true presence of the saint. In this conception, it was through the merit of the Jesuits, in their ability to mediate with the divine, that the mercy of a heavenly protector was obtained for the community. Likewise, it was through merit of the bishops that, under the Christian traditions of Late Antiquity, they were able to pass on to the city their image as protectors, bringing with them the presence of glorious advocates (Brown, 1981, p.94-95). Naturally, this does not mean that there was necessarily a consensus with respect to the interpretation of the meanings in the Jesuit message by the settlers,

22 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint the indigenous peoples, the mestizo villagers, etc. This was merely their objective. But, for the Jesuits and, perhaps, for the religious population of the city, the status and authority of the Society of Jesus were reinforced or, at least, it was believed that they ought to be, as a result of the undertaking. Considering the form and official motivations behind the event described, the festivities to receive the relic perhaps should be framed in what Belgian historian Annick Delfosse classifies as the ‘collective consecration’ of a heavenly patron or protector. According to Delfosse, much like the ‘election’ of a patron saint, their ‘consecration’ involves extraordinary ceremonial practices in which drama plays an essential part. It was a ‘high point’ of urban life, articulated independently from the cycles and dates of the liturgical calendar. Such consecrations allowed for heightened expressiveness and a vibrant in- ventiveness. With respect to hierarchies, they proclaimed the strength of local powers in guaranteeing civil and religious order in the urban space. Similarly to the case examined in this article, in the Spanish Netherlands in the early seventeenth century, particularly during the belligerent time of the Phillips, the Jesuits exercised an enormous influence over the judges, counsels and governors; including when it came to the ‘public’ interest in enshrining local patron saints, with the Jesuits becoming the main organizers of these ceremonies, according to Delfosse. The climate of political and religious war, the advance of Protestantism and the longing for divine protection would lead several Catholic cities in the Netherlands to choose any invocation of the Virgin, the guardian angel, St. Francis Xavier or another saint to protect them. The justifications for the consecration of a patron saint rested in the need to ensure peace and order for the general good of the city. The consecration of a heavenly patron saint would defy the armed assault of hostile forces, drive away the whips of war, warn of neighboring attacks and ensure liberation from an enemy’s yoke.10 This does not seem to stray too far from the conception of the festivities for the relic of St. Sebastian organized by the Society of Jesus in Rio in the sixteenth century. There wasn’t any astonishment at the fact that the Jesuits appropriated the worship of a patron saint. The Jesuits themselves may have influenced in the selection of the patron saint, at the time when the city was founded (1565-1567), suggesting, designating or confirming him, although there is no concrete evidence beyond the letter from José de Anchieta referring vaguely to the choice of St. Sebastian as the city’s patron saint.11 However, this documentary gap is not fortuitous. Even though the idea of a city’s patron saint is longstanding and established, it was only in 1630 that the papacy made an

June 2012 23 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso effort to regulate, and recognize through papal documents, the selection of patron saints, through the Sacred Congregation for Rites. Until then, the selection, proclamation and consecration of patron saints were scattered, poorly documented efforts, with total autonomy for the local secular and ecclesiastical authorities.12 However, this systematization was not yet in place at the time, and the disciples of St. Ignatius, striving to be the leaders of a reformed Catholicism, did not hesitate to intervene in the local traditions with respect to patron saints, as Delfosse demonstrated in the case of the Netherlands. The main point of the consecration of a patron saint, in the cases studied by the historian, was the proclamation of a vow of eternal commitment between the city and the saint, sometimes symbolized by the offering of a key to the image of the patron saint. In exchange for divine and special protection, particularly ‘in times of war, pestilence and famine’ (which were generally associated), the authorities solemnly promised the reverence of the entire city to the saint for eternity. The procession, the victory wagons, the scenic representations, the cannon fire, the lights and allegorical symbols were all inseparable from the ceremonies, always affirming the passage from the chaos of war to order, brought by the tutelary saint. Participating in these events were judges, officials, governors, the secular and regular clergy, as well as the students of the Jesuit schools, ‘richly dressed’ and occupying prominent positions. The Jesuit chapels generally served as the departure or arrival points for the processions and, sometimes, the places where the official proclamation of the vow would take place. The religiosity expressed in these consecrations was ‘pas- sionate,’ aimed at igniting hearts in order to “demonstrate the strength of the guardianship of the new patron saint, visibly powerful and effective,” and which brought joy to the city by reuniting it with peace. Such ceremonies were intended to exalt a solid civil and ecclesiastical power, capable of marshaling resources in order to ensure peaceful order, while demonstrating the vitality of the settlement. Or, rather, prophesizing the stability to come. For Annick Delfosse, the Jesuit priests were interested in these ceremonies not simply to catechize, but also mainly to “celebrate, with the population, the relentless strength of the urban community.” In other words, their goal was to celebrate the “triumph of the city” (Delfosse, 2009, p.9-16). Several of the points raised by Delfosse are evident in the description provided by Father Cardim. There is no mention of a proclamation of the vow, which may have been made official in 1565 or 1567, the foundational period of the settlement; but the entire event exposed in the epistolary narrative seems aimed at renewing the eternal commitment with St. Sebastian, patron saint

24 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint and guardian. The upper echelons of the city lead the festivities, which include a procession, theater performances on land and sea, decorations, dances, music, sermons, kissing the relic and a pilgrimage to the Jesuit church. The context studied by Annick Delfosse is clearly different, and it took place later in time, but Rio also had reasons to celebrate and predict order: the Tamoios had been definitively pacified and the remaining French had been expelled, through the efforts of Antonio Salema in Cabo Frio, in 1575. The city of St. Sebastian was consolidating itself in Morro do Descanso and the surrounding seaside. Peace and order seemed to have finally arrived in the Guanabara region and the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro was able to provide, through the ‘Catholic policy’ – represented by priests, governors, judges, the king, the pope and other authorities of the mystical body (Hansen, 2001, p.740) – what could be translated as the ‘triumph of the city’ of St. Sebastian. Similar events took place in Spanish America. According to Pierre Ragon, in the early days of colonial America, military victories were the main context for the first elections of the patron saints of cities. Under the New World reinterpretation of a renewed warrior impetus for conquests, St. Hyppolytus was designated as the first patron saint of Mexico City, by virtue of the Aztec sur- render in Tenochtitlán on August 13, 1521, the day of the soldier martyr. St. Michael, who featured angelic and warrior strains, was declared the patron saint of Puebla de Los Ángeles and Guadalajara. More than offering protection, these saints, according to Ragon, expressed the identity of these cities. Their annual feasts were genuine ‘civic festivals, where the whole community would come together to commemorate their origins, while celebrating the stability of their order and their inclusion in the Hispanic World, praying for their perennial existence.’ The festivities and processions were representations of a supposedly immutable and universal order, with the year’s elected regent playing a fundamental role in conducting the ceremonies. In Mexico City, the processions led to the Church of St. Hippolytus, which was erected, according to local memory, at the site of the aqueduct where allied conquistadors and indigenous peoples drowned during the tragic Noche Triste.13 This relationship between the festivities and places of remembrance from the European conquest can also be found in the case of Rio de Janeiro. Through Cardim’s description, it is possible to see the attempt to capture the divine influences in the city, referring to the prestigious time of its origins. By receiving the vestige of its patron saint, the city was renewing and upgrading the original protective forces that were at work during the first establishment of Rio de Janeiro, particularly the protection St. Sebastian provided to the found-

June 2012 25 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso ers. Thus, it provided a possibility for a rite of renewal or ‘return’ to the ‘strong’ and ‘prestigious’ times of its origins, connected to the cosmogony (creation of the world) and the sacred demiurgical beings manifested in profane space (temporal, secular) in order to create, allow or renew human existence.14 Not just because the saint was the patrimony of the city, since 1565, but also mainly because it was believed that he intervened as a soldier in the conquest of the Guanabara region from the French Calvinists and the savage Tamoios, as Fernão Cardim himself would preach during the festivities.

St. Sebastian versus the French and Tamoios: a founding theme

As the arm of St. Sebastian was resting on a ‘rich altar,’ a devout dialogue of the regarding the suffering of the patron saint, ‘with choirs and many richly dressed figures,’ was taking place. The narrator highlights a single scene: how St. Sebastian, played by a young man, was ‘shot through with arrows’ in a performance that moved ‘the entire city.’ The end of the performance becomes an occasion for a sermon from Fernão Cardim himself. In the same improvised ‘theater,’ sheltered by a ship’s sail, the priest who was serving as an assistant to the visiting Jesuit Cristóvão de Gouvêa preaches about the ‘miracles and mercies’ that the listeners had received from the glorious saint in the ‘taking’ of Rio, i.e. the conquest of the Guanabara Bay and the founding of the city. There is no precise record of the dramatization of St. Sebastian recounted by the commentator of this Jesuit visit. Perhaps there is some vague excerpt, a short textual fragment that might have been part of the dialogue cited by Cardim.15 However, another source can satisfactorily bridge this documentary gap: the dramatic theatrical work Na festa de São Lourenço (At the Feast of St. Lawrence), written one or two years before Gouvêa’s visit, probably in 1583, which was the longest and most well-known of Anchieta’s theatrical works. In it, St. Sebastian is one of the characters included in a long dialogue written in Tupi. Even though he is clearly not the principal saint in the drama, given its title, the Martyr of Narbonne is nonetheless featured and linked to historical aspects of the conquest of Rio de Janeiro: the struggle of the Portuguese and the Temiminós (also known as Maracajás, after the Margay cat) against the French and Tamoios. It should be pointed out that in these Jesuit theatrical works, the subject is always provided beforehand and familiar to the audience. It is the construction and the ordering of the topics and allegories according

26 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint to the occasion, the speakers, the festivities, the directives of the Society of Jesus and the monarchy, which contribute to the effectiveness16 expected by those working to establish harmony. As Isadora Telles has suggested, the theatrical work Na festa de São Lourenço can be classified as a ‘written foundation’ of Rio de Janeiro, which explains, for example, the participation of St. Sebastian, the city’s patron saint, in the dialogues. The theatrical work is a founding allegory of the conquest of Rio against the alliance of the French ‘Calvinists’ and the ‘savage’ Tamoios. Given the colonizing, legitimizing and perpetuating character of the Jesuit text, which organizes time, space and the indigenous memory, and is analogous to the Holy Scriptures, the discourse present in the theatrical work establishes the city on another level. According to Telles, dramatic and dialogic genres, such as these dramatic theatrical works, as well as tragedies and comedies, are particularly recurrent in the representations of the various types that compose and participate in a city, as well as the speakers expected in these types of performances. The theatrical work Na festa de São Lourenço – upon triggering the types and topoi of the foundation of Rio de Janeiro and directing them at the inhabitants of the city and the surrounding villages – institutes, models and projects a Portuguese Catholic city (St. Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro) as opposed to a ‘heretic city’ represented by the ‘French Antarctic’ and its aftermath. In other words, for Telles, the discourse that is written, proffered and staged through the cited theatrical work is a colonizing, founding and sacramental practice that ‘reveals’ the hidden designs of Providence with regard to the Catholic Christianization of Rio de Janeiro, the extirpation of the heretical/ diabolical forces and the leading of the nonbelievers of the Guanabara region to the mystical/political body of the ‘Portuguese empire.’ The alleged author- ship by Anchieta, believed to be a thaumaturgist and future saint, further assisted the theatrical work carry out its role to sacralize – and, by extension, legitimate –the foundation of Rio de Janeiro that, in its discourse, perfectly united Jesuits and Portuguese authorities against the rare confluence of obstacles to the conquest and Christianization of the territory (Telles, 2004, particularly p.91-92). In the theatrical work, while St. Lawrence is titled ‘patron saint’ of the village, St. Sebastian is never referred to as such in any passage of the composition. Still, his protective role over the Temiminós and the ‘founders’ of Rio de Janeiro is highlighted in a preemptory manner, activating the memory of local origins. His status as the city’s patron saint is part is what is left unsaid; perhaps because the theatrical work sought to emphasize the specific protec-

June 2012 27 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso tion that he had provided to the indigenous people of Arariboia at other times. The Temiminós were the privileged recipients of the ‘second act,’ in Tupi, or perhaps even the entire theatrical work, according to the very reasonable assumption that it had been performed in the Jesuit village of São Lourenço. Furthermore, it should have been rather evident, for the inhabitants of the Guanabara region, that St. Sebastian is the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro. St. Sebastian is introduced into the plot as a ‘companion in the struggle’ faced by St. Lawrence. The demon Aimbirê warns the boss, Guaixará, about the protective presence of them both. Later, Aimbirê alludes to the help of St. Sebastian, who, on a different occasions, had already defeated the demon Guaixará:

197. [Aimbirê] I once watched the battle of Guaixará. There were many igara canoes. Though you helped them, O! they disbanded in flight…

202. There were not many Christians. However, St. Sebastian fired upon them, causing panic. There was nobody left for the battle. (Anchieta, 1989, p.695)

Here we have a memorialist evocation of an allegedly miraculous event that happened during the founding of Rio de Janeiro, the battle against the canoes led by the chief of Cabo Frio, Guaixará – not incidentally, the name of the chief of the devils in the theatrical work. St. Sebastian was spotted by the Tamoios, upon whom he fired, saving a group of Christians who were in trouble, including the Captain-major, Estácio de Sá. The actions of St. Sebastian, defeating Chief Guaixará in a heated battle in the early days of Rio de Janeiro, may have been one of the ‘miracles and mercies’ evoked by Fernão Cardim in the sermon preached at the end of the dialogue representing the saint’s martyrdom.17 But it is at the end of the second act that the discourse becomes more explicit with respect to the general protection of St. Sebastian over the Temiminós and founders of Rio. An exhortation is given to the ‘custodian angel’ of the village, still in Tupi. The winged messenger speaks about the

28 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint protection of the cited saints: St. Lawrence protected the lands of the indigenous peoples, crushed the demons and lifted the souls of the new converts. In this, he was accompanied by the warrior martyr, shot through with arrows:

593. Also St. Sebastian, who was a soldier and the mighty Tamoios he once destroyed. Their land no longer exists.

What had up to that point evoked a spiritual warfare against demons, begins to mention flesh and blood enemies. It is alleged that St. Sebastian provided protection to the Temiminós: he ‘destroyed’ the ‘mighty Tamoios,’ their immanent enemies. Sebastian, ‘who was a soldier,’ did away with both the Tamoios and ‘their land’ – which ‘no longer exists.’ Why does it no longer exist? It is understood to be because a Portuguese Catholic City was erected in its place. After all, the Tamoios were not only enemies of the Temiminós, but also of the Jesuits and the Portuguese. They were the ones who originally invoked St. Sebastian, not the Temiminós. But the Indians, led by Martim Afonso Arariboia, also benefited from the favorable exorcising and exterminating action of the saints. As Guaixará himself says at the start of the theatrical work: ‘all of the Tamoios went/to lie burning in hell,’ with the few of them who loved God welcomed into the village of São Lourenço, where they were ‘perma- nently protected.’ The discourse becomes more explicit: it lists the destroyed Tamoio villages, seeking to make the story seem as realistic as possible. It also mentions the French who, although armed with ‘firearms,’ were defeated by the ‘arrows of St. Sebastian’ and by St. Lawrence, his ‘companion in the struggle,’ as was explained:

598. All of them – Paranapucu, Jacutinga, Moroí, Sariguéia, Guiriri, Pindoba, Pariguaçu, Curuçá, Miapeí,

603. the land of the Jabebiracica – They no longer exist.

June 2012 29 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso

Their defenders were defeated, side by side their corpses lie at the bottom of the river.

608. Their French friends brought, in a futile effort, firearms. They were tormented by the arrows of St. Sebastian alongside St. Lawrence. (Anchieta, 1989, p.693; 616-617)

It is important to highlight that the realism of this passage is reinforced by the testimony of Mem de Sá in his official report, when he explains that, after the battle of January 1567 against the ‘biraoaçu-merin fortress,’ focus was placed on the ‘parnapocu’ (probably the first group cited in the theatrical work) and, after they were defeated, many of the ‘principals’ came in search of peace and, with that, many of the villages were pacified.18 It is likely that all of the place names mentioned in the passage above referred to former Tamoio settlements in the along Guanabara Bay and surrounding regions, submitted to ‘pacification’ under the orders of Estácio and Mem de Sá, between 1565 and 1567. The saints in the theatrical work are responsible not only for providing protection from the Tamoios, who had previously expelled the Temiminós from their former lands (what is now Ilha do Governador), but also for expelling the Calvinist, heretic French. Here we see that the protection of the patron saints is not limited to the intra-Tupi war, but is also related to the overall conquest and foundation of Rio de Janeiro, with its policy of alliances between Europeans and American Indians. The ‘arrows of St. Sebastian’ are an allegory for the ‘just war’ against the aggressive Tamoios and the heretic, invading French, who were infringing upon the Portuguese right of mare clausum, conceded by the Catholic Church. In the conquest of Rio de Janeiro, St. Sebastian plays an active role in expelling the enemies – ‘they were tormented by the arrows of St. Sebastian / alongside St. Lawrence.’ It is plausible that St. Sebastian would only extend his protection to the Temiminós insofar as they participated, against the Tamoios and French, in the pacification and construction of Rio de Janeiro. St. Lawrence is the patron saint of the village, a human analog of the settlement spread throughout God’s city. The village is part of the broader hierarchical body of the city of St. Sebastian – the protector of the local Catholic city, a mystical and political unit in which the Indians, if they adopt good Christian customs, are able to par-

30 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint ticipate, while remaining lower down the hierarchy. It was as if, by extension, the patron saint whose emblem was the arrow, in addition to protecting the city that took his name, also protected the warrior ‘archers’ who had defended it and would defend it in times to come. This protection from the patron saint acted against spiritual and temporal enemies, such as Tamoios, heretics and demons. The Jesuit ritual involving Sebastian, his relic and his festivities, in Rio de Janeiro, was complemented by the cultivation of a memory of his protection and miracles, through the sacred oratory and sacramental writing. These miracles were divine symbols that were interpreted politically and theologically as a revelation of the designs of Providence and the updating of the Holy Scriptures, helping the mission, allowing for the conversion of the nonbelievers and the disinfection of the ‘Lutheran poison,’ promoting devotion, confor- mation and cohesion to the body of the order of St. Ignatius and the colonial city under a Catholic political order. Indeed, “by capturing the indigenous societies in theological and political formulas that regulated colonial expansion, the sixteenth century texts inscribe them in the European memory with a duration, space and characteristics specific to the Iberian ‘Catholic policy.’”19 To some extent, the sermon preached by Cardim when delivering the arm of St. Sebastian must have reached related listeners. As was explained by father Jácome Monteiro, the secretary of a subsequent Jesuit visit, the city of Rio de Janeiro was

the invocation of St. Sebastian, because when the city was won from the French and the heretics, and the Tamoios, the cruel nonbelievers, our glorious martyr visibly helped Our Own, which is the miracle we preach every year.20

Allegory of harmony as the emblem of the city’s foundation

The feast was a ubiquitous element in the history of Portuguese America, always associated with an urban culture devoted to the motives celebrated by the powers that – according to their discourse – granted their existence: the Church and the Monarchy. The only legitimate participants in the feast were the king’s subjects and faithful Catholics, although the numerous festivities of the political and religious calendar provided countless opportunities for a subversion of the established order and unorthodox uses.

June 2012 31 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso

But the perspective adopted by Fernão Cardim is primarily one of integration. His discourse, as the spokesperson for the Portuguese Jesuit Assistance, seeks to provide the direct and indirect readers with the idea of a harmonic colonial society. It is possible to note the effort the author makes to transmit the jubilation of the city during the ‘illustrious feast’ and show how the festivities involved a variety of social groups: the governor of the captaincy and members of the military made sure to greet their patron saint with ‘a lustrous infantry muster’ and, ‘together with their drums, fifes and flags,’ they went to the beach. Salvador de Sá, Cristóvão de Gouvêa and other priests went together to the ship to bring, in a decorated boat, the arm of the patron saint. Then, ‘members of the assembly, leading citizens and the conquerors of that land,’ took the predella that protected the relic once it had reached the shore. The Indians provided a battle simulation in canoes decorated with feathers, with the participation of Arariboia, the leader of the Temiminós and chief of São Lourenço village. There were European and American Indian drums, indigenous flutes, Portuguese fifes, native canoes, ships and Portuguese barges, Indian ‘shouts’ and prayers, organ music, dances by Indian children and Catholic processions. What Fernão Cardim seems ultimately to want to register is that the entire city and its surroundings – including the Jesuit village of São Lourenço and probably that of São Barnabé – took part in a true ‘mestizo’ festival marked by Catholic harmony and integration: ‘there was nary a woman absent from the feast.’ Cardim’s Narrativa epistolar, which was part of the spiritual goal of Gouvêa’s visit – to console evangelical workers in what was still a sterile missionary land – ‘emphasizes the unity of the province,’ as was noted by Castelnau-L’Estoile. Particularly, the jubilant welcome received by the visitor from the priests, indigenous peoples and the Portuguese – even though they would eventually become enemies of the Jesuits. It was an ‘idyllic picture of a new humanity’: a unified, holy, Catholic, harmonious Christendom under the direction of the Society of Jesus. This perspective would reappear in other times and other Jesuit festivities in Portuguese America, such as the celebration of the canonization of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier in 1622, in Salvador. According to Castelnau-L’Estoile, “described from a Jesuit perspective, the feast must not be understood as a simple mirror of colonial society, but rather as a Jesuit dream for that same society” (Castelnau-L’Estoile, 2006, p.45). As such, “the Jesuits want to impose a vision of reconciliation onto colonial society and attempt to reaffirm their preeminence” (ibidem, p.526). The ceremonies for receiving relics emerged during the transition from

32 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint

Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Peter Brown has noted that both the concern with harmony and the exercise of power must be taken into account when considering the ceremony that received the saint into the community and the annual replay of the saint’s arrival, on the date of their feast, by the local residents. During the Early Middle Ages, the ceremonial festivals of the saints came to be used to both differentiate and extend the Christian community, providing space for both longstanding and newly converted Christians, transforming these festivities into moments of urban consensus. The ancient ceremonies of the Advent, from that point forward, re-signified through the worship of saints, could extend the boundaries of the Christian community by providing a place for participants belonging to the different groups that made up the city. They also provided evidence of the divine acceptance of the community as a whole: heavenly mercy encompassed all of the dispersed members, and it was capable of reintegrating those who were left out during the previous year.21 Over the long term, these Christian/Catholic ceremonies seem to have maintained this ambivalence between the affirmation of a hierarchical power and harmonious existence, expanding the foundation of Catholicism, including the incorporation of America and its native peoples. Placed in the referential context of its time, the ritual of receiving the arm of St. Sebastian seems, therefore, to be configured as one of the mechanisms for the ‘artificial production of harmony.’ According to Guilherme Luz, this was an inherent aspect in the Aristotelian-Thomist culture that guided the Portuguese monarchy, as well as the lay and religious agents, during the time of the conquest and colonization of parts of Brazil. This ‘production’ particularly took place in the ‘ritual, rhetorical, poetic and imagery-based practices’ that promoted a ‘sense of belonging’ to the ‘Portuguese empire.’ And it sought a hierarchical, harmonious organization, according to the criteria of just and legitimate power based upon Artistotelian ethics and a rereading of Thomistic principles. Also according to Luz, in another text, it could be said that the feasts held for the arrival of the relics were intended, in that sense, to demonstrate ‘the alleged unity and harmony of all of the parts that made up the ‘mystical body’ of the Empire,’ establishing an ideal of ‘fraternal communion.’ The remains and objects of the saints came following the ‘mystical union between the metropolis and the colony.’ As such, the representations of the saint and his relic could be considered from the perspective of a concept that is particularly relevant when discussing the Jesuit worldview: it was an allegory for harmony in the city. In Rio de Janeiro, St. Sebastian and his arm, as well as all of the festivities that occurred in their name, were an allegory for the multitude of voices herded and led together to

June 2012 33 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso the mystical body of Christ and the Portuguese crown by the Jesuits and the representatives of Catholic policy – the pope, the Jesuits, the king, the governors, etc. Fernão Cardim’s report is in keeping with this sense, also functioning as a mechanism for the ‘production of harmony.’ As an allegorical personifica- tion of the city, the saint and his protection were included in the list of ritual, rhetorical/poetic and imagery-based practices that, from a theological/political standpoint, artificialized and constructed a common identity in the world that encompassed Portuguese, Jesuit and Catholic peoples from a variety of back- grounds.22 But there is also another dimension to the co-memoration of St. Sebastian in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1580s. As the messages communicate in the theatrical work of St. Lawrence, the effectiveness of the patron saint and protector of Rio de Janeiro was notable from the time of the city’s foundation, during the battle of the Portuguese and Temiminós against the French and the Tamoios. The intervention of the city’s patron saint was seen by the Jesuits not simply as a metaphor, but as something real and miraculous. Due to his intercession, his favors and his appearance, the Tamoio villages were destroyed, their members decimated or placed under submission, the heretics expelled or exterminated. The protection of the patron saint was not limited to the Portuguese and the Jesuits, who had invoked him, but also the Temiminós, who later settled in São Lourenço. If we take as our base the representations identified in this article, it was potentially this possible passage from the discourse that echoed in the sermon by Fernão Cardim, after the ‘dialogue’ with the young man shot through with arrows. It was the role of the Jesuits, archi- tects of the feast and impresarios of St. Sebastian’s patronage of Rio, to recognize, interpret and translate for the entire city, including the indigenous villagers, the protection or patrocinium of St. Sebastian, through collective and sacramental recollection – co-memoration – of his miraculous interventions in its conquest and foundation. In the West, the saints were mainly celebrated for their miraculous, warrior-like and civilizing roles. Jacques Le Goff, for example, in his analysis of St. Marcel and the dragon, suggested that the legend behind the sainted bishop and its draconian symbolism should be regarded as a kind of founding myth of Paris or an attempt to construct an ‘emblem’ for the city, outlining the protective and civilizing role of the patron saint against the chaotic forces of nature and the ‘public enemy,’ represented by the dragon. The foundational, protective and civilizing function of the representation of Rio de Janeiro’s patron saint also appears in the theatrical work about St. Lawrence, which attests to

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St. Sebastian’s defense against demons, hostile Indians and the French, allowing for the Christianization of the lands formerly held by the Tamoios. St. Sebastian was also the central character in the representation that took place in front of Misericórdia. It is likely that in this dialogue and in the sermon that followed, preached by Cardim, of which there are no known records, the message consecrated the Jesuit theological/political discourse, over those of the Protestants and non-believers, proposing a Catholic ideal for the city. There may have also been indications of the providential, miraculous and protective role of the patron saint, victorious over and superior to the city’s enemies, similar to the theatrical work about St. Lawrence, his contemporary. Therefore, in the 1580s, St. Sebastian already constituted the emblem or allegory of Rio de Janeiro’s construction by the Portuguese, the Jesuits and the Temiminós, in a material and spiritual conquest sacralized by the Society of Jesus. The relic, the processions, the dialogue, the sermon and the surrounding circumstances, by commemorating the city’s patron saint, reinforced the associations between its Catholic identity, the Portuguese crown, the Jesuit rites and the memory of the origins of St. Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro – or, as it was known in the early days, “The City of St. Sebastian.”23

NOTES

1 See CASTELNAU-L’ESTOILE, Charlotte de. Operários de uma vinha estéril: os jesuítas e a conversão dos índios no Brasil – 1580-1620. Translation by Ilka Stern Cohen. Bauru (SP): Edusc, 2006. p.37-94. 2 CARDIM, Fernão. Informação da Missão do P. Christóvão de Gouvea às partes do Brasil – Anno de 83 ou Narrativa epistolar de uma viagem e Missão Jesuítica ... escrita em duas Cartas ao P. Provincial em Portugal. In: _____. Tratados da terra e gente do Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; São Paulo: Edusp, 1980. p.169. 3 HANSEN, João Adolfo. A categoria ‘representação’ nas festas coloniais dos séculos XVII e XVIII. In: KANTOR, Íris; JANCSÓ, István (Org.) Festa: cultura e sociabilidade na América portuguesa. v.II. São Paulo: Hucitec, Edusp, Fapesp, Imprensa Oficial, 2001. p.736-739, 753. Italics added. 4 CARDIM, 1980, p.169-170; for the latest information, see also LEITE, Serafim. História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil: século XVI – o estabelecimento, t.I. Lisboa: Portugália; Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1938. p.393-394. For information on the villages of São Lourenço and São Barnabé, see ALMEIDA, Maria Regina Celestino de. Metamorfoses indígenas: identidade e cultura nas aldeias coloniais do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2003. p.82-84ss.

June 2012 35 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso

5 See FAZENDA, José Vieira. Antiqualhas e memórias do Rio de Janeiro, v.I. Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro: IHGB, t.86, v.140, p.158-159, 1919. 6 SERRÃO, Joaquim Veríssimo (Ed.) O Rio de Janeiro no século XVI, v.2: documentos dos arquivos portugueses. Lisboa: Comissão Nacional das Comemorações do IV Centenário do Rio de Janeiro, 1965. p.69; ou Instrumento dos serviços prestados por Mem de Sá, Governador do Brasil. Annaes da Bibliotheca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, v. XXVII, p.135, 1906. 7 See MAURÍCIO, Augusto. Algo do meu velho Rio. Rio de Janeiro: L. Ed. Brasiliana, 1966. p.107-108. 8 “Here lies Estácio de Sá, First Captain and Conqueror of this Land and City. This resting place, with his coat of arms, was ordered by his cousin Salvador Correia de Sá, Second Captain and Governor, and this Chapel was completed in the year 1583”. See also BELCHIOR, Elysio de Oliveira. Conquistadores e povoadores do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Brasiliana Ed., 1965. p.411. 9 See BROWN, Peter. The cult of the saints: its rise and function in Latin Christianity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. p.18; 36-39; 94-98; BEAUJARD, Brigitte. Cités, évèques et martyrs en gaule à la fin de l’époque romaine. In: LES FONCTIONS DES SAINTS DANS LE MONDE OCCIDENTAL (IIIe-XIIIe siècle). Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome avec le concours de l’Université de Rome “La Sapienza”. Rome, 27-29 oct. 1988. Rome, 1991. p.178-179. For more on bishops as the patron saints of cities or their role in promoting such worship, see ORSELLI, Alba M. L’immaginario religioso della città medievale. Ravenna: Ed. del Girasole, 1985. 10 See DELFOSSE, Annick. Élections collectives d’un “Patron et Protecteur”. Mises en scène jésuites dans les Pays-Bas espagnols. In: DOMPNIER, B. (Dir.) Les cérémonies extraordi- naires du catholicisme baroque. Actes du colloque international du Puy-en-Velay (27-29 oct. 2005). Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2009. p.1-3 Available at: hdl.handle.net/2268/785, kindly permitted by the author; Accessed on: May 2, 2009. For the historian’s published thesis, see DELFOSSE, Annick. La “protectrice du Païs-Bas”: stra- tégies politiques et figures de la Vierge dans le Pays-Bas espagnols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. 11 See ANCHIETA, José de. Carta ao padre Diogo Mirão, da Baía, a 9 de julho de 1565. In: Cartas: informações, fragmentos históricos e sermões. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; São Paulo: Edusp, 1988. p.264. 12 See SALLMANN, Jean-Michel. Santi patroni e protezione collettiva. In: _____. Santi barocchi: modelli di santità, pratiche devozionali e comportamenti religiosi nel regno di Napoli dal 1540 al 1750. Lecce: Argo, 1996. p.84-87. 13 RAGON, Pierre. Los santos patronos de las ciudades de México central (siglos XVI y XVII). História Mexicana. México (DF): v.52, n.2, p.361-389, Oct-Dec. 2002. p.363-364.

36 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The City of St. Sebastian: Rio de Janeiro and the commemoration of its patron saint

Available at: historiamexicana.colmex.mx/pdf/13/art_13_2075_18061.pdf; Accessed on: Jan 9, 2011. 14 See ELIADE, Mircea. Mito e realidade. 6.ed. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2002. p.25-39. 15 Proposed by Father Armando Cardoso, in ANCHIETA, P. Joseph de. Teatro de Anchieta. Translation by P. Armando Cardoso. São Paulo: Loyola, 1977. p.190-192; see also the safer edition by Maria de Lourdes Martins: ANCHIETA, José de. Poesias. Manuscrito do séc. XVI, in Portuguese, Spanish, Latin and Tupi. Transcription, translation, and notes by Maria de Lourdes de Paula Martins [1954]. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; São Paulo: Edusp, 1989. p.584-585.The controversy surrounding the “excerpt about St. Sebastian” is more closely examined in the author’s Master’s thesis. 16 See TELLES, Isadora Travassos. A ‘fundação escriturária’ do Rio de Janeiro: um estudo de caso do auto Na festa de São Lourenço (c.1583) de José de Anchieta. Dissertação (Mestrado em Teoria e História da Linguagem) – Unicamp. Campinas (SP), 2004. p.70. Available at: libdigi.unicamp.br/document/?code=vtls000313983; Accessed on: Jan. 22, 2010. For more on the Temiminó indigenous peoples and the alliances between Europeans and Indians during the conquest of the Guanabara region, see ALMEIDA, 2003, p.62ss. 17 See RODRIGUES, Pero. Vida do Padre Jose de Anchieta da Companhia de Jesu. Quinto provencial q. foy da mesma Companhia no Estado do Brazil [according to the copy at the Bibliotheca Nacional de Lisboa, 1606]. Annaes da Bibliotheca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, v.29, 1907. Rio de Janeiro: Officinas de Artes Graphicas da Bibliotheca Nacional, 1909, p.214; BERETTARI, Sebastiano. Vida del Padre Joseph de Ancheta…, traduzida de latin en castellano por el padre Estevan de Paternina de la misma Compañia. Salamanca: en la em- prenta de Antonio Ramirez Viuda, 1618, p.114-117; e VASCONCELLOS, Simão de. Chronica da Companhia de Jesv do Estado do Brasil ... tomo primeiro... Lisboa: na oficina de Henrique Valente de Oliveira, 1663, p.352-355. There are other writings that discuss the event that were not listed due to matters of space. The issue is given greater consideration in the author’s Master’s thesis and in “Favores do glorioso mártir: a tópica da intervenção de São Sebastião na fundação do Rio de Janeiro e sua construção na memória jesuítica. séc. XVII” (an unpublished text being preparedfor publication). 18 See SERRÃO, 1965, v.2, p.69-70. Jacutinga, for example, was located in what is now the muncipality of Belford Roxo, in the Baixada Fluminense region. 19 HANSEN, J. A. A servidão natural do selvagem e a guerra justa contra o bárbaro. In: NOVAES, A. (Org.) A descoberta do homem e do mundo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998. p.348. 20 Writing, around 1610, about the mission of Father Visitor General Manuel de Lima, of 1607. MONTEIRO, Jácome. Relação da província do Brasil, 1610. In: LEITE, Serafim. História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil. v.VIII. Suplemento Biobibliográfico – Escritores Jesuítas no Brasil, I (Da letra A a M). Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1949. p.397. Emphasis added. 21 According to Brown, such ceremonies were consciously modeled on the arrival (adven-

June 2012 37 Vinicius Miranda Cardoso tus) of the Roman emperors, moments of ideal harmony and unity between the members of the community. See BROWN, 1981, p.98-100. 22 See LUZ, Guilherme Amaral. Produção da concórdia – a poética do poder na América portuguesa. Varia Historia, Belo Horizonte, v.23, n.38, p.543-560, jul.-dez. 2007, p.549- 551ss. Available at: www.scielo.br/pdf/vh/v23n38/v23n38a17.pdf; Accessed on: March 1, 2010; LUZ, Guilherme Amaral, DUARTE, Stela Beatriz. A representação do martírio no “teatro jesuítico da missão”: exemplificação das virtudes na busca pela extinção dos vícios. Horizonte científico – a revista eletrônica da Propp, Uberlândia (MG), v.I, n.10, 2009. p.6ss. Available at: www.horizontecientifico.propp.ufu.br/include/getdoc.php?id=1553&article=6 2&mode=pdf; Accessed on: Jan. 22, 2010. 23 LE GOFF, Jacques. Cultura eclesiástica e cultura folclórica na Idade Média: S. Marcelo de Paris e o dragão. In: _____. Para um novo conceito de Idade Média: tempo, trabalho e cultura no Ocidente. Lisboa: Estampa, 1997. p.221-261; see also FRANCO JR., Hilário. Cristianismo medieval e mitologia: reflexões sobre um problema historiográfico. In: _____. A Eva barbada: ensaios de mitologia medieval. São Paulo: Edusp, 1996. p.64. The article presented here is an adapted and synthesized part of the author’s Master’s thesis, which studies the Jesuit construction of St. Sebastian’s patrocinium in Rio de Janeiro, between the foundation of the city (1565) and the mid-seventeenth century. The work received initial funding from CAPES and features important aspects that were, of necessity, not included in this article. See CARDOSO, Vinicius Miranda. Emblema sagitado: os jesuítas e o patrocinium de São Sebastião no Rio de Janeiro, sécs. XVI-XVII. Dissertação (Mestrado em História) – Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. Seropédica (RJ), 2010.

Article received on March 30, 2011. Approved on January 10, 2012.

38 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz*

Resumo Abstract Nunca foram bem definidos os limites The jurisdictional boundaries between entre as jurisdições da Igreja e do Estado. Church and state were never well de- As questões tornaram-se ainda mais confined. In the 18th century they became flituosas quando, no século XVIII, ascen- even more contentious following the deu ao poder o ministro marquês de rise to power of the Marquis of Pombal Pombal com sua política regalista que and his regalist policy which attempted tentava cada dia mais secularizar o Esta- to secularize the Portuguese state. De- do português. Mesmo distante da metró- spite being distant from the metropole, pole, o bispado do Maranhão vivia igual- the bishopric of Maranhão also experi- mente esses conflitos. As relações tensas enced these conflicts. The tense rela- entre as autoridades que representavam a tions between the authorities represent- Igreja e o Estado no norte da colônia são ing the Church and state in the north of o foco principal deste artigo. Através do cruzamento de fontes do Tribunal Epis- the colony are the principal focus of this copal, do Juízo da Coroa e até da Inquisi- article. By looking at sources from the ção de Lisboa é possível acompanhar os episcopal court, the crown court and the motivos dessa disputa de jurisdição e co- Inquisition, the reasons for these juris- mo se dava o desrespeito às imunidades dictional conflicts will be looked at, as eclesiásticas. well as how the ecclesiastical immuni- Palavras-chave: Igreja; Estado; juris ties were treated with contempt. dição. Keywords: Church; State; jurisdiction.

In the Bull Dudum pro parte, dated 31 March 1516, Pope Leo X conceded the universal right of patronage (Padroado in Portuguese) of all lands subject to the dominion of the Portuguese Crown. The Order of Christ received jurisdiction over all the churches built in the two years prior the Conquests and those which would be built in the future. In addition, the order was to receive

* Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA). Departamento de História. Rua Raimundo Pimenta, s/n, Floresta. 65200-000 Pinheiro – MA – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 39-58 - 2012 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz tithes and the Crown the right to patronage.1 This involved “a combination of rights, privileges and duties, conceded by the papacy to the Portuguese Crown, as patron of Catholic missions and ecclesiastic institutions in Africa, Asia and Brazil.”2 This gave the king the authority to accept or reject papal bulls; choose, with the approval of the papacy, representatives of the Church overseas; build and authorize the construction of churches, cathedrals, monasteries, cemeteries and convents, amongst other attributions. Since the beginning of colonization of Brazil and of other areas in the Portuguese Empire, the cross and the crown had marched together. However, although patronage gave the king the right to interfere in ecclesiastic questions, relations between Church and state where not always friendly. Discussions about this were very old. There were serious defenders of ecclesiastic immunity and occasionally conflicts of jurisdiction were latent. In relation to the right to patronage, Arlindo Rubert states that its exaggerations were common. According to him, “the ministers of the Crown, supported by some canonists, especially the religious, took the so called rights of patronage so far that they made the king” – after the perpetual union to the Crown of the Masters of Military Orders – “a type of ecclesiastic head, upon whom depended all jurisdiction. Lay and religious jurists openly considered the king, in relation to the Overseas Church, a type of Apostolic Vicar and even a natural pontifical leg- ate!” (Rubert, 1981-1993, vol.1, p.50). Although he exaggerates a little, Rubert was correct in part. Secular authorities frequently justified their attacks on ecclesiastic power evoking the sovereignty of the king.3 Gabriel Pereira de Castro, an important Portuguese jurist, spent a long time clarifying it, as the question was so complex. His work Monomachia sobre as concórdias, published in 1638, dealt with the agreements that the kings of Portugal had made with their prelates to try to determine the limits between the ecclesiastic and secular jurisdictions. He demonstrates that since the expulsion of the Moors from Portuguese territory there had been discussions about this, and that the first kings allowed prelates to make decisions concerning themselves and to protest when the secular hindered them or when temporal jurisdiction was exceeded.4 From the thirteenth century onwards, during the reign of D. Afonso II, complaints and the swapping of accusations between the secular and ecclesiastics became more constant. Doubts and quarrels continued over the years, until 1457, in the reign of D. Afonso V, the first Concordia were jointly drawn up by these powers. Gabriel Pereira de Castro included in his work letters exchanged with Francisco Suárez, a professor theology in Coimbra. These letters help to un-

40 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão derstand the discussions that took place between Church and State, especially in relation to the privilege of jurisdiction and the defense of the king’s against the ecclesiastic power. Castro and Suárez discussed from where the king’s right to interfere in Church matters came. The former stated that the right of kings had always existed and the reasons for this were very clear

because temporal and political jurisdiction was not conceded by Kings to the Supreme Pontiffs, since before God Our Lord came to the world, from whom the Ecclesiastic Power was delegated to S. Pedro, head of the Apostolate of Christ, and from him to his Successors, there were Kings who had temporal jurisdiction given immediately by God, and mediated through peoples.

Suárez, in turn, states that the right to ecclesiastic exemption was limited by divine will, which implied that “men could not by human potency, voluntarily diminish custom, because they could not prevail against the Divine will, against what He granted the right to.”5 In another of Castro’s works, De manu regia tractatus, from 1622 – which was prohibited from being certified by the Congregation of the Index on 26 October 1640 –, the author left if in the Praeludium of the work that the king could intervene to help those who considered themselves wronged, even if in doing this ecclesiastic immunities were infringed.6 Luís Reis Torgal states that these disagreements involving Church and State occupied a primordial place in all European countries, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even in those states which were essentially or even totally linked to Rome. This was a question which had a dimension that was not just religious, rather it was principally political, linked to the affirmation of nationalities and the growing power of monarchs. The author spends a long time explaining how these questions were pro- cessed in different European countries. In France, for example, Gallicanism was stressed which “without breaking with Rome, loudly affirmed the temporal superiority of its king, who presented himself, on the other hand, as the protector of the liberties of the Church.” In Spain and in Portugal, which were similar in many aspects, it was tried to highlight the respect due by the state to the Church, without however denying regal authority and independence.7 In Spain, for example, the work Historia legal de la Bula llamada “in Coena Domini”, published in 1768 by Juan Luis López – but which collected petitions made to the Holy See from 1254 to 1698 –, describes in detail cases

June 2012 41 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz of conflict and overlapping of jurisdiction. In the prologue the author clarifies his position in favor of royal sovereignty, stating that

the independent spiritual power in its functions aimed at the salvation of men, has often confused the privileges which the Churches and the Clergy have conceded to the King and Emperors claiming to hold divine right an immunity whose origin is owed to a large extent to the Catholic Princes, as is recognized by St. Thomas.

Juan López also criticizes the attitude of bishops who, according to him,

not a few have entered into temporal subjects, prejudicing the Regalia and authority of Princes and their Tribunals. The acquisition of estates and other temporal rights has been another of the causes of the confusion between the Empire and the Priesthood.8

Even in Spain and Portugal, where relations with Rome were at some moments very close and the right to patronage was a reality, many points of controversy emerged. The motives for these conflicts of jurisdiction invariable arose out of the affirmation of political power. Regal tribunals were the place par excellence where these disputes gained greatest force. Laypersons, generally royal officials, appealed to the civil power whenever they felt wronged by ecclesiastic authorities. These were made in the form of appeals to Crown courts. In relation to these, Cândido Mendes de Almeida has stated that these were “an expedient which used the temporal power to influence, dominate and subordinate the decisions of the ecclesiastic power,” under the pretext that the king was responsible for “the task of protecting his subjects from oppression and violence.” Almeida states that it was only during the reign of the Philips that this question was defined, since

the excess of the fourteenth century was transformed into law and as regulated by the new legislation prepared at the end of the sixteenth century, despite protests from Rome ... but some hypocritical deference was still kept towards the ecclesiastic authorities. This deference little by little fell into disuses, with Jansenist-Gallician doctrines dominating in during the eighteenth century, especially during the reign of D. José I, sufficient demonstration of which is the License dated 18 January 1765, issued in hatred of the Ecclesiastic Authority,

42 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão

with not a few arbitrary decisions being practiced in Brazil and other Portuguese colonies.9

Civil jurisdiction operated by sending letters rogatory which were passed to the ecclesiastic judge if in the understanding of the secular judge there was violence or excess on the part of the former. The letter stated “ElRey (the King), entreats and asks you to desist from the force you have taken against his vassal, declaring that if this is not done, he will neither save his Censures, nor procedures, whichever is the most apt mode to defender temporal jurisdiction.”10 If the ecclesiastic judge still refused to obey the royal orders, temporalities, were used against him. In this case the ecclesiastic authority lost all his power, servants were not to serve him and he was ‘imprisoned’ in his own house without right to the necessities for his subsistence. In the last case desnaturamento (literally to disfigure) could be resorted to, in other words, he could be expelled from the kingdom, though this could only happen after the monarch had been informed.

Episcopal Tribunal versus Crown Judge: Church and State in Conflict

At the level of diocesan administrations the tendency towards the general reform of the Church, which occurred in a more ordered manner after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), had a profound impact. With the widening of their powers, prelates immediately sought to have the Tridentine decrees approved in their dioceses. According to Giuseppe Marcocci this required the holding of synods and provincial councils.11 This legalist reflex, which occurred through the promulgation of diocesan constitutions in harmony with the ideas defended by Trent, only ceased when all the bishoprics had their own normative codes. A testament of this organizational and religious concern of the Church was the promulgation of the First Constitutions of the Archbishopric of Bahia in 1707. This synod adapted the Portuguese colony in America to the Tridentine decisions. Linked to the 1704 Regulations of Ecclesiastic Courts (Auditório Eclesiástico) – which provided rules for the functioning of the tribunal and detailed the functions of its agents –, the first constitutions became the principal legislative code for the Episcopal Tribunals in Brazil, stating which crimes were under ecclesiastic jurisdiction, as well as their punishments. As in all the bishoprics, these hearings functioned under the aegis of the bishop, who had

June 2012 43 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz jurisdiction in two distinct situations: in relation to the person and in relation to the subject. In relation to the person, he could judge the offenses committed by the secular clergy. In relation to the subject, some forms of illicit behavior, irrespective of whoever practiced them, due to the nature of these offenses came under ecclesiastic jurisdiction.12 Among the important points discussed in the Constitutions of Bahia were the ecclesiastic immunities. The title “The immunity and exemption of ecclesiastic persons” states that these were “exempt from secular jurisdiction, to which those who due to the dignity of the Priesthood and Clerical Office are thus the spiritual masters of lay people cannot be subjected,”13 in other words ecclesiastics would be judged in their own courts with privileged jurisdiction. In relation to this defense of immunities, María Luisa Candau Chacón comments that

Due to these immunities, our clerics possessed separate courts – and even Episcopalian prisons – depending for the most common offenses on the ecclesiastic hierarchies; thus, one further privilege inherent to their status and condition, the use of this jurisdiction inhibited the secular arm from pursuing law cases, even in those circumstances when civil authorities were implicated.

While the clergy had the right to a privileged jurisdiction of ecclesiastic judgment, laypersons were not immune to the jurisdiction of prelates. In addition to discussions about the monarch and his officials’ disrespect for ecclesiastic immunities, Churchmen also defended their right to judge laypersons in their courts. In both tribunals there were mixti fori questions, in other words, those to which came under both ecclesiastic and secular jurisdiction. Laypersons, however, could appeal almost without except to secular authorities, alleging that the ecclesiastics had used force. The interests of the Episcopal Courts were thus opposed by those of the secular courts, the Crown Courts. Secular judges, in turn, alleged that in addition to the right to judge the crimes committed by laypersons, in Book I of the 1603 Philippine Ordnances of the Kingdom there appears the title Dos Juízes dos Feitos de El Rei da Coroa, (The Judges of the Deeds of the King of the Crown) in which it can be seen that these judges could judicially act in cases involving ecclesiastic persons if the issues involved came under civil jurisdiction, such as the presentation of Churches under Patronage and the use of arms and lands, amongst others. After “judging that the knowledge belongs” to secular justice “and not to Ecclesiastic,”14 they were ordered to proceed against these clerics without fearing excommunication to which they were subject and with which they were

44 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão threatened by the authority of the prelate under the allegation of the usurpation of jurisdiction. In the bishopric of Maranhão the secular and ecclesiastic authorities clashed from early on, which must have been common in other parts of the colony. What is of interest to us is the conflicts involved priests and royal officials, since in the Ecclesiastic Court archive there are 21 lawsuits against secular priests – or 12.3% out of a total of 170 records – which mention appeals made to secular courts and use annexed lawsuits, inquiries or summaries, which had been produced by their agents. In the collection of the Overseas Council, in turn, there are 121 documents for the eighteenth century which demonstrate that the notification and sending of complaints against priests to royal officials was very common. An emblematic lawsuit in this sense is the one taken against the Parish Priest of Oeiras, Dionísio José de Aguiar, in 1784. His own parishioners sent complaints against him to the queen, Maria I., in Lisbon. She then wrote to the Bishop, Fr. Antonio de Pádua, stating that Fr. Dionísio behaved with “irregular and scandalous conduct” participating “in all forms of secular business,” having a “genius for perturbation and discord,” and that he was not concerned with administering the sacraments. She ordered the prelate to have the cleric’s behavior investigated through a devassa (an official inquiry). The bishop did this. He sent two commissioners to Oeiras, Fr. Henrique José da Silva and Canon João Maria da Luz Costa who in secret opened an investigation in Vila de Moucha and took statements from many witnesses, with Fr. Dionísio being pronounced guilty, deposed from his position, fined 200,000 réis and sent under arrest to the bishop’s seat. After being condemned the reverend, who had been the parish priest of that town for more than 22 years, did not accept the orders of the bishop, nor his privileged jurisdiction in the Episcopal Court, appealing his sentence to the Crown Court. He came under the protection of the ‘enemies’ of the prelate, Fr. Antonio de Pádua, because since the beginning of his administration, the latter had been in constant conflict with the governor José Teles da Silva, almost always for reasons of the usurpation of jurisdiction. The royal court came to analyze the conflict while the prelate maintained the decision to arrest the cleric. From this point it is possible to see how these conflicts of jurisdiction occurred in the daily practice of these courts. The Royal Court in Maranhão consisted of the ouvidor geral (attorney general), Manuel Antonio Leitão Bandeira; the procurador da coroa (crown attorney) and district judge Antonio Pereira dos Santos, and the lawyer José

June 2012 45 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz

Felix da Silva. It was to these people that Fr. Dionísio turned to in order to make a Civil Act of Appeal against the bishop, Fr. Antonio, in the Royal Court of the Crown Tribunal of the City of “Juizado Régio do Tribunal da Junta da Coroa da Cidade do Maranhão.” In his petition to D. Maria I he stated that he had resorted to royal support “due to the force, violence, trespass and injury done to him by the Rev. Bishop of this Bishopric.” Fr. Dionísio alleged that the reason for the reprehension of his prelate was because he had not accepted that a mulatto named Baltazar dos Reis Pinto receive ecclesiastic jurisdiction, as desired by the Vicar General Francisco Matabosque, because he was a soldier and held the position of captain of foot. Since he disobeyed the orders he had an accusation of disobedience and injury made against him, and he lost the keys and books of the Church, which the prelate ordered to be handed over to the commissionaire, Canon João Maria da Luz Costa. The condemned priest said that he “appealed to the Bishop believing that he would find in him the peace that Shepherds should seek among their sheep, however, he found greater violence.” It was then that he chose to appeal to the Crown Court, since, according to him,

Her Majesty promised to protect all her vassals against the unjustly drawn sword of the Church, as declared in the Provision of 10 March 1764 and similar proceedings which were the cause for Her Majesty to take pious measures to create in Brazil Crown Courts so that through them your vassals would be free from the violence they had suffered from the Prelates and Ecclesiatic Ministers, as can be seen determined in the License of 18 January 1765.15

The bishop Fr. Antonio de Pádua had really ordered Fr. Dionísio’s arrest and sent him to São Luís. In another document it can be seen that the prelate used the prerogatives of the first letter Maria I had sent him from Portugal – the one which ordered the priest’s behavior investigated – to have proceedings carried out against him. Fr. Antonio resolved to write to the governor José Telles da Silva complaining about usurpation of his jurisdiction, since the Prior of the Convent of Mercês did not want to receive the prisoner due to an order of the governor. Later he adds

The Defendant with this patronage which he found in Your Excellency found... hit the officials who accompanied him and retreating into some houses that had been rented to them, he locked them in and threatened that if they came back he would teach them a lesson. I ordered the Reverend Defendant

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summonsed and in contempt of my summons he said to my officials that I was not his Prelate and he was only subject to the Crown Courts.16

Indignant with the governor’s orders, the bishop asked him to correct this error, which not only affected his jurisdiction and person, but also the initial royal orders which were to punish the offending priest. Not satisfied he wrote to the queen on 26 December 1785, stating that he was the victim of this dispute and he had been prejudiced by the usurpation of his jurisdiction. A year previously in 1784, the prelate wrote to the Secretary of State for the Navy and Overseas, Martinho de Melo e Castro, annoyed with what he considered to be the arbitrariness and abuse of the secular power. Temporalities had been decreed against him with the result that the bishop had lost his authority. He stated that he had obeyed the decision which ordered the priest to be found innocent and restored to his church, but complaining about crown officials, he stated:

i was indignantly treated by that Junta, using against me scandalous accusations, which far from being guaranteed by the law of temporalities, are repressed by it. It is enough to state that I was proclaimed by the Porter in the streets of the city of Maranhão, with the people being told not to assist me in any convenience in life, and furthermore, it was alleged that this was in agreement with the holy law, which explicitly orders this, otherwise due respect for ecclesiastics would be lacking.

He did not neglect to emphasize that the proper functioning of that institution would be injurious to the fundamental laws of the Royal Juntas of the Crown in America. He stated, for example, that in the Junta of Oeiras there was a relator judge who barely knew how to read or write and that the function of assistants – which was only supposed to be filled by graduates – was occupied by surgeons, apothecaries or some lawyer trained in Pernambuco. Finally, he asked that Melo e Castro observe “the many disorders sown in those lands between the priesthood and the Empire by the abuse the Crown Juntas make of the power which Her Majesty granted them.” It was no use. The Crown Attorney was firm in defense of Fr. Dionísio. More than this, he was firm in defense of secular jurisdiction and tried at all costs to reduce the importance and even the legitimacy of the power of prelates. According to him, “the temporal power looks to the world, works on the body, and all that is temporal” while “the spiritual body looks to heaven, and works on the soul.” For him the bishop had “passed the limits of the concession

June 2012 47 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz and Royal Jurisdiction” and for this reason on 5 January 1786, annulled the decisions of the prelate against the priest. The Junta das Justiças considered the question two days afterwards, ordering Fr. Antonio de Pádua to restore Fr. Dionísio to liberty, as well as the possession of his church.17 It is not difficult to determine why priests, despite having the right to a privileged jurisdiction in the Ecclesiastic Courts, resorted to royal authority, especially if we take into account that of the 21 processes in which these priests resorted to the Crown Court, 18 were judged after 1750. In the second half of the eighteenth century the Portuguese scenario altered profoundly due to the reforms implemented by the Marquis of Pombal, inspired by an assumed regalism.18 This policy defended that the civil and spiritual powers were never equal and at the utmost could only be thought of as complementary. This was the period of the reign of José I in Portugal, in which it was sought to strengthen royal authority, but also giving due importance to the spiritual. In this context Jansenism19 played an important role for the ground- ing of royalist practices, especially because it was related to the specificity and independence of the temporal and spiritual powers especially the desacraliza- tion of the temporal power. In the second half of that century diplomatic relations were broken between Portugal and the Holy See, which confirms the alteration of the Portuguese religious and political scenario. The licenses of 10 March 1764 and 18 January 1765 are a witness to this moment of reforms which advanced in the judicial field above all. These determined that the common jurisdiction of prelates was restricted to purely spiritual matters, prohibited the institution of the alma por herdeira (having one’s soul as an heir), restricting the ancient liberty of leaving legacies for the Church and for masses for one’s soul (called pios, capelas and sufrágios in Portuguese). This is further proof that the Pombaline laws did not save the power of the prelates. These authorizations were only gradually accepted, but their evocation could be accompanied in many cases in Maranhão at the end of the eighteenth century. The dispute involving the priest, the bishop and the secular authorities was not, as has been stated, an isolated fact in the ecclesiastic history of Maranhão. Relations between these authorities oscillated between periods of collaboration and, principally, conflict, especially because between 1761-1778 the nephew of the Marquis de Pombal, Joaquim de Mello e Póvoas, was in charge of the civil government in Maranhão. As soon as he took office, Mello e Póvoas began to intervene in the administration of the then bishop, Fr. Antonio de São José – who governed the bishopric of Maranhão between 1756-

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1778 – substituting clerics with bad reputations in various parts of the bishopric. The prelate, however, chose to maintain them in their parishes. The governor considered this as an affront, while the bishop complained of the usurpation of his jurisdiction. In one of these discussions, the prelate excommunicated the governor, accusing him of being a persecutor of the Church. In order to understand a little of this scenario of latent conflict, it is necessary to draw on the documents in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, since for this period in particular there are few cases in the Ecclesiastical Court of Maranhão. This is most notable for the 1770s, for which curiously there are no appeal cases to the Royal Court. Although it can be supposed that these were quiet years for the ecclesiastic administration, a series of letters and complaints sent to the metropole by ecclesiastic governors, such as Frs. Filipe Camelo de Brito and João Duarte da Costa, fill this gap and prove the opposite. They assumed this function after the bishop Fr. Antonio de São José was summoned back to the kingdom on 18 July 1766, due to constant disagreements with governors. The conflicts occurred because the civil authorities had involved themselves in questions which did not belong to their jurisdiction, in relation to both the judgment of clergy and laypersons. The cannons asked for royal protection to resolve these questions and more importantly that their jurisdiction been respected. However, the complaints continued. In 1772 the two priests sent a letter to the Metropole complaining that

seeking for as much as it is possible for us, the service of God, and to receive the royal pleasure of Your Majesty: however, since the Crown Court of this city has in some form inhibited ecclesiastic jurisdiction in such a way that it has hindered our use of it; since the parties in any action, decision or sentence, without them being denied the ordinary means to appeal to their Ecclesiastic superiors, make appeals to the said Royal Crown Court of Your Majesty where they are commonly successful.20

In a letter sent almost two decades earlier, in 1756, to the then king D. José, there appeared the concern with clarifying how the secular court should function in Maranhão and how to proceed in cases and appeals from the Ecclesiastic Court to the Crown Court. This missive stated that the Overseas Council (Conselho Ultramarino) was informed by the appeals court and district judge of Maranhão, Gaspar Gonçalves dos Reis, “that in order to discover the causes of the Appeals made for the Ecclesiastic Court to the Crown Court of His Majesty” and that there was “in that city one graduated as an Attorney and

June 2012 49 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz two Assistants, one an Ecclesiastic, and the other Secular, who is a layperson due to the lack of a diploma.” The document was concerned with clarifying that the aim of the law dated 19 February 1752, stated that for the territories of Maranhão and Pará, cases and appeals would be resolved “in relation to that district in which it is intended to do justice, excusing the reported delays,” this is because the “co- marcas (districts) of the two captaincies of Pará and Maranhão were very distant in relation to this Court.”21 As a result a judicial structure was formed which was more independent from the metropolitan power, which also reduced the expenses of the parties involved. The result of these alterations was an increases in the autonomy of the power of secular judges. More than 20 years after this first letter, during the Mello e Póvoas government the Junta das Justiças do Maranhão (Council of Justice of Maranhão) was created. In a 1775 letter, Mello e Póvoas described the need to create mechanisms to make the resolution of conflicts more dynamic, but only in 1777 was his request answered through a Royal Letter.22 Its aim was to solve an old problem, since when an ecclesiastic judge did not obey the ruling of a Crown Court, he was obliged to return to Portugal on the first ship to resolve the conflict in Desembargo do Paço. The Council of Justice, however, changed this scenario. This Junta was presided by the ouvidor (attorney general), who had a district judge and a lawyer or jurist as assistants so that appeals could be solved as quickly as possible. The creation of the Council of Justice in Maranhão undoubtedly represented a victory of secular justice which, supported by a court with greater freedom to resolve conflicts previously sent to the Court in Lisbon, became a scenario of great conflict with the agents of ecclesiastic justice. It was not that this conflict did not exist previously, but the possibility of being judged in Maranhão by attorney general and royal agents who dealt directly with prelates and ecclesiastics gave a more serious tone to disputes which previously had taken years to find solutions on the other side of the Atlantic. The creation of the Council of Justice in Maranhão is thus responsible for the increase in the number of cases in the Ecclesiastic Court of Maranhão in the later period, and the consolidation of measures in favor of royal power which had been drafted since the Pombaline period. In addition to the conflicts that have already been seen, there were cases of the usurpation of the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Maranhão in which priests were judged directly by secular justice without their prelates being consulted. An example of this is the proceedings involving Fr. José de Sousa

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Machado in 1759. He publicized a false story that large amounts of gold had been found in the Angicos plantation in the Iguará sertão. The governor, Gonçalo Pereira Lobato de Sousa, sent many expeditions there at great expense to His Majesty’s coffers. After nothing was found the cleric sought the bishop, still Fr. Antonio de Pádua, to complain about the excesses of the secular agent who had ordered that a summary complaint against him been drafted without the orders of the prelate. Bishop and governor did not reach a consensus and a breach was inevitable. The governor, who had ordered the priest arrested, had to hand him over to ecclesiastic jurisdiction. The prelate, however, received a new order on 19 April 1759 to hand over the cleric who was “seditious, rebellious, and disturbing the peaces” to secular jurisdiction and send him “on the first ship leaving this port for that of Lisbon.”23 The prelate complained again to the king, stating “they did not take into account Ecclesiastic jurisdiction, the censures of the Church, and the dogmas of religion.” However, the cleric was not considered only an enemy of the Church, but also of the king of Portugal. Another who was judged and imprisoned by the civil authorities was the priest José Afonso. In 1798 he was accused in Oeiras of forming “conventicles and causing disorder” against the governor of Piauí, D. João de Amorim Pereira. The reverend was accused of criticizing and outraging public officials, disrespecting the governor and creating disturbances to the public peace. The priest appealed to the Episcopal Court alleging that what was occurring was “a lay judge and for layperson, elevated over the sacredness of canon law, and intending to indirectly drag an Ecclesiastic, who enjoys privileged jurisdiction, and of Canon Law, into its court.” The cleric asked that he be helped by “his own legitimate superior, in whose court he should be heard and convinced” so that “the sickle will not be used in the harvest of others... giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”24 The priests of Maranhão demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the disrespect for their jurisdiction by the staff of the Crown Court by writing to the kingdom. From these letters it is possible to consider questions that left no traces in the cases in the Ecclesiastic Court. An example of this is the report sent to Martinho de Melo e Castro, Secretary of State of the Navy and Overseas, in 1772 by canons João Duarte da Costa and José Marinho Sampaio, about the obstacles they had been meeting in the attempt to run the bishopric in the period of a vacancy. They complained of having placed

June 2012 51 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz

in the presence of His Majesty some of the cases in which the Attorney General of this Captaincy has, with the intent of discovering through an appeal to the Royal Crown Court all our procedures, left us in the straitened condition of not being able to exercise Ecclesiastic jurisdiction, nor administrate to the different parties the justice we owe.

The canons stated that everything started because the Cabido (Chapter) had ordered the provision of choir boys be passed to José Miguel dos Santos. Months later one of the losing candidates for this function made an appeal to the Crown Court, which was accepted. The issue became prolonged and the Cabido had to send the “principal records to the Royal Table in Dezembargo do Paço.” The governor also became involved in the question in favor of the royal judge. The canons concluded the letter stating that

for the felicity of a Republic it is very useful that there be a proper union between those who govern the spiritual and the temporal, and that there rarely be discord between them, otherwise there will soon be scandal among the people; with this consideration to remedy all occasions of dissent, we have closed our eyes to many things in which the Governor has interfered in things belonging to Ecclesiastic jurisdiction.25

The canons requested royal support for the resolution of these questions, and principally that their jurisdiction be respected. Nonetheless, the complaints continued. Nor were the ecclesiastic judges exaggerating. In the cases appealed from the Ecclesiastic Court to the Crown Court, generally speaking, it was observed that the appellant’s supplication was almost always accepted. Especially when the case involved the top hierarchies – notably bishops, vicars- general and the Cabido – the judgment of secular justice was contrary to what the ecclesiastic authorities determined. Victory was almost always the king’s ministers. The denunciation of the secular power especially occurred when those involved were at the top of the ecclesiastic hierarchy, notably vicars-general. This possibly occurred because defendants had a certain difficulty in accusing and suing vicars-general in Episcopal courts where they were the actual judges. Two good examples are the complaints which reached the kingdom against the canon João Maria da Luz Costa, one for abuse of a slave and for not wanting to release him; another for concubinage with a married woman.26 Some incorrigible clerics who had already been denounced in the eccle-

52 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão siastic jurisdiction were also denounced in the secular court. Fr. Thomás Aires de Figueiredo is one of the best examples. An obstinate cleric who appeared at least six times in the Episcopal Court of Maranhão, he was also one of those denounced to royal officials. The Attorney General João da Cruz Diniz Pinheiro wrote to the kingdom in 1752, reporting that Fr. Thomás was “subject to perverse customs, which shelter and protect all quality of malevolent men.” The following year the confusions caused by Fr. Thomás were the subject of another letter, this time from the attorney general and appeals court judge Manuel Sarmento, who demanded measures be taken to ascertain the crimes committed by that priest on the high seas. The ouvidor told Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real, the Secretary of State and Overseas, that Thomás was a “bad cleric,” who had “had been involved in thirteen or fourteen deaths” and that he had been incriminated in two devassas because he had been carried out “with despotisms in the regions where he lived, as a bad pastor.”27 Another example of how these conflicts could reach extreme conflicts is the process taken by the Inquisition of Lisbon against Friar Cosme Damião da Costa Medeiros in 1791. Although he was accused of crimes under inquisitorial jurisdiction, such as sigilismo (breaching the confidentiality of confession) and solicitation in confession, Friar Cosme told the inquisitors that the real motives of the accusation made against him were, amongst other reasons, disagreements with the then vicar-general, Fr. João Maria da Luz Costa. Everything had started years before when on Easter Sunday he had given a homily in the chapel of Desterro Church. According to what Friar Cosme said, the sermon dealt with the flight of Our Lady, and furthermore that “the Doctrine of this sermon was based on the virtue of Holy Obedience which the same Lady practiced in her flight and without any enthusiasm at all other than to encourage all those listening to imitate the same lady in such sublime virtue.” The sermon on obedience, however, would cause him much trouble because it was confused with disobedience. The vicar general was present and did not like what Friar Cosme spoke about since

one of those listening was the District Judge of that city, Antonio Pereira dos Santos, who was an enemy of the said João Maria, the governor of the Bishopric, and, regarding the resources of the Crown, about which he had not received a reply, even saying he had invited the said minister to listen to him and in his presence defend the observance of the Holy virtue of obedience, suspecting that he the defendant had made a satirical piece about the said João Maria and the

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bishop of Maranhão, while it was only the truth that he the defendant had not declared to anyone in particular the said sermon and only said that they all should absolutely and that holy persons should obey the principal sovereigns, since being from the Tribe of Levi did not exempt them from the position of subjects.28

A new conflict was established between the ecclesiastic government and the secular government in the bishopric of Maranhão. Frei Cosme was a friend of the vicar of Oeiras, Dionísio José de Aguiar – mentioned above and who had created problems years before by appealing to the Crown Court and defying the bishop –, as well as the district judge of São Luís. This must not have pleased the vicar general and the defenders of the sovereignty of ecclesiastic power and privilege. The persecution which would unfold from them should be considered as pedagogical and served as an example to those who sought assistance from royal power to the detriment of the respect they owed to the prelate. As Friar Cosme said in this statement, at that time temporalities had been declared against the bishop “for not complying with the decisions of the Crown Council in the case of appeals.” Due to this sermon the canon suspended him from the exercise of the orders in the sacristy after the mass and the polemical sermon of obedience. One of the witnesses of the case did not hide his words to link the fact. In relation to the cause of the misunderstandings between the friar and vicar general, he stated that

perhaps some indisposition, with which the same Friar Frei Cosme Damião found against the reverend João Maria da Luz Costa Vigário Geral of that bishopric, who had been a Commissionaire Judge of the Devassa which at the order of His Excellency the bishop had been made into the Vicar of the City of Oeiras, such Devassa gave rise to the appeal which caused the temporalities.

The attitude of the friar after he was removed from holy orders delimited even more the sides of the conflict. He said that he still tried to appeal the decision in the Ecclesiastic Court, but after being told to deliver his petition to the Vicar General, the latter was said to have stated in front of various people that he stick that paper “in a part that modesty prevents him from saying.” What was left to him was to appeal to the Crown Court. In his own words, after this, “it was then that the anger and slander got even worse.”29 By bringing the case to the Inquisition in Lisbon, the vicar-general of Maranhão could make real a punishment which had not been possible against Fr. Dionísio José

54 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão de Aguiar years before, as shown here, and even against the Crown Court which in the inquisitorial jurisdiction could not protect Friar Cosme as it had done before with the parish priest of Oeiras. The reports described until now have shown that the scenario of rivalries was constant throughout the eighteenth century, especially during its second half. Notwithstanding the right to privileged jurisdiction and the insistent defense that the prelates and vicar generals tried to make of their exemptions and immunities, the force of that royal patronage could exert on the institutions within the ecclesiastic power cannot be underestimated. Linked to this was the always anodyne and indefinite limit between the two jurisdictions which was, as I have shown, a subject of discussion and conflict within the Portuguese kingdom for centuries. From complaints of clerics’ bad behavior to cases against them which did not go through the Ecclesiastic Court, relations between the Crown Court and the Episcopal Court in Maranhão were almost always strained. Furthermore, this must have been common in other regions at the same time. The overlapping of jurisdictional conflicts between the secular and ecclesiastic spheres is not proof that the administration of justice was confused or disorganized. Rather it explains the multiplication of institutions with their more or less autonomous ramifications, typical of the exercise of power in the Ancien Régime, both in the metropole and overseas. In the colony, where royal officials and the administrators of vacant bishoprics had to confront each other, while also being distant form their superiors, anything could happen. Wherever there was an ecclesiastic official trying to exercise his jurisdiction, there was certainly a secular official trying to interfere in his affairs, and vice-versa. Both sought help by resorting to the monarch to try to resolve the conflict. In a period of the maturation of judicial institutions, royal patronage, regalism, Jansenism, etc., nothing else could be expected. They were spaces where rivalries and personal conflicts gained strength, where temporal and spiritual waged a constant war to determine which would prevail.

NOTES

1 In May 1503 a great controversy was brought to a close when Pop Alexandre VI authorized the nuncio to take possession of the Archbishopric of Braga in the name of the Cardinal of Alpedrinha. The brief Cum te in praesentia also guaranteed that the King of Portugal, D. Manuel I, could choose whomever he wished to occupy the same archbishopric on its next vacancy. After this Portuguese bishops came to be designated by the king and

June 2012 55 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz were no longer selected by the pope. (PAIVA, José Pedro. Os Bispos de Portugal e do Império (1495-1777). 1.ed. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2006. p.42. Also in relation to this, see RUBERT, Arlindo. A Igreja no Brasil. Santa Maria (RS): Pallotti, 1981- 1993. Vol. .l, p.48-49. 2 BOXER, Charles. A Igreja e a expansão ibérica (1400-1770). Lisboa: Ed. 70, 1978. p.99- 100. 3 In relation to this form of sovereignty, Antonio Vanguerve Cabral stated that “the Prince, who does not know any superior, can grant pardon to criminal kings.” This was justified, according to Cabral, “because the Prince is the absolute Lord in power among his vassals, and also universal Lord of the whole Kingdom.” CABRAL, Antonio Vanguerve. Epilogo juridico de varios casos civeis e crimes concernentes ao especulativo e practico controvertidos, disputados, e decididos a maior parte delles no Supremo Tribunal da Corte, & Casa de Suplicação com humas insignes annotaçoens à Ley novíssima da proibição das facas, & mais armas promulgada em 4 de Abril de 1719. Lisboa: Antonio Pedrozo Galram, 1729. p.128. 4 CASTRO, Gabriel Pereira de. Monomachia sobre as concórdias que fizeram os reis com os prelados de Portugal nas duvidas da jurisdição eclesiástica e temporal. 1.ed. Lisboa: José Francisco Mendes, 1638. p.2. 5 Ibidem, p.8-10 e p.54, respectively. Castro positions himself in defense of royal power. In his view, ecclesiastics could also ask for royal help if they considered themselves wronged by the power exercised by their prelates and other appeal authorities. Moreover, he believed that when kings took advantage of their power to protect subjects for the arbitrariness of the Church, they did not offend its liberty and exemption, much less did they usurp its jurisdiction. 6 CASTRO, Gabriel Pereira de. De manu regia tractatus: prima [-secunda] pars: in quo, omnium legum regiarum (quibus Regi Portugalliae invictissimo in causis ecclesiasticis cognitio permissa est) ex jure, privilegio, consuetudine, seu concordia, sensus, & vera decidendi ratio aperitur... Lisboa: Petrum Craesbeeck Regium Typographum, 1622. pt I, § 6, 7 and 8. 7 TORGAL, Luis Reis. Ideologia política e teoria do Estado na Restauração. Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1982. v.II, respectively p.53-54 and 54-63. 8 LÓPEZ, Juan Luis. Historia legal de la Bula llamada “in Coena Domini” dividida en tres partes en que se refieren su origen, su aumento, y su estado... Madrid: En la imprenta de D. Gabriel Ramirez, 1768. p.xii and xiii. 9 Apud SILVA, D. Francisco de Paula e. Apontamentos para a História eclesiástica do Maranhão. Bahia: Tipografia de São Francisco, 1922. p.86 and 87, respectively. 10 CASTRO, Gabriel Pereira de. Monomachia sobre as concórdias, 1638. p.19-20. 11 MARCOCCI, Giuseppe. I custodi dell’ortodossia. Inquisizione e Chiesa nel Portogallo del Cinquecento. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Leteratura, 2004. p.173-174. The diocesan constitutions came to be much more wide-ranging. No longer were they only concerned with limited and occasional questions, they became true normative codes with pedagogical concerns such as the proliferation of Catholic doctrine, in addition to establishing penalties

56 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Cross and Crown: Church, state and jurisdictional conflict in colonial Maranhão and offenses which were the jurisdiction of the prelate. They thus went beyond concern with the property of the Church and its clergy, to deal in a more wide-ranging manner with various aspects of the life of the diocese, paying special attention to the sacraments, teaching of the doctrine, the functioning of ecclesiastic institutions; the valorization of the church and faith as the means to save souls – intensifying the control of the behavior of laypersons and ecclesiastics through a rigorous policy of Pastoral Visits, for example; the functioning of the bureaucratic machine in dioceses as well as its judicial apparatus, amongst others. In relation to this, see: PAIVA, José Pedro. Constituições Diocesanas. In: AZEVEDO, Carlos Moreira de (Dir.) Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal. v.C-I. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2000. p.9-15. 12 The documentary estates of the Episcopal tribunals were destroyed or are in the possession of ecclesiastic archives which do not allow access to researchers. Until the short while ago what was known about its functioning was what was contained in its rules. The Maranhão archive is currently the sole and largest collection of documents about tribunals of this type open for consultation. It holds an impressive 429 civil and criminal cases against lay and clergy. These documents served as the basis for my masters` and doctoral research, namely: MENDONÇA, Pollyanna Gouveia. Sacrílegas famílias: conjugalidades clericais no bispado do Maranhão no século XVIII. Masters’ Thesis in History, Programa de Pós-Graduação em História, Universidade Federal Fluminense. Niterói (RJ), 2007; and Parochos imperfeitos: Justiça Eclesiástica e desvios do clero no Maranhão colonial. Doctoral Dissertation in History, Programa de Pós-Graduação em História, Universidade Federal Fluminense. Niterói (RJ), 2011. 13 Constituiçoens primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia feitas, e ordenadas pelo Illustrissimo e Reverendissimo Senhor D. Sebastião Monteiro da Vide, Arcebispo do dito arcebispado, e do Conselho de Sua Magestade, propostas, e aceitas em o Synodo Diecesano, que o dito Senhor celebrou em 12 de Junho do anno de 1707. Lisboa: na Officina de Miguel Rodrigues, 1764. Livro IV, tit I, n. 639, fl. 248. Recently the constitutions have been republished: VIDE, Sebastião Monteiro; FEITLER, Bruno; SALES SOUZA, E. Constituições primeiras do arcebispado da Bahia. São Paulo: Edusp, 2010. v.1. 920p. 14 Codigo Philippino ou Ordenaçõens e Leis do Reino de Portugal recopiladas por mandado d’El-Rey D. Philippe I. 14.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia do Instituto Filomático, 1870. Livro I, tit X, p.34. 15 Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (hereafter AHU), Conselho Ultramarino (hereafter CU), Capitania do Maranhão (hereafter CM), doc 5828, fl. 25; fl. 2 v and fl 3, respectively.drf6 16 Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (hereafter IHGB), Arq 1. 1. 5, fl 314 v. 17 AHU, CU, CM, doc 5708, fl. s/n, fl. 29, 32 and 38 v, respectively. 18 In relation to this, also see: CASTRO, Zília Osório. O Regalismo em Portugal: Antonio Pereira de Figueiredo. Cultura História e Filosofia, v.I, 1987, p.360; and CATROGA, Fernando. Secularização e laicidade: uma perspectiva histórica e global. Revista de História das Ideias, v.25, p.76-77, 2004.

June 2012 57 Pollyanna Gouveia Mendonça Muniz

19 René Taveneaux demonstrates how complex the task of defining Jansenism could be. The influence of space, individuals, and times means that it is difficult to classify this concept. Taveneaux suggests that the term Jansenisms, in the plural, be used. In this way, the risk of uniformization is avoided. TAVENEAUX, René. La vie quotidienne des Jansenistes aux XVII et XVIII siecles. Paris: Hachette, 1985. p.9-11. A work of reference about the question of Jansenism in Portugal is: SOUZA, Evergton Sales. Jansénisme et réforme de l’Eglise dans l’Empire Portugais (1640 à 1790). Paris: Gulbenkian, 2004. 20 AHU, CU, CM, doc. 4480, fl. s/n. 21 AHU, CU, CM, doc. 3660. 22 Arquivo Público do Estado do Maranhão. Retratos do Maranhão colonial: Correspondências de Joaquim de Mello e Póvoas, governador e capitão-general do Maranhão (1771-1778). São Luís: Ed. SECMA, 2009. p.241 and 281, respectively. 23 AHU, CU, CM, doc. 3817 and doc. 3813, respectively. In the collection of Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino there appear the following documents about the case: 3804, 3805, 3807, 3813, 3817, 3827, 3866, and 3884. In the collection of the ecclesiastic court it was not possible to find any records about the question, however, Fr. José de Sousa Machado had already been sued in the ecclesiastic forum. The same year as the dispute about the false eldorado, 1759, he was sued because he owed 5000 cruzados and 33,000 réis to Captain José da Silva Costa. Arquivo Público do Estado do Maranhão (hereafter, APEM), Feitos Cíveis de Assinação de Dez Dias, doc. 2572. 24 APEM, Autuamentos de Ofício, doc. 5287, fl. s/n. 25 AHU, CU, CM, doc. 4511, fl. s/n. 26 AHU, CU, CM, doc. 8642, fl. s/n and doc. 6562, respectively. Inácio Luis Domingos states that he still tried to resume the marriage but Josefa was irreducible. They separated and he lost his goods. He ask the he be taken under the protection of the monarch and have his goods to be restored to him. Months later the same Inácio wrote again to D. Maria I asking that some ecclesiastic authority allow his complaint against the vicar-general to continue. AHU, CU, CM, doc. 6639, fl. s/n. 27 AHU, CU, CM, doc. 3312 and doc. 3395, respectively. 28 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Tribunal do Santo Ofício, Inquisição de Lisboa, proc. 14880, fl. 40 v. and 39, respectively. 29 Idem, fl. 47, fl 47 v, fl 153 v. and fl. 83, respectively.

Article received on 27 March 2012. Approved on 22 May 2012.

58 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines Fernando Lobo Lemes*

Resumo Abstract Lugar de concentração de poderes di- A place where many kinds of power versos, Vila Boa de Goiás se ampara de were concentrated, Vila Boa de Goiás um corpo político. Pedra angular na was supported by a political body. The gênese do corpo político da cidade, o Municipal Council, crucial in the gene- Municipal Council se organiza e se sis of the city’s political body, was orga- projeta sobre o espaço urbano, subme- nized and projected on the urban space, tendo os outros corpos sociais a seu bringing other social bodies under its comando e governo. Nesse processo, rule and government. In this process, nem o espaço sagrado da cidade, nem neither the sacred space of the city nor os grupos ou membros das instituições the groups or members of the religious religiosas, ficarão imunes às ações dos institutions, were immune to the ac- oficiais municipais. Suas iniciativas, tions of municipal officers. Their initia- contudo, vão suscitar resistências que tives, however, provoked resistance that darão forma aos embates entre o poder conditioned the conflicts between the secular e as autoridades eclesiásticas secular and the ecclesiastical authorities nas minas de Goiás. in the mines of Goiás. Palavras-chave: poder político; minas Keywords: political power; Goiás mines; de Goiás; festas religiosas. religious festivities.

The sacred and the profane: competing powers in the Goiás mines

Since the beginning of gold mining in Goiás and the foundation of the first camps, two competing hierarchical structures emerged: one associated with the secular power of the monarch and the other with colonial ecclesiastic authority. In the Sant’Anna camp (arrayal), the first mining settlement founded in 1726, the superintendent-general and first discoverer, Bartolomeu Bueno

* Université Sorbonne – Paris III. IHEAL – CREDAL. 28, rue Saint-Guillaume. Paris – France – 75007. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 59-81 - 2012 Fernando Lobo Lemes da Silva, had his authority supported by powers granted by the king of Portugal. A little later in 1733, the Brotherhood of São Miguel e Almas, the first to be created in the mines, based its influence on the authority of the bishopric of Rio de Janeiro. Each had a legitimacy recognized by local society. Both demanded a privileged relationship with the sacred: in 1727 under the auspices of Bueno da Silva the first chapel was constructed in the arraial of Sant’Anna, while the Brotherhood of São Miguel e Almas was concerned with masses and spiritual activities associated with this chapel. The sacred was, thus, from the genesis of the relations of power in the Goiás mines, at the heart of the disputed field of politics.1 In this way the founding of the first vila colonial (colonial town) did not substantially alter the nature of the powers in play in the region. Nevertheless, after the creation of Vila Boa in 1739, the institutional presence of the Municipal Council (Senado do Câmara) would produce specific contours throughout the political history of the colonial period in Goiás, influencing the relations of power until the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and even during the process of the formation of the Empire. A place where various powers were concentrated, Vila Boa de Goiás was also supported by a political body. The cornerstone of the genesis of the political body in the city, the Municipal Council organized itself and projected its power over the urban space, submitting the other social bodies to its command and government. In this process not even the sacred space of the city, nor groups or members of religious institutions, were immune to the actions of municipal officials. However, their initiatives would meet resistance which would take shape in the clashes between the secular power and the ecclesiastic authorities. In this context, while the forms of resistance to the full exercise of political power by the Municipal Council, on the one hand, and to the influence of Vila Boa as a privileged place for decision making, on the other, appear as struggles which hinder the imposition of its power and the effective realization of its sovereignty, they represent for us an element of inflection and, at the same time, a starting point to understand the fights waged in the Goiás political sphere. From our point of view, the resistance and the conflict allow the nature of the relations of power to be identified, exposing the most evident motives and strategies of the actors in the city. Using a metaphor proposed by Michel Foucault, this involves making forms of resistance a “chemical catalyzer which allows the relations of power to be put into evidence, to see where they are

60 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines inscribed, to discover their points of application and the method they use.”2 At the same time resistance or opposition to the government strategies produced in Vila Boa by members of the Municipal Council produced a privileged environment for the study of political relations in the city. As we will see in the city the political sphere had the intention of controlling time, imposing its calendar on the spaces it governed. The creation of Vila Boa de Goiás and the legitimation of its power through the actions of municipal officials modified the nature of the political field in the mines, altering the existing balance of forces. In the middle of the inevitable arrangements and misunderstandings which defined the rhythm of urban life in the Goiás mines, Vila Boa imposed its preeminence in the local scenario, establishing the foundations on which the ties of a new collectivity were built. As the city took shape, it was society that was being incorporated into a new logic of power. In this movement disputes between representatives of the secular power of the monarch and local authorities linked to the colonial ecclesiastic power gave form to the relations of strength which would emerge in this new territory conquered by the monarchy.

Political power in the field of the sacred: the construction of Sant’Anna Parish Church

One of the strategies which the members of the Municipal Council found to demarcate their territory in the religious field was their involvement in the construction of a new church built to replace the old Sant’Anna chapel. With the emergence of Vila Boa, a new and large church aimed to give the sacred universe of the city a dimension comparable with the future capital. In the words of the then intendent of the Royal Treasury, Sebastião Mendes de Carvalho, the magnitude of the new church was such, “that in no mine could such a grandiose church be found, even in the larger settlements of Beyramar there was no other more advantageous.”3 Leaving the exaggeration aside, alleging the growth in the number of faithful, the Brotherhood de São Miguel and Almas submitted, as the body responsible for the building of a new church on 22 August 1739, a petition to the Municipal Council (the entity responsible for the control of public buildings) requesting authorization for the construction of a new church. After the solemnity of the submission of the document to the councilors, with this being registered in the annals of the Municipal Council, the members of the

June 2012 61 Fernando Lobo Lemes

Brotherhood of São Miguel and Almas solemnly walked through the streets of the city in a procession of notables.4 However, it was the councilors of the city who took center stage with the aim of raising the funds necessary to construct a new matriz (parish) church. Three years later, on 21 March 1742, given the danger of the old chapel col- lapsing, the Municipal Council petitioned the King of Portugal for help in the building of a new church. The response from Lisbon was not slow: around a year later, a provision of the monarch, dated 2 April 1743, authorized the Royal Treasury to participate in a consortium in Vila Boa, which already had received donations from residents and contributions from the Municipal Council.5 However, the intendent and provedor of the Royal Treasury, Sebastião Mendes de Carvalho, wrote to the monarch on 22 April 1744, confirming his participation in the project of the construction of the parish church, also stating that due to the precarious state of the old chapel, when the royal provision reached his hands the work had already been started at the initiative of the residents of Vila Boa. He also explained that the use of the old chapel created much inconvenience as it could not hold the large number of believers who used it. In the busiest festivities, entire families did not go to church due to the precarious state of the building. A year later on 26 April 1745, the Overseas Council, judging ‘very imper- fect’ the map sent from the Goiás mines, ordered that a project for a new church drafted in Lisbon be sent to the Council of Vila Boa. It also noted that if there were still voluntary donations from residents or funds from the Royal Treasury to be invested in the construction, they were to deposited in a safe with three keys, and disbursements could only be made with the authorization of the Municipal Council and the approval of the ouvidor, keeping informed the governor of the Captaincy of São Paulo.6 In 1746 Council officials once again petitioned the monarch for funds to complete the building of the parish church of Nossa Senhora de Sant’Anna de Vila Boa de Goiás. Since the construction differed considerably from the plan conceived in Lisbon, it was argued that when the architectural project reached Goiás, the construction work was almost completed, all that was lacking being the entablement of the frontispiece and the towers, which it was intended to complete in accordance with the royal project. This liberty to construct was associated with the absence of religious orders, prohibited by the crown from establishing themselves in the mining regions, thereby transferring the responsibility for the construction and maintenance of building to believers. Thus, it was the leaders of brotherhoods and

62 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines fraternities who defined the general lines to be followed in buildings, profoundly influencing regional architectural forms.7 Nevertheless, the building required constant repairs until its collapse in 1759, and was abandoned until 1777, when renovations were concluded by master Manoel José do Nascimento. Until the end of the eighteenth century, there were constant interventions by the Municipal Council in order to guarantee financial support for the repeated refurbishments and reconstructions of the parish church.8

The place of social bodies: the Fraternity of Republicans and the feast of St. Sebastian

However, the initiatives of the Council officials did not remain confined to the material sphere in the organization of the sacred spaces of Goiás. It also influenced the immaterial spheres of its constitution. In 1742 members of the Municipal Council created in Vila Boa the Fraternity of Devotion of Republicans, whose protector saint was St. Sebastian, creating more profound roots in the consecrated devotional circles of the spiritual world. 9 Years before in 1733, King João V had ordered the governor of Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro to create a solemn procession in homage of the same saint, also obliging the participation of regular and secular clergy (Santos, 2005, p.48). In Goiás, responsible for his cult, municipal officials organized festivals and procession and took care of the altar and ornaments installed in the Senate building:

It is required, as it is of service to God and to the benefit of this Villa, that a Fraternity of Republicans be established, with the protector the undefeated martyr St. Sebastian, who was from this Bishopric, whose image is given by one devote; and it is also intended that the government of this Villa shall ornament its Altar; and the responsibility for the care and zeal for its cult shall be the Council’s; and annually holding its Corpo de Mesa, it shall also be invoked in one of the Royal Festivities ordered by law...10

In the holy Sundays of the city, the Municipal Council also sought to exercise its attributions in the sphere of official and religious festivals. In addition to the functions they were responsible for in governing the city, and despite the frequent complaints about the financial difficulties which under- mined the Municipal Council, the regulation, organization and sponsorship of festivals was also part of the agenda of municipal officials. In this aspect, reinforcing social ties and making public its place in the hierarchies of powers

June 2012 63 Fernando Lobo Lemes of Vila Boa, they assumed their role very early, in obedience both with canon law and the royal legislation which regulated public festivities in overseas dominions. The devotion to St. Sebastian, patron of the Bishopric of the city of Rio de Janeiro began in Goiás when a devotee made a donation of an image of a saint to adorn the offices of the Municipal Council. The example of other festivities associated with royal power, the emergence of the Fraternity of Republicans, and shortly afterwards the procession of St. Sebastian, are practically simultaneous, occurring a short while after the foundation of Vila Boa, as happened in the genesis of other colonial cities.11 A essential moment in the calendar of royal festivities, the Procession of Republicans, in homage of St. Sebastian, was held in Vila Boa under the auspices of the Municipal Council, every 20 January. As can be noticed, the fact that inaugurates and allows the holding of the festival and procession of St. Sebastian is its creation and the status of being an important urban center acquired by Vila Boa, since this implies an initial gesture by the Municipal Council as a political vertex of the colonial city. Usually during the second half of the eighteenth century, the minutes of council meetings included reports about preparations for the Procession of Republicans. Preparation for these festivities began at the beginning of the year, and there was a need to concede official authorization to the Council Attorney (procurador da Câmara) to allow the necessary expenditure for the acquisition and preparation of the material used, such as wax, music and other things, all paid by the Municipal Council, as shown in the petition transcribed below:

Herein, the said Procurador petitions, since the Festival of the Glorious Martyr St. Sebastian is [close], that he wants to have the ability to prepare what is needed and necessary for this. It was determined to prepare all the wax necessary in the manner practiced in other years both for the exposition of the Holy Sacrament and, for the Republicans and the body of this Council, whose expenses shall be taken into account, and paid from the earnings of this Council.12

The councilors were responsible for monitoring the entire organizational process, indicating the position and the places of the authorities who would participate in the procession, “nominating the Republicans ... for the festivities of the glorious martyr St. Sebastian”: for the standard, for the pallium, torches, lanterns and litter. Furthermore, they showed that they had an ascendency over the local clergy, more specifically over the vicar and the brotherhoods of Vila

64 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines

Boa, as shown in the minutes for the same meeting, when “official letters [were sent] to the Reverend Vicar of the Matriz to assist with what was necessary for the festivities of St. Sebastian, as well as to the Irmandade do Santissimo Sacramento” (Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament).13 The Procession of Republicans, like the feast of Corpus Christi which we shall examine below, consisted of a parade in which the different social bodies of Vila Boa de Goiás participated, hierarchically ordered and forming a single body, the Body of God. We can infer, due to the recurrence and the various functions attributed to it, that the Municipal Council played a specific role in the social framework during the procession ritual. The description of the cortege which moved through the city streets reveals the position and order of the social bodies. It also indicates, as in a play staged for a large audience, the hierarchy which straddled the places of the secular and ecclesiastic power in Vila Boa de Goiás:

First, a dance between Turks and Christians followed by other dances, all wearing rich clothes. Shortly afterwards two mounted figures representing the Council and the Church, preceded gentlemen dressed as Fame with their headers girthed in hats of flowers and diamonds. These were followed, along the sides, by two pageboys dressed as Mercury. Behind these came eight black men on foot and dressed in great style playing charamelas [an old wind instrument]. At the distance of two paces, dressed in clothes of gold and with turbans, came a mounted figure with the royal arms on his breast and the words: Viva the Council. This figure was followed, along the side, by two others on horseback dressed in the same way with two pageboys on each side dressed as tragedy. Afterwards came the figures representing the seven planets. Next the Brotherhood of São Miguel e Almas formed part of the procession, whose provedor was the then Ordinary Judge and a numerous retinue of the nobility of the Vila and its districts which had served the Republic, the Holy Sacrament, that of N. Sra. Da Lapa, Santo Antonio, and N. Sra. Da Boa Morte. Underneath a cross came the numerous clergy of the parish and its freguesias with the Divine Sacrament below the precious Palluim in the hand of the Reverend Vicar of the Parish Church (Matriz). Behind came the Captain General [and governor] of Guayazes Alvaro Joseph Botelho, Conde de São Miguel, followed by a company of Dragons and Pedestrians carrying the litter with the image of the saint. The procession came to an end at the Parish Church of Santa Ana where high mass was celebrated with a sermon.14

June 2012 65 Fernando Lobo Lemes

We can note that through the intermediation of a sacred ritual, all of society can be seen and represented as a unity, as order and permanence. In the same manner, while the political field emerges, as we have seen before, from the sacred giving form and contours to society, in the Procession of Republicans it is the representation of the ritual in honor of St. Sebastian which offered the avid eyes of the public the spectacular image of political power in the city: “dressed in clothes of gold and with turbans, came a mounted figure with the royal arms on his breast and the words: Viva the Council.” Integrating the social universe and the hierarchy of institutions as members of a single body, the Municipal Council united with the local community, establishing at the same time the bases and the foundations of its power. Having said this, we can observe the “symbolic convergence of the cortege through the Mystical Body, in other words the participation of the will of all the orders – from the feet to the head – of the kingdom in a unified whole. This meant that the top of the hierarchy, or the head of the mystical body, was constituted in the best figure of its unity, namely the Municipal Council” (Moraes, 2005, p.431). Based on this reflection, the image of the Municipal Council on the top of this hierarchy, as the ‘head of the mystical body’, relates to the legitimacy of its power erected in the meanderings of the public spaces of Vila Boa de Goiás. In the same way that in Rio de Janeiro in the first half of the eighteenth century a new sociability took form which submitted the inhabitants of the city to the logic of control and monitoring, altering the relations of power within the urban space. In the case of Vila Boa, this sociability, as noted by Maria Fernanda Bicalho in the case of Rio de Janeiro, is in the origin of the “changes which point to the complexity of uses of spaces in the city, its symbolic wealth, and the effectiveness of its political instrumentalization.”15 However, the constitution of this unity of the mystical body followed the ordinary course of time and things, compounding a vision of the world compatible with the natural universe experienced by the inhabitants of Vila Boa. Despite the social distinctions and the unequal political powers, the belief that instituted and nurtured the existence of the sacred appeared equal to men facing the insecurities and storms brought by the unknown. Thus, in 1794, the councilors proposed festivities with great pomp and solemnity: plagued by the fear of illnesses and epidemics which were spreading, through the Procession of Republicans they sought the recognition of the ‘Almighty’ and the reduction in the punishments which had fallen upon the people. In the first meeting of the year held by municipal officials, the ordinary

66 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines judges were absent, laid low by an illness that was spreading through the city. After authorizing the expenses for the festivities in honor of St. Sebastian, Council officials stated that it was an exceptional year. For this reason, due to the excessive presence of illnesses, “since the year is critical and the diseases continuous,” this year “the festivities would have to be held with greater solemnity, so that through the intercession of this saint we will deserve the pardon of the Almighty, and the epidemics that have raged shall be stopped.” Also proposed was a feast day “with a High Mass, exposition and a sermon.”16 In the distant Vila Boa in that year of 1794, the ritual of the Procession of Republicans assumed a special tonality with the high mass, the body of Christ shown to the public and a sermon paid with the weight of gold: calling for the intervention of St. Sebastian, the protector saint of the Bishopric, the Municipal Council resolved to pay the reverend and professor Luis Antonio da Silva e Souza “alms of twenty oitavas of gold.” Council officials thus made their actions in the world of the sacred a political instrument which sacramented its position in the social hierarchy of Vila Boa.

The procession of the Body of God: opposition between powers in the political field of Goiás

In the Portuguese overseas world, in addition to the festivities of St. Sebastian, there were various moments in which festivities and procession offered the fraternities and brotherhoods occasions for a public demonstration of their religious manifestations: the Advent of the Lord, the feast and the revelry of the Holy Kings (Santos Reis), Lent, Holy Week and Easter, the Procession of the Steps of the Passion, Palm Sunday, Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday, the Holy Thursday Procession, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, Ascension Thursday, Pentecost and the festivities on days of obligation. These were liturgical celebrations which each fraternity and brotherhood dedicated to their own patron, whose dates were distributed throughout the year, filling the civil calendar of colonial society. In Goiás, a world invaded by religious activities and representations, the frequency of royal processions tended to impose the dominion of Vila Boa over all the territory occupied, where daily life was marked by frenetic activities associated with the mining economy. In the heart of the mines, in the principal urban center of the region, it was the colonial authorities and the authorities from the Municipal Council who defined working days and holidays, move-

June 2012 67 Fernando Lobo Lemes ment and rest, setting the rhythm for the social life of the inhabitants. For the most important feasts days religious practices were regulated in accordance with the Archbishopric of Bahia, imposing the compulsory nature of processions and the obligation for residents to participate. The attributions of the Municipal Council and the power which emanated from Vila Boa did not occur by chance. When it was founded Vila Boa de Goiás was geographically superimposed on Arraial de Sant’Anna, the place chosen for the creation of the first town. Under the auspices of Lisbon its influence imposes the marks a new time, new powers and a new society. With the strong and intense gesture represented by its creation, the colonial time intended to substitute the time of the arraiais, where the field of the sacred was associated with the practices dictated by the first discovers and religious associations. The colonial project, with the foundation of Vila Boa, had the intention of imposing another rhythm on economic relations, new forms of judicial and administrative control and other forms of power in the Goiás mines. In relation to this, the creation of Vila Boa at the order of the king of Portugal represented the inscription of a new time on the memory and the still vivid traits of the arraiais (Vidal, 2007, p.589). In this context in 1742, in addition to the festivities organized in homage to Sant’Anna, patron of the vila, four other festivities were programmed in Vila Boa: Corpus Christi, Guardian Angel, St. Isabel and St. Sebastian.17 Of these, the procession of Corpus Christi, or the Body of God, since it constituted an important festival for the monarchy, in addition to offering a crystallized image of the positions of each social body, reveals the oppositions and struggles which aimed to guarantee or preserve the preeminence of each layer in the social and political hierarchy of the Goiás mines. A religious festival which was made universal by the Church during the Middle Ages, it was appropriated by the Portuguese monarchy in the early modern period, creating a context in which the spheres of religion and politics were ordinarily superimposed. Ordered both by the Church and the monarchy, its contours indicated a ceremony in the confluence of a dual ordination, which during the processions held in Goiás potentialized disputes for space and power between representatives of Church and Crown. Organized by the Municipal Council, it was to be expected that the festival of Corpus Christi would be a large, solemn and celebrated procession. It is interesting to note, as Cruz Santos did, that this dual ordination or simultaneity, seen by today’s observer as mixing the domains of religion and politics, “was precisely one of the elements that nurtured the festival, celebrating Corpus

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Christi in the Kingdom and its dominions” (Santos, 2005, p.33-34). In Goiás the dual command of the Church and the monarch nourished the festival and at the same time it stimulated the frequent intrigues between local religious and political authorities. In Portugal the history of the feast of Corpus Christi was always associated with municipal councils, with there being reports that it was created in 1387 by the Municipal Council of Lisbon in commemoration of the battle of Aljubarrota against the Spanish. In Portuguese America, as in the kingdom, the propagation and emergence of this festival were linked to initiatives of Council officials, and thus were closely tied to the colonial cities. In the Goiás mines, when the date of the festival was drawing near, it was the Municipal Council of Vila Boa which announced its arrival in a public notification, which punished any infractions committed by participants in the parade or among the watching public who were legally obliged to attend the procession, which took charge of the organizational costs, paid the clergy for the sermons, kept order within the cortege, as well as along its path, meticulously planned and prepared, through the streets of the town. The minutes of the Goiás Municipal Council also register the preparations for the festival. In the sessions of 11 and 15 May 1793, expenses were authorized for the purchase of wax and judges of the manual trades were appointed – representatives associated with the various craft activities inspected by municipal officials – to participate in the procession. On 22 May, the authorities or ‘republican persons,’ were nominated, as well as their strategic disposition in the hierarchy of the cortege, a public notification was issued summoning the population to prepare the city streets and letters were dispatched to the Vicar of the Matriz Church and to the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament:

Herein the Republican persons are nominated for the Insignias of the Procession of the Body of God; and the following have been chosen: For the Standard, the Chief Surgeon Joaquim da Silva Freitas. For the Pallium, Sergeant Major Alvaro Joze Xavier da Sª, Ensign Joze Ribeiro da Costa, Ensigns Bernardo Joze de Souza, João Loureiro Gomes, Furriel Simão de Souza Lima, Joaquim Pereira Pays Peçanha (and) Manoel Joze Leite; For the lanterns, Ensign Thomé Ferreira Pacheco, Doctor Gregório da Costa Mattos, Joze Ferreira Coelho, Theodozio Manoel da Sylva. The various requirements shall be carried out, and a Public Notification shall be published calling on the residents of this Villa to prepare the streets and to affix this (the notification) on their doors and windows ... In this it is determined that I the clerk shall write official letters to the

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Vicar of the Matriz and to the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament; and also to the said Republicans.18

Plural Elites: Religious Brotherhoods and the Municipal Council

It is worth noting that the movements, and the political and institutional advances, of the Municipal Council into the urban space of the Goiás mines never occurred without resistance. Since the creation of Vila Boa, Council officials took advantage of special occasions to exercise their authority, imposing and legitimating, step by step, their power in all spheres of daily life in mining society. As a local political institution, it invested in and sought an increasingly expanded autonomy, presenting itself in relation to the multiplicity of existing powers as the direct representative of the king and the Portuguese monarchy. Therefore, behind the scenes of the drama enacted in the Corpus Christi festivities on the streets of Vila Boa, the scenario that is unveiled before the eyes of the observer, and the actions and methods used by Council officials confirm this tendency. At each stage of the festival, municipal officials had the clear intention of submitting to their control – to the will imposed by the official discourse which only they, allegedly, incarnated – the leaders of the other social bodies, and the other elites who were part of the social universe of the Goiás mines. Vila Boa emerged as a space for the unfolding of connections which sustained and legitimated the authority and capacity for action of political elites in the Goiás mines. From the start, among various aspects of mining social life, the actions of the Municipal Council functioned as an important source of power and assumed pedagogical forms: religious life, led by brotherhoods and fraternities, and public ceremonies, both dynastic and official, were the targets of actions by Council officials. In this context the set of social practices, usually treated in the historiography in terms of instruments of control and domination of royal power, can also be interpreted as a means of socialization, learning, and the formation of habits, values and knowledge. Religious ceremonies and public festivities, in addition to promoting integration between different social bodies, functioned as productive mechanisms of individual and collective autonomy.19 More than this, the pedagogical nature of the action of municipal officials induced the appropriation of political and judicial knowledge, which would be spread by the Municipal Council, reaching ever more extensive sectors of the population.

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However, in a regime based on a multiplicity of powers, the elites in turn are plural and maintain conflicting and competitive relations among themselves. This is what happened in Goiás. As a result, in order to understand how the various elites related with each other and the impact of their connections based on strategies implemented by municipal officials, the exchanges and mediations which occurred in the social context in which they found themselves have to be measured. In this aspect the debate about a possible definition for the term ‘elite’, in a wider fashion in the social sciences and in more restricted form among historians, goes far beyond the field of political discussion and the limits of this article. Nevertheless, an appropriate meaning for the term can better translate the coexistence of plural elites – notably religious and political – in the same environment. The coexistence between them gives rise to a set of powers based on a hierarchy which defines the place of each in the broader structure of society. In this way the definition borrowed from William Genieys seems to us interesting for the purposes of this study:

The uses progressively give the word elite its own meaning, designating a minority who at a given moment in a determined society, have a prestige resulting from socially valorized natural qualities (for example, race, blood, etc.) or acquired qualities (culture, merit, capacity, etc.). The vocabulary thus designates both the environment (social, territorial, etc.,) from where the elite originated, and the actors who compose it, or also the area in which they manifest their preeminence. In this case, the determining factor is always followed by a qualification which allows the field of the group of actors to be restricted as constituting an elite.20

Moreover, unlike an approach with an essentialist form, the status of elite, for the purposes applied in this text, should not be confused with an innate concept of elite, given exclusively via natural means, but as the result of a process which has a direct relationship with the possibilities of access to a specific field of activity. Much more than a monistic and homogeneous view of the elite, if we consider the influence of the groups of high-ranking people, or more properly the landed nobility, in the decision making processes that defined the destiny of the city, we can say that power was distributed among various or some groups who composed the local elites. Most especially the perception of the social ties that connected the political and religious elites within the Goiás

June 2012 71 Fernando Lobo Lemes mines allows us see how the relations of these institutions with Lisbon led to the formation of individuals who occupied key posts and strategic positions in the fundamental organizations for society. Based on relations which integrated them, developing close ties of dependency and occupying particular institutional positions, these groups of actors, who were capable of influencing the decisions that affected mining society, constitute the elites of the social bodies in the city. Above all, it is their initiatives and their capacity for action that defines their condition within Goiás mining society. Here we are concerned with the Municipal Council, and the religious fraternities and brotherhoods as spaces of decision making and the production of power, capable of creating diverse elites, whose participants have, at a determined moment, prestige resulting from the natural qualities that are socially valorized or qualities acquired through culture, merit, or personal aptitudes. However, the vocabulary which designates the environment in which the elite originates, as well as the actors who compose it (the brotherhoods and fraternities, or the Municipal Council) has a direct relationship with the terrain in which they manifest their preeminence: the religious (brotherhoods and fraternities) and the political (Municipal Council). As a consequence of this, when one talks of an elite in (political) power it is necessary to state and acknowledge that this is an elite integrated by high- ranking people or members of the Municipal Council (political elite), due to the nature and the existing hierarchies within the political field of the Goiás mines. While other social bodies did not constitute elites which directly commanded power and political institutions in Vila Boa, they certainly composed what we can understand as elites strategies,21 due to the strategic role they played in maintaining a certain balance of powers, capable of acting based on circumstances that were, we can say, unfavorable in the strongly hierarchal political and social context of the Goiás mines. Nevertheless, if we start with the idea that the power of the Municipal Council was not unlimited, we can understand that decision making possibilities were distributed among various groups of elites, with the same condition of balancing the system (Vidal, 2007, p.592). In these conditions it is necessary to negotiate. In addition to the administrators nominated by the Crown, in permanent conflict with local political groups, Council officials had to establish dialogues and negotiations with other social bodies, such as the brotherhoods and fraternities. However, the existence of these social bodies expanded the platform and the scope of action of elites, also certainly multiply-

72 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines ing the conflicts, but at the same time organizing the powers and the political relations of mining society. Taking as a backdrop the form in which the Municipal Council made the other elites submit, it is important to us to essentially verify how these elites inter-related in the political micro-system and how their powers were capital- ized by officials from the Council of Vila Boa. Drawing on the understanding of elites proposed by Antônio Manuel Hespanha, this involves perceiving how the powers of some corrode the powers of others.22

The divided Body of God: Council Officials and the “brothers of the Lord”

In 1742, aware of the importance and significance of the festivities in the heart of the Portuguese monarchy and its overseas possessions, Council officials ordered the arrest of four members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament and threatened to no longer hold the procession of the Corpus Christi (Body of God) in the Goiás mines. The initial cause of this conflict was the how members of the brotherhood treated the sacred space of the church. They alleged that people nominated by the Council to transport the pallium did not have the right to collect it from the internal enclosure of the church, a ritual destined only for the ‘Brothers of the Lord,’ in other words members of the brotherhood. The second motive for the discord makes the tense nature of the relationship between Council officials and members of the brotherhood more clear: according to the councilors, ‘the brotherhoods of this Villa’ had refused to ‘accompany the Royal Processions’ and to hand over the ‘holy ornaments’ needed to hold the festival. On their part the members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament alleged that it was not their obligation to incur expenditure with the wax used in the procession, since it was always them who paid ‘costs of arrobas of gold’ for the rebuilding of the church and paid for the costs of the canonicals ‘necessary to celebrate the divine office.’ After hours of negotiations aimed at convincing them to rent the canonicals used in the cortege, even involving the intervention of the governor the Captaincy, the councilors stated that they

had done this [the renting] much against their will, and the solemnity of the festival was as was usual; however, with so much murmuring of the people and of the same Brotherhood against this Council that we have determined not to

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hold any Royal festivities while Your Majesty does not take measures against these disorders...23

However, the first and second causes of the conflict only hid the real motive of the dissatisfaction of the members of the brotherhood who, by trying to impede access to the main altar of the church and the use of the canonicals indispensible for the procession, were retaliating against another of the Municipal Council’s decisions: the exclusion of the provedor of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament from the place immediately after the Pallium. In fact, Council officials had threatened to arrest the provedor if he tried to occupy that place during the Corpus Christi procession. In response to the notification sent by Council officials, the members of the brotherhood, in a letter dated 20 May 1742, stated that they would not give up the provedor’s position in the hierarchy of the procession, the place they had occupied in ‘previous years,’ except at the order of the King of Portugal. Otherwise they would not permit the use of the ornaments, nor even the pallium, since they were the sole property of the brotherhood. In addition, they alleged that the canonicals were acquired with resources from the religious association and not by the Royal Treasury, as was usual in Corpus Christi processions in other parts of the empire. The following day, in reprisal to the brotherhood’s resistance, the councilors summoned to the Council building the provedor, the clerk, the treasurer, and the procurador (lawyer) of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament. After being interrogated, they were arrested and placed in the ‘trunk,’ “a place for the delinquents with the greatest crimes.” Reporting the incident to the monarch on 8 June 1742, the members of the brotherhood alleged that they were victims of “scandalous reproaches,” demanded justice, asking the King of Portugal to “order the Council” to abstain from its pretensions, “so alien to reason.”24 The Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament was demanding precedence and therefore preeminence in the places of the procession, against the impositions of the Municipal Council. In this aspect the feast of Corpus Christi entails an ideal field of disputes between the members of the brotherhood and the Municipal Council. For this reason, alleging that the ‘custom’ of the brotherhood did not harm the ‘common good,’ they stated that their right came from a ‘possession’ acquired upon the creation of the freguesia of Sant’Anna and conserved even after the establishment of Vila Boa and the Municipal Council. They argued before the King of Portugal that this right could not be tak-

74 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines en from them without an explicit order from the monarch. They also noted that in relation to similar misunderstanding custom should prevail, with the attitudes of the Municipal Council being contrary to the expressed law.25 The following year, ignoring the brotherhood’s petition, the Crown answered a letter from Council officials in which the latter reported the reasons for the imprisonment of the four officials from the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament. The decision of the monarch vehemently contradicted the expectations of the members of the Brotherhood. The content of the correspondence sent from Lisbon, in addition to approving the initiative of the Municipal Council, included a severe reprimand for the members of the Brotherhood: the ouvidor was ordered to summon the four fraternity officials to the Council and in the presences of the senate officials give them

a severe reprimand for not giving the fraternity`s ornaments to serve in the cult and veneration of such an important mystery as the solemn procession which takes place every year, for which the secular jurisdiction contributes with everything necessary for the greater gift, given that the Ecclesiastic estate and even more so the fraternity created for the service of this Holy Sacrament had a particular and close obligation to do this; for which they were unworthy of serving in this Fraternity.26

The harsh words from Lisbon were also aimed at guaranteeing the holding of future festivities, with the ouvidor-geral being given responsibility of ensuring that the members of the brotherhood continued to contribute to the celebrate and the veneration of the ‘divine cult’:

[that the ouvidores] ensure that the procession in the future had greater solemnity, with the Fraternity contributing, not only with the richest ornaments it has, but with everything that is conducive to the celebration of the act; and the veneration of the divine cult; and records of everything are ordered to be kept in the Council’s records.27

The Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament’s demand to return to the past, seeking to maintain the old hierarchy in the Corpus Christi procession did not produce the expected effect. In this point the Municipal Council of Vila Boa was in perfect harmony with Lisbon: maintaining the preeminence of the brotherhood, allowing the provedor occupy a leading position, letting the procession continue in accordance with the traditional manner signified, above all, consenting to the continuity of a previous order which could, at the limit,

June 2012 75 Fernando Lobo Lemes contest the new order implanted by the Municipal Council. As Laurent Vidal stated, it was not just due to simple arrogance that Council officials wanted to put an end to this custom. Above all, because it constituted a habit which referred to the past, to a time that had to be forgotten and overcome. It involved the better manifestation of the arrival of a new time represented by Vila Boa (Vidal, 2007, p.589). As we have seen, although the ordered aspect of society in the scenario of the Corpus Christi procession imperiously had the Municipal Council as the head of the mystical body, representing the unity of the monarchy, the imposition of the power of the officials of Vila Boa Council over the sacred dominions of the mines of Goiás encountered much resistance. The affluence of a dual ordination, as we have stated, common during the processions, aggravated the disputes between representatives of the Church and the authorities linked to the Crown. Years later, in the occasion of the 1748 Corpus Christi procession, the Municipal Council, facing a new impasse “between the members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament and the Republicans,” solicited the king of Portugal to determine the order of places to be occupied by the brotherhoods. The discord which involved a dispute over who would occupy the place behind the pallium, once again ended with the arrest by the Municipal Council of some members of the brotherhood, “in punishment for their rebelliousness.” Moreover, the municipal officials guaranteed to the monarch that they only did not arrest the provedor of the brotherhood “as he was an ecclesiastic person.” This was the “Reverend Doctor, vicar of the Matriz Church, João Perestrello de Vasconcellos Espinolla”.28 In 1750 the officials of Vila Boa Council simply decided not to hold the Corpus Christi procession. They informed the monarch that the coadjutor of the Matriz Church demanded that a high mass with a sermon be said before the cortege, asking for ‘alms’ of 50,000 réis. Alleging that the mass ‘was not usual’ and that they did not have authorization from the crown for that expense the procession was suspended. The Municipal Council accused the coadjutor of having an unjust attitude, asserting that he would only subject himself to the warnings of his supervisions or the actual king of Portugal. In fact, they pointed to a dispute which involved, on the one hand, the representatives of the Church, and on the other the authority of the Crown. Furthermore, they made an accusation of ‘disobedience’ of ecclesiastics. According to the Council officials, this ‘scandalous procedure,’ which resulted in the suspension of the procession and which had as a cause the ‘alms of a mass,’ was associated with the fact that the ecclesiastics did not fulfill the roy-

76 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines al commands, but only followed the orders of their prelate. Above all, they stimulated the feeling that they were not “vassals of Your Majesty, for which reason they usually do not execute nor obey Royal Commands.”29 In the middle of conflicts over jurisdiction, the resistance to the position of Council officials indicates the limits of the latter’s power in the sphere of the sacred spaces of the mines. Despite being the head of the mystical body of the monarchy, they very often had to negotiate with the fraternities and the brotherhoods, holders of the divine ornaments and a far from vulgar power, in the religious activities which ordered the calendar of the city.

Conclusion

From the beginning it is in the interweaving of social bodies that we can identify the forms of resistance to the actions of the Municipal Council. Resistance which revealed the points of application, the mechanisms and the ordinary strategies in the struggles for preeminence in the political field of the mines. These struggles, it is worth noting, instead of compromising the unity of the monarchy, produced a type of ‘structuring connections,’ to use an expression from J. M. Imizcoz,30 which molds the general framework of the colonial project in Goiás, where the differences reflected in a hierarchy of powers were not translated into a separation or social distance, to the contrary, they reinforced and tightened ties of dependency and mutual collaboration. From there, as we have said, the city emerged as a space for the unfolding of the links and networks and power which sustained and legitimated the authority and capacity for action of the political elites in Goiás. In the critical moments of its constitution and legitimation, the conflicts and confrontations offer a privileged panorama to observe the interactions between politics and the city. In the city the political controlled the time, imposed its calendar and affirmed its power in the urban spaces it governed. Due to the political nature of their actions, the municipal officials penetrated the arena of the sacred and had access to the religious life of the inhabitants of the city: while the interventions of the King of Portugal contributed to the construction of a new parish church, the creation of the fraternity of Republicans deepened their influence in the spheres of the spiritual world. Through official festivities they negotiated with the religious brotherhoods and lay fraternities. Against the persistence of the old customs, it was necessary to demonstrate the arrival of the new time, of the capital city. In Vila Boa, the vertex of an extensive urban mining network, the Municipal Council submit-

June 2012 77 Fernando Lobo Lemes ted other elites, other social bodies, to its hegemonic position. Thus, it added to its agenda saturated with tensions and conflicts the articulation of a dense social network woven in the daily conflicts that have a place in the Goiás mines. As an inseparable instrument from the political project of the monarch, which ultimately gambled on harmonious coexistence between the colonial elites, the Municipal Council, with its distinctive signals, its visibility and its forms of hegemony, had the intention of constraining, integrating and submitting to its power the social bodies whose legitimacy was based on colonial ecclesiastic authority. In this multiple society par excellence it contributed to the building of the unity of the monarchy. In this aspect it is perhaps not exaggeration to describe the Municipal Council, as the historian Charles Ralph Boxer did, as one of the pillars which guaranteed the continuity – and why not the unity? – of Portuguese colonial society in overseas territories.31

NOTES

1 VIDAL, Laurent. Sous le masque du colonial – Naissances et ‘décadence’ d’une Vila dans le Brésil moderne: Vila Boa de Goiás au XVIIIe siècle. Annales HSS, n.3, 2007. p.584. 2 FOUCAULT, Michel. Deux essais sur le sujet et le pouvoir. In: DREYFUS, Hubert; RABINOW, Paul. Michel Foucault: un parcours philosophique. Paris: Gallimard, 1984. p.300. 3 Carta do intendente e provedor da Fazenda Real de Goiás, Sebastião Mendes de Carvalho, ao rei João V, sobre a carta da Câmara de Vila Boa (22 abr. 1744). Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, hereafter AHU, Administração Central, Conselho Ultramarino, série 008, Caixa 3, Documento 235. 4 Arquivo Frei Simão Dorvi, hereafter AFSD, Documentos avulsos: ata da Câmara de 22 de agosto de 1739, fl. 104 v. There were various motives which led to the holding of a procession in colonial society. See, for example, LEITE, Serafim. História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1950. v.3, Tomo III, p.299-342. As a religious practice and manifestation of baroque culture in colonial society and in Portuguese America, they were commonly held upon the construction of new churches. Cf. SANTOS, Beatriz Catão Cruz. O corpo de Deus na América: a festa de Corpus Christi nas cidades da América Portuguesa – século XVIII. São Paulo: Annablume, 2005. In this case, it is interesting to observe that the Municipal Council appeared as a starting point for the procession, as the institution which had the power to cause the march through the city, revealing the nascent legitimacy of the power of Council officials in Vila Boa, which had been created only a short time before, in July 1739. 5 Provisão do rei João V, ao intendente e provedor da Real Fazenda de Goiás, Sebastião

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Mendes de Carvalho, sobre carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa (2 abr. 1743). AHU_ ACL_CU_008, Cx. 3, D. 215. 6 Carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa ao rei João V, solicitando esmola para o término das obras da igreja matriz de Nossa Senhora Santa Ana de Vila Boa de Goiás (30 mar. 1746). AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 4, D. 301. 7 COELHO, Gustavo N. O espaço urbano em Vila Boa. Goiânia: PUC, 2001. p.213-214. 8 MORAES, Cristina de Cássia Pereira. Do corpo místico de Cristo: irmandades e confrarias na Capitania de Goiás (1736-1808). Doctoral Dissertation in History – Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Lisboa, 2005. p.169-171. 9 In Goiás there existed lay brotherhoods subject to the jurisdiction of the Crown and lay brotherhoods subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, founded and created with ecclesiastic approval after the creation of the Captaincy. The brotherhoods of devotion, to the contrary, preceded the administrative and ecclesiastic organization of the Captaincy. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, we can find associations called Brotherhoods because they possessed chapels of their own churches and others called fraternities (as is the case of the Republicans) who had side altars in certain churches, in honor of their holy protector. During the eighteenth century, when the prelacy of Goiás was created (1745) and shortly afterwards when the Captaincy was created (1749), there already existed the brotherhoods of São Miguel and Almas (1733), Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Pretos (1734), Santíssimo Sacramento (1742), Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte (1749), São José (1749), Santa Efigênia (prior to 1752) and Senhor dos Passos (before 1751). Also in Vila Boa there existed the fraternities of Santo Antônio and Republicanos. Cf. MORAES, 2005, p.147. 10 AFSD: Livro 192 nº 042, Atas da Câmara 1736-1762, 062v-063f. 11 Cruz Santos remembers the simultaneity of the feast of Corpus Christi with the birth of the colonial cities of Salvador, in 1549, Princesa, in Minas Gerais, and Recife, in 1710. Cf. SANTOS, 2005, p.73. In Goiás after the founding of Vila Boa, despite the creation of the Fraternity of Republicans, the procession of St. Sebastian was not immediately organized by councilors. According to Manuel Antunes da Fonseca, then ouvidor-geral das minas, (solicitor-general of mines), among the religious festivities expected for 1742, the Municipal Council only held that of Corpus Christi. For this reason they asked the king for the same privileges and gratuities as conferred on the Council of Vila Rica, as they had been “per- suaded to become the Capital of this comarca and Minas”, and they would thus be able to fulfill the entire calendar of religious festival under its responsibility. Cf. Carta do ouvidor- geral das Minas de Goiás, Manuel Antunes da Fonseca, ao rei João V, sobre a carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa solicitando propina igual a concedida à Câmara de Vila Rica para poderem realizar todas as festividades religiosas previstas. AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 160. 12 Instituto de Pesquisa e Estudos Históricos do Brasil Central, hereafter IPEHBC, Documentos Avulsos, Atas do Municipal Council de Vila Boa de Goiás, 2 jan. 1793, folha 82v e 113v.

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13 IPEHBC, Documentos Avulsos, Atas do Municipal Council de Vila Boa de Goiás, 12 jan. 1793, folha 84. 14 Description given in MORAES, 2005, p.431. Cf. Arquivo Frei Simão Dorvi, hereafter AFSD, Documentos avulsos: Atas da Câmara 1736-1762. Livro 192, nº 42, fls. 081v-082 e 082v. 15 BICALHO, Maria Fernanda Batista. A cidade e o Império: o Rio de Janeiro no século XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2003. p.231-255. 16 IPEHBC, Documentos Avulsos, Atas do Municipal Council de Vila Boa de Goiás, 1794, folha 113v. 17 Carta do ouvidor-geral das Minas de Goiás, Manuel Antunes da Fonseca, ao rei João V, sobre a carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa solicitando propina igual a concedida à Câmara de Vila Rica para poderem realizar todas as festividades religiosas previstas (15 mar. 1742). AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 160. 18 IPEHBC, Documentos Avulsos, Atas do Municipal Council de Vila Boa de Goiás, 1793, folhas 92v-96. 19 Cf. LEMPÉRIÈRE, Annick. El paradigma colonial en la historiografía latinoamericanista. Istor, México, ano V, n.19, 2004. p.121. 20 GRENIEYS, William. Nouveaux regards sur les élites du politique. Revue française de science politique, v.56, n.1, 2006. p.121. 21 The term strategic elites highlights the strategic role of certain elites with the ability to act even before the existence of a power controlled by other ‘elites in power,’ who acted more directly under the scope of political institutions. Cf. KELLER, Suzanne. Beyond the ruling class: strategic elites in modern society. New York: Random House, 1963. We believe that the use of this concept for the study of the relations established between the elites who composed the universe of the social bodies in the mines of Goiás. 22 HESPANHA, Antônio M. Governo, elites e competência social: sugestões para um enten- dimento renovado da história das elites. In: BICALHO, Maria Fernanda Batista; FERLINI, Vera Lúcia Amaral (Org.) Modos de governar: ideias e práticas políticas no império portu- guês – séculos XVI-XIX. São Paulo: Alameda, 2005. p.44. 23 Carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa, ao rei João V, sobre a ordem para a prisão de quatro oficiais da Irmandade do Santíssimo Sacramento de Vila Boa (26 maio 1742). AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 192. 24 AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 192. 25 Carta do escrivão da Câmara de Vila Boa, ao rei João V, sobre a Câmara pretender ex- cluir o provedor da Fazenda Real das Minas de Goiás, Sebastião Mendes de Carvalho, do seu lugar imediato atrás do pálio, nas procissões que nessa vila se fazem (8 jun. 1742). AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 195. 26 AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 195.

80 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 In the arena of the sacred: political power and religious life in the Goiás mines

27 AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 2, D. 195. 28 Carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa, ao rei João V, solicitando que se determine qual a ordem dos lugares a serem ocupados pelas Irmandades e dignitários nas procissões em Vila Boa (6 jul. 1748). AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 5, D. 370. The relationship with the vicar of the Matriz Church of Vila Boa, João Perestrello de Vasconcelos, was very problematic during the entire time he spent in the mines of Goiás. Accused by the Inquisition in Lisbon of sinning against chastity, Fr. João Perestrello obtained ‘justice and mercy’ from the Inquisition Court. At the decision of the Municipal Council and the ‘people’ of Vila Boa, he was declared demented, arrested and sent to Rio de Janeiro. Freed by sympathizers before even reaching Meia Ponte, he excommunicated the people involved, some of whom were arrested by the ecclesiastic court. In relation to the events involving Vicar João Perestrello, see MORAES, Cristina de Cássia Pereira. Deus e o Diabo no sertão dos Guayazes: abusos e desmandos do vigário da Vara de Vila Boa. Sociedade e Cultura, 2006, v.9, n.1, p.91-103. 29 Carta dos oficiais da Câmara de Vila Boa, ao rei João V, sobre não se ter realizado a procession de Corpus Christi em Vila Boa, devido o coadjutor da matriz da mesma vila alegar, contra o costume, a necessidade de uma esmola para se cantar uma missa, após a qual se poderia realizar a procession (30 maio 1750). AHU_ACL_CU_008, Cx. 6, D. 435 30 BEUNZA, José María Imizcoz. Comunidad, red social y élites. Un análisis de la verte- bración social en el Antiguo Régimen. In: BEUNZA, José María Imízcoz (Org.) Elites, poder y red social: las élites del País Vasco y Navarra en la Edad Moderna. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 1996. p.27. 31 BOXER, Charles Ralph. O império marítimo português – 1415-1825. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002. p.286.

Article received on 6 January 2012. Approved on 30 March 2012.

June 2012 81

“Your grace in our feelings”: devotion to the Virgin as a guarantee of salvation of the souls in an eighteenth century manual of devotion Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck * Mauro Dillmann **

Resumo Abstract Este artigo analisa o manual Mestre da This article analyses the manual Mestre Vida que ensina a viver e morrer santa- da Vida que ensina a viver e morrer san- mente, escrito por João de Castro e pu- tamente, written by João de Castro and blicado na Espanha, na primeira metade published in Spain in the first half of the do século XVIII. Sabe-se que a obra me- eighteenth century. It is known that the receu várias traduções e reedições ao work was translated and republished longo do século XIX, e que algumas de- many times during the nineteenth cen- las chegaram a circular no Brasil. Além tury, and that some of these copies circulated in Brazil. In addition to the da identificação e da análise das repre- identification and analysis of the repre- sentações da Virgem presentes na obra, sentations of the Virgin present in the nos detemos nas orientações que os fiéis work, we are concerned with the guid- deveriam seguir no culto e nas práticas ance that believers were supposed to devocionais a Maria, propondo uma follow in devotional practices to Mary, avaliação sobre sua aceitação e difusão suggesting an evaluation of the accep- no mundo luso-brasileiro. Tal análise tance and diffusion of these orientations insere-se nas recentes discussões histo- in the Luso-Brazilian world. This analy- riográficas acerca das práticas de leitura, sis takes into account recent discussions considerando as formas plurais de apro- regarding reading practices, including priação e de recepção de textos, inseri- the many forms of appropriation and das em seus contextos de produção e reception of texts, inserted in their con- circulação. texts of production and circulation. Palavras-chave: manual religioso; devo- Keywords: religious manual; devotion ção à Virgem; salvação das almas. to the Virgin; salvation of souls.

* Centro de Ciências Humanas – História, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos). Av. Unisinos, 950, Cristo Rei. 93022-000 São Leopoldo – RS – Brasil. [email protected] ** Doutorando em História. Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos). maurodillmann@ hotmail.com

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 83-118 - 2012 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann

This article presents the analysis of a Catholic manual of devotion from the eighteenth century which provided its readers with guidance on how to guarantee the salvation of their souls through devotion and faith in the intercessory power of the Virgin Mary. Published in Spain1 in the eighteenth century, the manual Mestre da vida que ensina a viver e morrer santamente (Master of life who teaches how to live and die in a saintly manner) was written by the Dominican friar João de Castro with the aim of instructing readers2 in the “mysteries of the Catholic religion” extracting “truths which... instruct and... lead to virtue and perfection,” to a “holy life and death” and to a “happy and glorious eternity” (Castro, 1882, p.v, vi, vii). In addition to prayers for different purposes, the manual includes papal bulls and encyclicals from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which are in harmony with Counter-Reformation thought. Various editions3 and translations4 were published in Europe, while it also circulated in the American colonial empires until the nineteenth century,5 which favored the diffusion of its guidance among Catholics. It is worth remembering that during the colonial period the entry of religious books and manuals to the Americas took place through the acquisitions of manuscripts and printed material by the secular clergy and religious orders, who kept these works in their libraries.6 Catholic brotherhoods also had religious pamphlets and manuals in their collections, favoring the spreading of Catholic advice about how to live and die in a saintly manner among their members. In the nineteenth century, the coming of the Court and the establishment of the Royal Press also favored the circulation of books in Portuguese America, especially those which spread content favorable to religion, government and good customs.7 The manual ‘which teaches how to live and die in a saintly manner’ was published in the form of a pamphlet – despite having more than four hundred pages –, the proper format for individual reading8 – thereby facilitating handling and transport by the devout who followed the guidance it contained. Undoubtedly these characteristics must have contributed to ensuring that the content of the work was not restricted to the individual who read it, favoring collective readings, in small groups or families, in private houses, churches or religious events. These occasions not only permitted readers to share what they read, but also facilitated the circulation and appropriation – by listeners – of the guidance contained in the manual (Gilmont, 1999, p.61). It is plausible to also suppose that the small format of the book implied a lower price, favoring its acquisition and consequently its reading by faithful Catholics. In the Prologue, João de Castro highlights other reasons for reprinting the manual:

84 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings”

“Your grace in our feelings”

The general acceptance which the book entitled Mestre da Vida deserves; the utility of this Compendium of devotions, spread through various volumes, for Catholics; and the blessings, which God gives to anyone who undertakes to teach the Faithful to live and die in a saintly manner, are the strongest stimuli to undertake the reprinting of the book in question. (Castro, 1882, p.v, emphasis added)

Figure 1 – Mestre da Vida que ensina a viver e morrer santamente

The various reprints appear to be indicative of the acceptance that the publication enjoyed, not only among lay Catholics,9 but also among the popes and ecclesiastical hierarchy, who authorized its distribution and encouraged its reading. It is worth noting that from the seventeenth century onwards the Catholic Church, through a ‘pedagogical effort’ increased the ‘book baggage’ of parish priests, recommending the reading of books of moral theology, with the objective of transforming them into “men of study and books” (Julia, 1999, p.92). Despite its circulation at different moments and in different spaces, in which the model behavior, attitudes and values were transformed, the manual appears to have been kept as a devotional guide, promoting the effective interiorization of the norms of conduct and the religious sensibilities valorized by the Catholic Church over the centuries.10 However, it has to be taken into account that, although the manual – due to its devotional nature – was concerned with the adoption of determined practices and behavior reiterated by the Church, it also allows different appropriations by the reader,11 to the extent that throughout the text ‘it articulates, permits communication and transmits representations,’ performing the function of intermediation between production and reception.12

June 2012 85 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann

Since it is a guidance manual for Catholics about the religious behavior to be adopted during life and in the moments preceding death – in order to guarantee salvation –, its analysis not only permits the identification of forms of devotion and intercession for the saving of souls, but also the different representations that the Virgin received and assumed. Although it was not a work that was especially orientated to Marian devotion, the publication seems to have been very efficient in disseminating the representation of Mary as a model of sanctity to be followed by believers to obtain salvation at the moment of death. In the Western Christian religious mentality, the purity attributed to Mary and her maternal nature were fundamental in the definition of her functions of intercessor, mediator, and aide that she would assume in the economy of salvation.13

About the origins of devotion to Mary

The Catholic Church constructed its religious universe linking the spiritual to the terrestrial, and the sacred to daily life, with the religious experiences propelled by feverous devotions to Christ and Mary,14 responsible to a great extent for the salvation of the souls of sinners. Faced with death, in medieval religious thought expressions of lamentation were common for the end of power, honor and pleasure, but also of jubilation for the saved soul (Huizinga, 2010, p.243). As can be perceived in the introductory passage of the eighteenth century religious manual, leading a life based on the sanctity of religious mysteries and inculcating in believers the need for worship and adoration were objectives shown to be fundamental in obtaining salvation:

Herein is what we have to put all our efforts and care into; however, for these to be effective and to triumph at the hour of death the terrible combat of the universal enemy, it is necessary to pray to God, to turn to Holy Mary and the Saints of our particular devotion, ask them to be our protectors, that they help us, and intercede for us. (Castro, 1882, p.v, vi, emphasis added)

This extract from the manual reinforces the need for believers to ‘turn to Mary` to obtain the path to salvation, an instruction which in general began to spread in the sixteenth century, due to the Counter-Reformation the mother of Christ became the favorite saint of the ecclesiastic hierarchy.15 However, her adoration had been important since the twelfth century when the infancy of Christ gained emphasis and the life of Mary soon came to be a theme devel-

86 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings” oped by the Church and later spread throughout Europe and America (Souza, 2002, p.233), including the Hispanic dominions.16 This increase in the veneration of the Virgin Mary during the Middle Ages, especially from the twelfth century onwards, has been highlighted by Juliana de Souza and Ronaldo Vainfas (1999) as being associated with the values of virginity and maternity.17 In this period Mary was taken to be the central personality in the religious universe, which can be observed in the iconography, in the architecture and in the literature.18 The relation between the Virgin and salvation had already been consolidated in the medieval period, since “in the narratives produced in the Abby of Cluny, there was presented the need for alms and the celebration of the souls of the dead, as well as presenting the Virgin Mary as the principal help for souls regarding salvation.”19 Among the indications of the practice of the Marian Cult in the Catholic kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula during the medieval period, the most important are the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a set of musical poems from the thirteenth century, seen as the “greatest medieval compilation in praise of the Virgin.”20 These poems “narrate many miracles of the Virgin conceded in Marian sanctuaries in Europe.” With the cantigas, “Afonso X sought ... to spread devotion to and praise of Our Lady,” some of which “referred to pil- grims and miracles that occurred in Portuguese lands” (Pereira, 2009, p.2), which, possibly, favored the addition of devotion to Mary to the knightly ideal of the medieval period, which defined the Virgin as the preferred prototype of woman. During the age of discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, invocations to the Virgin were used to name vessels, such as Columbus’ Sancta Maria, and to baptize islands, such as Santa Maria da Conceição. Furthermore the explorers carried with them images of the Virgin Our Lady of Hope, brought by Cabral on his expedition (Souza, 2001a, p.78). In the sixteenth century, the cult of Mary, in addition to being intensified, came to play a new role, by being used as a weapon against the Lutheran Reformation, being thus transformed into a symbol of religious identity and fidelity to the Catholic Church21 (Souza; Vainfas, 1999, p.203). This mobilization of Church around the cult of the Virgin appears to have been successful, since according to Michel Vovelle, between the sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth, the Virgin was practically omnipresent in Provençal paintings, maintaining her condition as the ‘queen do purgatory’ and ‘our defender.’22 Also dedicated to the Virgin were works of moral theology and even treatises of surgery and medicine in the eighteenth century – with

June 2012 87 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann the names of Maria Santissima de los Llanos, Prodigiosa Imagen de Guadalupe, Maria Santissima del Rosario and Virgen de los Dolores –, as we have found in a recently concluded investigation.23 In our analysis of some of these eighteenth century treatises, we found that most often their authors, in addition to the functions linked to the arts of healing, had close ties with the Church, being members of religious orders or ecclesiastics. Dedications to the Virgin in this genre of publication were actually constituted in reverence to the ‘great artifi- cer of healing’ – God – and in a strategy which legitimated the knowledge di- vulged through compliance with the norms of approval and circulation then in force.24 The author of the manual Mestre da Vida – the Dominican Friar João de Castro – confirmed the use of this usual practice in the period, by dedicating it to the “Holy Virgin of the Rosary through the hands of her pro- digious image which is venerated in Vila do Barreiro” (Figure 2).

Figure 2 – Frontispiece of Mestre da Vida que ensina a viver e morrer santamente

In Portuguese America the Marian cult spread through the arrival of colo- nists who were devotees of the Virgin, though it underwent some adaptations,

88 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings” especially in the seventeenth century and eighteenth centuries. In 1764 when the Englishwoman Jemima Kindersley (1741-1809) – the first woman to register her impressions of Brazil25– recorded daily life in Salvador in the letters she wrote, she highlighted that in the houses of people ‘of some distinction,’ the room had white walls decorated with paintings of the Virgin. In the city’s Churches Kindersley found “richly dressed” statues of the Virgin, under the care of priests who kept in drawers “richly embroidered clothes” and “beautiful jewels, with which the images are adorned on solemn occasions” (França, 2008, p.43-44). Devotion to Mary in Portuguese America was almost an extension of medieval Mariology, since “Mary is presented as the Mother of Jesus in almost all her expressions: joy, sorrow, loneliness, glory and triumph. The Mary who had power to grant victory in difficult battles, such as Aljubarrota; the Mary who freed souls from purgatory; the Mary who protected her devotees from the dangers of plagues, sicknesses...”.26 This positive representation of Mary was constructed under the argument that her maternity was a response to the appeal to God for the conception of Jesus. The French theologian Bernard Sesboüé highlighted that Mary’s virginal maternity was used by the Church to establish the relationship between purity and salvation in the souls of sinners. As the mother of the Savior, the Virgin also played for the Church a salvationist role.27 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Marian devotions multiplied and the specialized literature about the Virgin became part of the history of salvation. According to Richard Nebel, from the seventeenth century onwards the Iberian Peninsula witnessed many personifications and representations of the Mother of God, placing Marian veneration at the center of the Christian faith.28 In relation to this, the Counter-Reformation actions of the Catholic Church were efficient in spreading the Marian cult, especially if we consider that publications such as the Mestre da Vida manual were successful, accepted by the public and widely distributed until the nineteenth century. In that century the devotional fervor grew to such an extent that in “1842, Luís Maria Gringnion de Monfort’s Tratado da verdadeira devoção à Santa Virgem was rediscovered. This dated from the seventeenth century and exercised a great influence” in Marian devotion (Sesboüé, 2005, p.468). The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary – as a result of her divine maternity– was only officially established in the nineteenth century. However, the debate had been present in the Church since the medieval period, since the ‘Greek festival of the Conception of Mary’ spread throughout Europe in the twelfth century and the Council of Basil in 1439 also established it, even with “the feast day of 8 December for all the Church” (Sesboüé, 2005,

June 2012 89 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann p.495). However, the dogma was only officially established on 8 December 1854 by Pope Pius IX, who solemnly defined the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, who was thus “exempt from sin from the first moment of her existence” (Sesboüé, 2005, p.497). As can be seen, the devotion to Mary, as had been structured since the medieval period, came to be even more widespread between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, both by clergy and by the Church – through preaching and Councils – and through books of Christian morality and devotional manuals – such as Mestre da Vida – which were read by Catholics. Next we will analyze in more detail the representations of the Virgin and the forms of devotion to her we identified in João de Castro’s work.

About the representations of the Virgin Mary

The representations of the Virgin present in the manual Mestre da Vida emphasize her chastity, purity and virginity, presenting her as a model of abnegation and of the faith proposed by Catholic doctrine. Her ‘life’ is presented as a kind of archetype of the perfect Christian life. ‘Mary the always virgin’ – or ‘Queen of virgins’ – remained ‘the sovereign lady’ by being conceived as the ‘Holy Mother of God,’ achieving as a result of this the titles of ‘glory of Jerusalem’ or ‘Glorious star’, serving as a ‘very clear mirror of humility’ and example for all sinners (Castro, 1882, p.120-250). For the guarantee of the perfect health of the body and spirit, Mary was considered the ‘health for the ill’ and the ‘help of Christians,’ to whom they should resort in times of ailments, pains and sufferings, since she was capable of remedying ‘not only the illnesses of the body, but also those of the soul.’ The Virgin Mary was also represented as the ‘refuge of sinners,’ the ‘consoler of the afflicted,’ the ‘gate to heaven’ and the ‘star of heaven,’ for those tormented by the sins of pride and selfishness, which prevented their souls from going to eternal salvation after death (Castro, 1882, p.184-254). These representations of the Virgin are constantly shown throughout the manual, reinforcing for the reader – or listener – her importance in the life of Christians, or those considered perfect Christians. To the reader of the man- ual29 they had to demonstrate their devotion to the Virgin, their condition as the model of humility, to guarantee a healthy life and salvation at the hour of death. The manual presented, for this reason, not only a large number of prayers to her, but also the recommendation that the faithful deliver their souls to the Most Holy, the “Queen of heaven and earth.” For the Marian cult, the

90 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings” saying applied that the law of prayer is the law of faith – Lex orandi, Lex cre- dendi – (Sesboüé, 2005, p.467). The numerous adjectives used to describe the Virgin Mary in the manual were constructed in accordance with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and were not just historically imposed, but also favored the expansion and spread of devotion to the cult of the saint. If priests, in the exercise of their office, used the manual to guide the faithful, it is possible to suppose that the qualifications and functions attributed to Mary operated as efficient means of conversion, since the Virgin was presented as the help and cure for various evils, especially for sinners, those suffering, the ill and the afflicted. At the beginning of the manual we can find the following guidance: “As soon as the Christian wakes, at the right time to get out of bed, he should send his thoughts to God, bless himself and say the Hail Mary three times” (Castro, 1882, p.1). Devotion to the Virgin, as we can see in the manual, stipulated many prayers and the saying of the Rosary.30 It is that worth noting that devotion to the Rosary grew at a moment when, according to the historian Juliana de Souza, “the Church felt weak and used it as a combative mechanism. The method of praying proposed by the rosary valorized, alongside the repetition of the Hail Marys, meditation, re-establishing interior contemplation” (Souza, 2001b). Devotion to the Virgin and the rosary were thus “weapons at a time when Catholics increasingly believed in the exteriority of the faith and in the buying of indulgences to achieve salvation” (Souza, 2001b). Devotion to Mary was affirmed by prayers which the devout dedicated to her to purify their souls and consequently achieve the ‘worthy living place,’ as can be seen in this ‘devout anthem, in submission to the Immaculate Conception Mother of God’:

You are all beautiful, oh Mary, And there was no stain in You: You are the Glory of Jerusalem, You are the happiness of Israel, You are the honor of our people, Oh Mary, oh Mary, Merciful Virgin, Pray for us, Intercede for us with Our Lord Jesus Christ. Immaculate you are, Virgin, in your Conception. Pray for us to the Father, whose son you bore. (Castro, 1882, p.182-183)

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The beautiful and purified Mary, as the prayer transcribed here highlights, also assisted in leading of a saintly life, especially for women.31 By communicat- ing with the Virgin through prayer, through the practice of spiritual exercises, believers policed their attitudes with an intimate reflection, which favored the mystic connection with the transcendental.32 Another prayer to the Virgin recommended that over the breast on top of the heart three crosses be placed during morning and night prayers, in order to achieve chastity. Only the “Pure Virgin,” who kept her “holy virginity before birth, in birth and after birth” can eliminate the “sensual appetite” (Castro, 1882, p.183-184) and the stains of impurity. A concern can be noted here with emphasizing faith in Mary as a means of eliminating the ‘sensual appetite’ – or, why not, sexual – and to maintain sanctified conduct based on the example of purity and the maintenance of virginity of the mother of Jesus. The prayers to the Virgin, the ‘Star of Heaven,’ helped in the fight against the ‘influx of stars, which in their malign dispositions hurt people with mortal wounds.’ Dying as a result of a plague meant the possibility of dying suddenly, without the administration of sacraments, and leaving one´s soul in eternal condemnation. The prayers effectively pointed to the awareness of the dangers which plagues represented to the devout, who, in addition to asking ‘free us from the plague’ (Castro, 1882, p.184), invoked the Mother, whose ‘sacred breast’ offered ‘sweetly the counter-venom’ to the condemnation of the soul. Finally, the prayer Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) appears to have been full of significance:

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and or hope. To thee do we dry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn them, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us. And after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, o loving, o sweet virgin Mary. Pray for us, o Holy Mother of God. Santa Madre de Deus, that we be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen Jesus. (Castro, 1882, p.277)

It can be perceived that Mary is not the savior, but only the intermediary, the intercessor, the reconciler between the repenting sinner and the savior. She always appears connected to Jesus and the project of salvation, to whom is prayed – as in this prayer – that ‘after this our exile, show us Jesus.’ The ‘Holy Mother’ appears not as the mother of God, but as the mother of men, and is prototype of the ideal mother and the protector, ‘pious’ and ‘sweet.’ This prayer

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– as well as others dedicated to the Virgin – reinforces the ‘hope’ of/in salvation, to the extent that Mary advocates and prays ‘for us.’ The Mestre da Vida also guides the devout to ‘meditate the rosary’ based on their ‘mysteries:’ the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries and the glorious mysteries.33 We will focus here on the joyful mysteries, since they refer to how certain parts of the life of the Virgin Mary should be meditated by believers. There are five joyful mysteries and they are related to the attributions of the Virgin, seen as models for the Christian life. The first mystery is that Our Lady ‘was greeted by the Angel Gabriel and she was told she had conceived Jesus Christ.’ In the discourse of meditation presented, João de Castro proposed to make believers aware of the importance of humility and love demonstrated by Mary, counterpoising them to the pride and ingratitude of humans, by stating: “Be horrified, Catholic, take care in joining with the God who calls you” (Castro, 1882, p.120). The second mystery is related to the visit Mary made to her cousin, St. Isabel, who was pregnant. In the meditation, the objective is to demonstrate that Mary spared no efforts to help them in an “act of charity,” leading believers to reflect on “culpable indifference in other needs” and about the importance of prayer for cleansing the heart “of all sin” (Castro, 1882, p.121-122). The third mystery refers to the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. With the intention of stressing that Jesus was born in poverty, this mystery is intended to teach the poor to accept being poor and the ‘rich’ the proper use of the goods they possess, through the following recommendation: “Be joyful, since the poor has his luck; the rich love poverty making good use of the goods they possess and living comfortably in accordance with the laws of temperance, justice and equity... we who live so pure and holily will obtain this” (Castro, 1882, p.123). The fourth mystery is related to the ‘purification’ of Mary in the Temple and the ‘offering of the child Jesus.’ The aim of this mystery was to demonstrate that despite the ‘divine maternity’ and her ‘inviolable virginity,’ Mary ‘did not take advantage of her privilege,’ but rather ‘subjected herself to it to build more and not to scandalize simple people who ignored the motives of her exemption.’ There were thus many reasons, faced with so much love and humility, for “us to praise her day and night.” (Castro, 1882, p.123-125). The fifth mystery deals with Mary’s search for his son for three days. The mystery seeks to teach Christians that, in the same way that Mary inconsolably searched for the child Jesus, before finding him in a temple in Jerusalem, it was necessary to search and find God in a religious temple, the ‘most appropriate

June 2012 93 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann place for his dwelling.’ The prayer to the Virgin included the request: “grant that we know how to search and that we deserve to find the Lord in the Catholic Church and not to let our sins ever drive us away from him” (Castro, 1882, p.126-127). Another mode of devotion to the Virgin Mary, in accordance with João de Castro’s manual, could be found in the correct way of holding novenas during the festivities for Our Lady. For each day of the novena – nine days of prayers and venerations – the manual had instructions for how believers should express their religiosity and adoration of Mary. While in the Christian faith the Most Holy Mary, ‘since she enjoyed the highest dignity and excellence,’ received this title with ‘all worth,’ it had to be asked: ‘With what effort and with what craving should we not seek to have on our part a similar protector?’ In light of this, care and zeal in fulfilling religious obligations, and the devotion to and veneration of her son, Jesus, was one of the manners of not only conquering her shelter and protection, but also of commemorating her. Commemorations were also to be seen as a form of ven- erating Jesus, since “it would be madness for us and injurious to the same Lady to take advantage of her maternity regarding us, like a strong wall, for in doing this we can offend more securely Jesus Christ,” since “first, she was mother of the Lord; love him a lot; be zealous of his honor; and strongly dislike that which offends him. We should avoid causing him this dissatisfaction, for her to help us and get for us celestial happiness” (Castro, 1882, p.249-251). Among the recommendations for the third day of the novena is to revere the Virgin with devotion, an attitude which will guarantee that the devout will be removed from all dangers, anguish and temptations, which may come to compromise the salvation of their soul in the Final Judgment, as we can perceive in this transcription:

Consider that the Most Holy Virgin is the cause of our joy; since freeing her devotees from the greatest tribulations, works, dangers, and temptations, filling them with a special pleasure and consolation. We make efforts to venerate this Sovereign Lady and to always resort to her with devotion. However, neither can this one be true, nor can Mary be satisfied in freeing for us similar benefits and make us joyful if our live is sinful and dissolute and our actions do not fit with hers. We can thus invoke without ceasing the Most Holy Virgin and we do this as our part, so she will influence feelings of virtue and sanctity; as we as her true devotees, will live in this world happy in the Lord and happy we will pass into the celestial likes. (Castro, 1882, p.250-251, emphasis added)

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This extract presents the Virgin as the one who, in addition, to promoting joy and good feelings, has virtues which should be imitated by the faithful, for atonement and the tranquilization of consciences, especially those of sinners. It should be considered that belief in the Final Judgment not only determines the concerns of the faithful about the destination of their souls, but revives personal culpability,34 for which reason the invocation and devotion to Mary was imposed. On the fourth day of the novena, the prayers invoked the Virgin as a guarantee of protection against the dangers of the world, encouraging the faithful to repent:

we should go to her to find asylum and protection that can serve as a shield against the arrows of Divine anger and our enemies; however, this does not give us security to continue our disorders. If by chance though human fragility and corrupt nature, in which to our regret we are participants, we fall into guilt, we repent and soon after we are reconciled with God through the sacrament of Penance. And to avoid the traps and pitfalls which the Devil leaves for us and the punishments which for our sins we deserve: we turn with true devotion to Mary. We support ourselves on this secure and strongly fortified Tower to defend ourselves from all dangers and so that in the shelter of her we can trium- phantly enter into the Holy City of Sion. (Castro, 1882, p.252-253)

As can been seen the manual presents Mary as ‘an asylum and protection’ against ‘divine anger’ and against the ‘pitfalls which the demon leaves for us,’ protection which implies repentance and reconciliation with God ‘for the Sacrament of Penance.’ On the fifth day of the novena, the prayers said to the Virgin are about Christian obligations, such as charity, virtuous behavior which facilitated the opening of the ‘celestial door’ to the devout:

Consider that the Most Holy Mary is the Gate of Heaven from where redemption comes to us and from where God is continually spreading over us so much help and so many favors. To what point of unhappiness would we be reduced if this Celestial Gate were closed to us? So that there will not happen to us what happened to those crazy virgins, who were not admitted to the nuptial and upon whom the door was closed, we will always be vigilant over our obligations; because we do not know the day not the time when we will be called; and we have much care in not extinguishing in us the oil of charity. For this we always invoke

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and resort to Mary, who will be the Gate of Heaven for us to receive the grace of the Lord and to enter into the festivities celestial and eternal vows. (Castro, 1882, p.253)

The excerpt we highlighted reveals that access to access to ‘celestial and eternal vows’– the ultimate purpose of all moral improvements35 –, was subject to the evaluation of Mary – ‘the Gate to Heaven’ –, attentive to invocations and to the behavior of man. For the sixth day of the novena, the manual highlighted the need to rid oneself of all the ills of the souls the most effective remedy for which was the protection of the Virgin:

Consider that the Most Holy Mary is the Health of the sick and the cure not just for the ailments of the body, but also of the soul. These are what we should take greatest care with and to be thrown out of us with the greatest diligence. For this reason we continually invoke Mary; however, at the same time, we cannot place obstacles to our cure. When we seriously want to heal ourselves from the ailments of the body we use the medicines we judge the most effective and we flee from all that is noxious to our health. And why do we not practice the same for the infirmities of the soul which along are fearful and dangerous? We thus run from vices, though they increase and we resort to an very effective remedy, which is the protection of the Most Holy Virgin and we can achieve that corpo- ral health which is most convenient for the spiritual and which will be followed by the happy eternal rest. (Castro, 1882, p.253-254)

Devotion to Mary appears as an ideal model to guarantee physical and spiritual health, since it is represented as a ‘medicine’ for the ‘infirmities of the soul,’ whose effectiveness lay in driving away vices. The reference to physical health is certainly associated with the fear provoked by the constant plagues which ravaged Europe in the eighteenth century (Delumeau, 2009, p.182), favoring an increase in devotion to the Virgin. For the seventh day of the novena the prayers represent the Virgin as a refuge against the ‘dangers of life and death,’ which leads believers to bliss:

Consider that Most Holy Mary is the refuge of sinners and that if she did not take so much pity on our miseries what would become of us! Since her compassion has been so great we abuse it, placing the blame on others, remaining with the same habits and always desiring to commit new offenses? And can we persuade ourselves that for sinners there is refuge in the Virgin, who is proposed to

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us through her virtues as a perfect model and whose sanctity hates sin? This is to defame her, making he a accomplice in our crimes. We take care to follow her example where possible: and repenting from have offended God we avoid falling into sin again. We pray with fervor and we turn with trust to Mary and we discover that she is our refuge who frees us from the dangers of life and of death to lead us to bliss. (Castro, 1882, p.254-255)

In this, and in all the other days of the novena, Mary assumed the function of a mediator for salvation, being presented as the ‘perfect model’ of sanctity, which should be followed by Catholics. In the Catholic imagination, the Virgin has a universal character (being the mother of Jesus) and a private character (she possesses different invocations), with “her capacity to be one and at the same time multiple” (Reesink, 2003, p.134). In addition to defining what should be the behavior of the devout during the days of the novena, João de Castro highlights the peculiarities and particularities of the sanctity of the Virgin – independent of her invocation –, reinforcing the universal discourse of the salvation of the Catholic Church. Consolation at the time of death is the theme of reflection proposed for the eight day of the novena, since Mary is also seen as the consoler of the afflicted. The instructions state that the believers should avoid the exaggerations of mundane pleasures:

Consider that the Most Holy Mary is the Consoler of the afflicted, we have the strongest motives for wait for her to console us at the hour of death; the time of greatest affliction. However, in order for this hope to be well founded we should not gorge ourselves on mundane pleasures and luxuries. The Virgin Sovereign takes pleasure in such sweetness and glory, first, on Earth she suffered on Earth many bitter tasks always resigned to her God. She invites us to follow her luck and to suffer with resignation in this world the transitory mortifica- tions and punishments so that we can go with her to the celestial and eternal pleasures. (Castro, 1882, p.255)

‘Suffer with resignation’ was the recommendation for those who desired ‘consolation at the hour of death’ – ‘time of our greatest affliction’ –, which was to be obtained through the repulse of ‘mundane pleasures,’ considered pernicious by those who desired to enjoy the ‘celestial and eternal pleasures,’ in other words, salvation. Mary not only helped and comforted the soul of the devout at the time of death, through her power and tenderness, but contributed to a tranquil passage without pain. Furthermore, she was also responsible,

June 2012 97 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann with her example of resignation and trust in the promise of eternity, for reducing believers’ fear of death. Finally, for the last day of the novena, and following the directions to keep away from carnal and mundane pleasures, Catholics are told to witness and to persevere in maintaining a life free from scandals:

Consider that the Most Holy Mary is the Help of Christians; and enjoying this nature we have in the same Lady someone who effectively helps and supports us. How can we be certain of this benefit if as Catholics we only preserve the name? If our deeds do not give testimony that we actually are Christians, it matters little if we call ourselves that. It is not enough that these feelings are so prejudicial to truth and to Religion, feelings that the spirit of novelty and the whims of good taste invented at every step; it is necessary that we flee from a free, blameworthy and scandalous life. We pray devotedly and fervently to the Most Holy Virgin and she will be our Assistance so that we can be free of so many evils and all the dangers to achieve eternal happiness. (Castro, 1882, p.256)

In this extract the author of the manual seems to show his opposition to the distortion of the practice of good ‘works’ by Catholics, revealing his perception of some behavior in eighteenth century European society. It has to be considered that Castro was writing the manual at a time when the Iberian elites – nobles and bourgeois – still enjoyed the riches coming from the Colonial American Empire, which perhaps led Castro to criticize the ‘the spirit of novelty and the whims of good taste invented at every step,’ believing in the need to remain distant from a ‘free, blameworthy and scandalous life.’ This novena for the feast of Our Lady evidently had the intention of preparing and guiding believers in devotion to the Virgin, being characterized by recommendations which assumed an interiorized devotional experience, from which would result the behavior expected from a devotee of the Virgin.

About the Virgin and intercession for the salvation of souls

In Catholic doctrine, Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, was always associated with the salvation of souls, as can be seen in the traditional prayer reproduced in the manual Mestre da Vida: “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

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Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen, Jesus” (Castro, 1882, p.276). For eighteenth century man, “dying a sinner meant going to Hell, where the soul would suffer eternal torture,”36 a perception that was present in the manual written by João de Castro and which give importance to the intercession of Mary. This mediation is evidenced in the use of the verb rogai (pray), invoked principally ‘at the hour of our death,’ indicating that the request is not made in the imminence of ‘my’ death, but ‘our’ death.37 In Colonial America, missionaries were instructed to trust in the ‘intercession of the Virgin Sovereign,’ who helped deliver salvation, with the administration of the necessary sacraments. Devotion to the Virgin, seen as a guarantee of salvation, was highlighted by Zulmira Santos in her study of the actions of the Company of Jesus between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth (Santos, 2004, p.582). According to the author, the doctrinaire program of the Company, amongst other things, considered “the importance of and need for frequent confession and communion, mental prayer [and] the practice of spiritual exercises.”38 The Jesuit José de Anchieta even stated that “God had conferred on the Virgin Mary the mission of multiplying her sons, extending to her a fourth part of the world to share her grace there.” Mary, due to her closeness to God and man, represented the link “between Heaven and Earth” (Souza; Vainfas, 1999, p.205). While Christians were supposed to think daily about the salvation of their soul, it was in the imminence of death that the search for protection and eternal ‘glory’ became more present, as can be seen in this prayer to the Most Holy Mary given in the manual:

O most pious Virgin, and most loveable Lady, it has never been heard that You forsook anyone who has supplicated your help and aid. You, like the most tender mother, are sensitive to our prayers and to our miseries. With trust I then turn to You to help me in the hour of my death! Commit yourself o most clement and powerful mother, commit yourself in favor of me and protect me in this dangerous moment in which I most need your effective protect. Make me a participant in your glory for all the centuries. (Castro, 1882, p.11-12)

A prayer said to the Virgin ‘with fervor’ led Christians to refuge and to protection from the ‘dangers’ of death, as can be understood in the following recommendations found in the manual: ‘we turn with trust to Mary and we

June 2012 99 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann discover that she is our refuge who frees us from the dangers of life and of death to lead us to bliss’. Similarly, the manual constantly reinforces the need for efforts to ‘always turn to her with devotion’ and to accompany her ‘in the same feelings,’ in such a way to be able to participate in the ‘fidelity’ and the ‘constancy’ attributed to her (Castro, 1882, p.204-255). To the Virgin went the requests in the final moments of life, when the moribund in prayer, turning to her, sought help and protection, in search of the ‘final grace,’ the ‘crown of all,’ in other words a ‘holy death.’ Concern with the salvation of the soul dominated prayers to the Virgin and is repeatedly present in the manual we analyze:

My soul, Virgin Mary, will reach eternal life through your merits and your intercessions ... Intercede for me with the King of Glory, Sovereign Lady ... save the soul of this sinner who has the honor of being your son ... O Queen and Lady of all the universe, stairway to heaven, throne of God, gate of Paradise, listen to the prayers of this poor soul, do not despise the moans of this miserable being ... help this sinner in his last fight ... deign to free the soul of your servant from the eternal punishments and let him enjoy the celestial goods. (Castro, 1882, p.329-350)

Mary was the one who could free Christians from condemnation, punishments and hell, as well as from the traps of the devil. While, as we can seen in the prayers analyzed here, in relation to the first dangers, ‘we have the strongest reasons to hope that she will console us at the time of our death,’ since she was the ‘consoler of the afflicted’ and the ‘greatest advocate to free us from the eternal damnation we deserve for our guilt,’ in relation to other threats Mary was perceived as an antidote “to avoid the traps and pitfalls which the demons leave for us and the punishments which for our sins we have deserved” (Castro, 1882, p.251-256). Sick people on the edge of death were recommended to ask: “Most Holy Virgin Mother of God and advocate of sinners, help this one in his last fight. Do not leave me alone at this time of my greatest need. It is now that I most need your maternal charity and all the credit you have with your son.” In another part of the manual, we can find the following invocations: “Most Holy Virgin, refuge of sinners and consoler of the afflicted ... we ask you to watch over and defend this your servant in the hour of his death” (Castro, 1882, p.342-352), and this asking for the salvation of the soul:

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The Most Holy Mary, Mother of God, Lady, it is now time to show you are my loving Mother: take me from this conflict: from the pain, sighs and agonies you had at the foot of the cross, turn your eyes to my soul so besieged by afflictions. Guide it to the presence of your and my beloved Jesus; present to him your services and ask him in reward for this to put my soul in the possession of eternal felicity. (Castro, 1882, p.353-354)

Castro’s manual dedicates various pages to guide devotees of the Most Holy Virgin on how to pray for her intercession ‘at the hour of death to be free of the illusions and temptations of the devil,’ in order to merit the ‘Sacred Death.’ In one of these the devout should say: “into your hands I deliver my soul: into your care I deliver the matter of my salvation...”, while in another, the ties between the Virgin and the devout should be reinforced: “a thirst served to reach us in our salvation with your effective intercession” (Castro, 1882, p.5-145). In Portuguese America,39 the Most Holy Mary, “mother of sinners and most tender and compassionate mother... sensitive to our supplications and miseries,” assumed the important function of bringing hope to her believers who, through penance, novenas and processions, sought to free themselves of their weaknesses to deserve salvation (Buarque, 2007, p.5), an aspect which is very evident in the manual which teaches the following prayer: “grant us that like the memory of this Sovereign Lady pleases us, your pious intercession favors us, freeing us of the evils of this life and much more from eternal death” (Castro, 1882, p.250). Chapter V of Mestre da Vida is concerned with guiding believers in devotion to the Rosary,40 as well as highlighting the spiritual benefits which resulted from this. To this was added the “Summary of the Graces and Indulgences granted by many Pontiffs to the Brethren and Devotes of the SS. Rosary, declared in the Bull of Innocence XI,” dated 31 July 1679,41 and in other bulls (Castro, 1882, p.108). It is interesting to note that the praying of the rosary consisted of a channel for communication between believers and the Virgin,42 whose importance lay in the protection of a dead relative or guaranteeing that one’s own soul would be guided to the path to salvation. Figure 1 shows the benefits conceded – the Indulgences – for each actions carried out by the brethren who were devoted to and carried with them the Rosary:

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Figure 1 – Indulgences for the brethren of Our Lady of the Rosary

Action of all brethren who: Benefit

Carry the rosary with them (p.111) 100 years of indulgence Say the name of Jesus at the end of the Hail Mary 5 years of indulgence (p.111)

Piously and devotedly say the name of Jesus and 7 days of indulgence Mary inside and outside the rosary (p.111)

Say a third part of the rosary (p.111) 140 days of indulgence Say a third part of the rosary in any Church 50 years of indulgence (p.112) Repentant, confessed and having taken communion, who say a third part of the rosary 10 years of indulgence on days of annunciation and resurrections (p.112)

In a brotherhood, properly repentant and 60,000 years of indulgence confessed, say a third part of the rosary (p.112)

Any believer who says a third part of the rosary 5 years of indulgence (p.112) Devotedly say the rosary or at least a third part of it, gaining for each Our Father and Ave Mary 100 days of indulgence (p.113) Plenary indulgence for one Say every day for an entire year the rosary, or at day during the year, which least a third part of it (p.113) can be used for the dead (p.113) Repentant and confessed who devotedly say the 10 years of indulgence rosary three times a week (p.113)

Say the full rosary each week (p.113) 7 years of indulgence

Say a third part of the rosary, in such a way that during the whole week the full rosary is prayed 2 years of indulgence (p.113)

continues

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Plenary indulgence for all since, applied by the confessor chosen for Say the rosary for a week (p.114) arbitration, once in life and another time at the time of death (p.114)

All the Indulgences which Say the rosary (p.114) believers in the Kingdom of Spain enjoy

Devotedly watch the Procession of the Rosary 7 years and 7 quarantines of (p.114) Indulgences

Watch the procession properly repentant, Plenary indulgence confessed and having taken communion (p.114)

Watch the procession praying piously to God for the harmony of the Christian princes, extirpation Plenary indulgence of heresies and exaltation of our Holy Mother the Church (p.114)

For illness or legitimate impediment not being Plenary indulgence able to watch the said processions... (p.114)

Following the processions on the due days 100 days of indulgence (p.115) Following the procession on the days of Purification, annunciation, visitation, Assumption, Plenary indulgence nativity, presentation and conception (p.115)

Visiting the Rosary Chapel on the first Sunday of any months and on all the feast days of the Plenary indulgence Blessed Virgin Mary (p.115)

Visiting on the octave of the Feast of the Rosary the chapel in which the Society of the Rosary is Plenary indulgence based, on a day chosen, if confessed and having taken communion (p.115)

continues

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Giving alms, consoling the sick, teaching the doctrine or doing any work of piety or charity 60 days of indulgence (p.116)

Pray to God for the happy state of the Roman Plenary indulgence Pontiff and all the Catholic Church (p.116)

At the time of death, confessing and communing Plenary indulgence by Viaticum (p.116)

Invoking at the time of death the pious name of Plenary indulgence Jesus with the heart, if the mouth cannot (p.116)

At the time of death, receiving the holy sacraments, stating their faith in the Church and Plenary indulgence saying the Salve Regina (p.117)

With the firm purpose of confessing those who (having in their hands, at the time of death, the Plenary indulgence blessed candle in honor of the Virgin Mary) died; if in life they had said the Rosary at least once (p.117)

Walk, sail and serve, devotedly praying the Plenary indulgence Rosary (p.117) Source: prepared by the authors, based on the “Summary of Graces and Indulgences.”

In addition to the “Summary of Graces and Indulgences”, the manual repeatedly recommends that believers keep piously praying to God for the concord of the Christian princes, the extirpation of heresies and the exaltation of the Holy Mother Church, in order to eliminate any doctrinal deviation which hurts Catholic morality. The divulgation of the concession of these indulgences sought to reinforce devotion to the Virgin Mary, highlighting her capacity to intercede for the salvation of souls. The feeling of repentance and devout behavior were to accompany believers in their prayers, pilgrimages and visits to churches and also during religious festivals. There can also be found in the manual actions in which the indulgence conceded is implied by the reader, as can be seen in the one granting the brethren of the Holy Rosary who visit five altars of any Church, “the same

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Indulgences they would get if, on a pilgrimage, they visited the stations in Rome” (Castro, 1882, p.116). The Plenary indulgence of all sins was aimed at the most pious and devotees of the Rosary and the Virgin who, in times of illness or near to death, kept the faith and trust in the intervention of the Virgin, maintaining the rosary in their hands and thought in their prayers. According to the author of the manual, João de Castro, various pontiffs had granted Indulgences to the dead, such as Pope Innocence XI (1611-1689), who “had perpetually conceded that all and each of the Indulgences conceded to the Brotherhoods of the Rosary, can apply in accordance with the suffrage to the Souls of dead believers who left this world united to God in holy charity” (Castro, 1882, p.117).43 As observed by Vovelle, in the eighteenth century there was a diffusion of the rosary and the scapular, devotions which gained in importance (2010, p.171), which leads us to understand better the statement of the author of the manual: “Lately, a separate volume is needed to refer to the Indulgences of the Rosary, everyday they are increased; the pontiffs which concede them and the Bulls which grant them. This brief report is enough and hopefully we will use all those written here.” The text of the manual was, thus, in harmony with the expression of religiosity in force in Europe in the eighteenth century, by man- ifesting a “new sensitivity, in relation to a more affable Virgin, gracious and even sweet” (Castro, 1882, p.117), as can be seen in the artistic images which portray her with the Christ child in her lap – a Virgin to “be contemplated and to give consolation” (Vovelle, 2010, p.173) – or in practice, adopted by families, meeting every night to recite the rosary (Delumeau, 2009, p.134). Considering the actions expected of members of the brotherhoods and the benefits resulting from it, it can be perceived that they not only defined a model of behavior to be observed, but also the existence of a hierarchization– in terms of importance – of actions, consequently subject to greater and lesser graces and indulgences. The “Summary of Grace and Indulgences” also reveals the relationship established between guilt and repentance and between devotional practices and the corresponding period of indulgence. If the salvation of the soul, in the Final Judgment – the moment when the punishments were decreed, or eternal life was granted– was the final objective of all Christians, the devotion to and the cult of the Virgin was an important path and mediation between terrestrial life and eternal glory. Rosary prayers indicated the attempts of the devout to communicate with Mary, which could occur in Churches, chapels, processions, festivities, in the home, on the death bed, or in any other place which could guarantee the privacy necessary to recite the rosary or part

June 2012 105 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann of it. The Indulgences received, as has been shown, were dependent on the number of prayers made, participation in liturgical rituals and the conviction of thoughts and feelings. Exercising the function of mother of the Savior of all, Mary provided assistance to all of humanity, principally guaranteeing comfort in face of the suffering at the hour of death and the so-desired salvation. To obtain this, the believer had to observe the recommendations: devout oneself to the Virgin with great faith, pray and recite the rosary and principally adopt virtuous conduct and religious behavior in novenas and festivities.

Final considerations

In our first contact with the work Mestre da Vida, what called our attention was the number of republications and translations of the manual between 1731 and 1882, instigating us to reflect on the circulation and appropriation of the guidance for the veneration of and devotion to the Virgin prescribed in it. One of the intentions of the author of the manual we have analyzed in this article was to guide the thoughts and religious practices of Catholics devotees of the Virgin Mary. Irrespective of whether the reading of the manual was done as a private and subjective experience, the constant republications seen to point to the acceptance of the advice contained in it and for its application by Catholics – both individual and collective demonstrations of devotion to Mary – which aimed to achieve “Your grace in our feelings” (Castro, 1882, p.180). The adoption of the guidance prescribed by João de Castro can especially be perceived in the resort for Marian intervention to guarantee the salvation of the soul – which in fact guided numerous passages of the manual analyzed here – in the holding of novenas, prayers to the Virgin and the concessions of Indulgences. While on the one hand it should be considered that the various versions of the manual accompanied the changes which occurred within the Catholic Church and the Marian dogmas – such as the Immaculate Conception in the nineteenth century and the Assumption of Mary in the twentieth – serving as inspiration for many Catholics to manifest and reaffirm their devotion, on the other, it is necessary to keep in mind that reading does not allow for unique or correct comprehensions, inevitably suffering the action of subjectivity, which interferes in meaning and in the attribution of meaning by the reader (Certeau, 1994, p.49), which can change the meaning intended by the author and by the institutions interested and involved in its production and circulation. Like

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Roger Chartier, we believe that the reader is always being considered by the author, the commentator or the editor of a work, who resorts to strategies to curb the subjectivity of readers and impose a forced reading.44 Some of these are more evident, as can be seen in the prologues, prefaces and notes, others are implicit, “making the text machinery which must impose a fair comprehension” (Chartier, 1990, p.123). This resource can be found in the Prologue of the manual, in which João de Castro recommends to readers that they should take from the “Compendium the spiritual use necessary for a holy life and death,” dedicating to the Virgin, “sovereign Lady of God, specialized in all creatures and our greatest Protector ... particular recognition,” offering her “as a specialty some tribute of our gratitude,” which “can make us eternally happy and glorious” (Castro, 1882, p.vii). Despite the difficulties in measuring and evaluating the reception and appropriation of a determined text, we believe it will be possible to evaluate them through the socio-cultural effects which it has produced, even because a text is always marked “by a complex game between various temporal and spatial layers. Each reading is an event of translating and updating the work: the reader reconstructs – at a given moment and a given place – the various levels of inter-textuality of the ‘original.’”45 Not only readers contemporary to João de Castro in eighteenth century can have attributed, applied and experimented feelings distinct from the Dominican priest, but also readers from the nineteenth century, principally if we consider the effects of the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and the significant alterations in the conceptions and representations of death, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. While among the possible reasons for the acceptance of the manual by Catholics in the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, what stands out is the permanence of the belief in the intercessory power of the Virgin Mary to guarantee salvation, in relation to its circulation in the second half of the nineteen century it has to be considered that the fear of death and of not being saved – as motivations for the continuity of belief and devotion – were not imposed as strongly as in the previous centuries (Rodrigues, 2005, p.63, 348). It also has to be taken into account that in the same period when the Catholic Church reaffirmed devotion to the Virgin as indispensible for salvation and as one of the central pillars of Catholic piety, a series of changes in perceptions and attitudes towards death were ongoing, such as redefinition of the role played by the Church in the running of public cemeteries and the

June 2012 107 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann simplification of funeral rituals, associated with the process of secularization of death (Rodrigues, 2005, p.346-347). The republication of Mestre da Vida in 1882, thus, seems to suggest the reiteration of the importance of devotional practices and the virtuous conduct prescribed by João de Castro at the beginning of the eighteenth century, since the changes that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century did not provoke an increase in incredulity of a supposed ‘loss’ of religiosity, but new and different representations of death and life beyond the grave (Rodrigues, 2005, p.346-352). Considering its purpose, the manual Mestre da vida que ensina a viver e morrer santamente, like many other devotional manual and works of morality and theology, must have circulated among lay Catholics and among clerics in ecclesiastic teaching establishments – for regular and diocesan clergy – in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the initial decades of the twentieth. The 1882 example which we have analyzed has on its title page a stamp with the letter JHS,46 and shortly below the inscription Novo Hamburgo (RS), which seems to suggest that it was part of the personal collection of a Jesuit priests or the library of a Jesuit seminary, favoring its reading and the practice of its orientations by young members of this religious order. The Episcopal Seminary of Porto Alegre (RS) – which when it was transferred to São Leopoldo in 1913, came to be called the Central Seminary of São Leopoldo47 – offered courses in philosophy, theology, morals, and canon law and to it “flocked, in addition to seminarists from the archdiocese, the other dioceses of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná and other states” (Rambo, 2002, p.302). Imbued with spirit of Catholic Restoration, ecclesiastic education centers– like this Jesuit seminary – were concerned with the education of a theologically disciplined clergy, committed to religious practice which observed the papal bulls, the sacraments, the commandments, and the dogmas, such as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, which preached her elevation to heaven in body and soul at the end of her earthly life. Given the leading role played by the Jesuit seminary of São Leopoldo in the Catholic Restoration project – the task of restoring Catholic doctrine and implementing discipline among the clergy and in the communities of believers –, some questions have to be asked about the particularities that devotion to the Virgin assumed among Catholics in twentieth century Rio Grande do Sul. According to the Gaúcho historian Arthur Rambo, in the first decades of the twentieth century “it was difficult to find a house in which [the] Heart of Mary

108 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings” was not venerated,” while in the public manifestations of faith, the Marian Congregations used blue ribbons and carried banners, militating in the name of Catholicism, very much ‘to the taste of the Jesuits.’ Rambo also mentions Daughters of Mary Associations, stating that “There was no parish with this type of association which did not bring together adolescents and girls in devotion to Our Lady. The high point of these groups was also the intense motiva- tion for the sacramental life and the cultivation of Christian virtues” (Rambo, 2002, p.294-295). The ‘cultivation of Christian virtues’ by these young Catholics in the middle of the twentieth century seemed to evoke the instructions formulated by João de Castro at the beginning of the eighteenth century.48 Instructions like the ones we found in the first pages of the manual, in which the Dominican friar orientates believers on how to start their day in a ‘saintly’ manner – on their knees in from of an image of the crucified Christ – praying for his salvation:

I adore you... Queen of Heaven and Earth, The Most Holy Mary, Mother of God; into your hands I deliver my soul: into your care I deliver the question of my salvation: to your intercession I commend the beginning and end of my life; and by your sweetest entrails of piety I ask thee that I may reach your son with your grace, so that in all thoughts, words and works I do this day I will do your holy will. (Castro, 1882, p.5)

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, lay and clerical Catholics could use the recommendations prescribed by João de Castro to ‘live and die in a holy manner.’ The latter – in their condition of teachers, preachers or confessors – must have used the manual Mestre da Vida to instruct their students and parishioners ‘in the mysteries of religion’ and to guide them ‘to virtue and perfection.’49 Lay readers – and perhaps listeners – must have sought in the chapters of this devotional manual the means to live in a saintly manner, in order to ensure protection from the dangers of death and to reach a “happy and glorious eternity” (Castro, 1882, p.vi-vii). Called on to reaffirm their faith, they prayed for “Your Grace in [their] feelings... thoughts, words and deeds” and gave “the question of [their] salvation” into the care of “the Most Holy Mary, Mother of God” (Castro, 1882, p.5). The appropriation over the centuries of the practices of the veneration and devotion to the “Queen of Heaven and Earth” stipulated in Mestre da Vida seems to prove the “omnipresence of

June 2012 109 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann the Virgin in Catholic doctrine” as a “privileged symbol of conversion, reaffirmation and seduction of Catholicism” (Reesink, 2003, p.132).

NOTES

1 This manual of devotion was one of many religious writings which circulated in the Iberian Peninsula and in Portuguesa America during the colonial period, which generally had an ‘origin and inspiration’ in Spain. SOUZA, Juliana Beatriz Almeida de. Virgem mes- tiça: devoção à Nossa Senhora na colonização do Novo Mundo. Tempo – Revista do Departamento de História da UFF, Rio de Janeiro, v.6, n.11, p.77-92, 2001. p.83; see also: SOUZA, Juliana Beatriz Almeida de. Viagens do Rosário entre a Velha Cristandade e o Além-Mar. Estud. afro-asiát. [online], 2001b, v.23, n.2. Available at: www.scielo.br/scielo. php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0101-546X2001000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso. Accessed on: 7 June 2011. 2 It is worth noting that in the seventeenth century and, principally in the eighteenth, the practice of reading was widespread in Europe. Chartier considers that in this period much was read, both in silence and out loud, guaranteeing not only the diffusion of writings, but also a form of familiar, mundane and public sociability. CHARTIER, Roger. A ordem dos livros. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 1994. p.98. 3 It is known that between 1731 and 1750 there were 16 editions of Mestre da vida and that in 1762, its twentieth was published. RODRIGUES, Cláudia. Nas fronteiras do Além: a sec- ularização da morte no Rio de Janeiro, séculos XVIII e XIX. Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2005. p.63. It is interesting to highlight that the eighteenth century was fruitful in terms of religious publications. Dominique Julia, referring to the reading of official Catholic publications during the Counter-Reformation in ecclesiastic libraries in France, stated that “the decisive take-over occurred... in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, since this proportion passed in the period of a generation from 45% of inventories, while three-quarters of priests had at least twenty books; around 1755-1760, the priests who had more 100 volumes it had risen to 60% and on the eve of Revolution 75%.” JULIA, Dominique. Leituras e Contra-Reforma. In: CHARTIER, Roger; CAVALLO, Guglielmo. História da leitura no mundo ocidental. São Paulo: Ática, 1999. p.96. Publications before this period, in other words before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,were used by missionaries in their fieldwork. According to Charles Boxer, this involved the use of the printed word for spreading the faith, both of lay and clerical writings, such as: catechisms, compendiums, vocabularies, grammars, devotion manuals, edifying works, etc. BOXER, Charles. A Igreja Militante e a Expansão Ibérica. 1440-1770. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. p.56. 4 According to the historian Cláudia Rodrigues, this manual was “the second largest work of this type of doctrinal literature published in Portugal” (Rodrigues, 2005, p.63). It is known that the Régia Officina Typografica press in Lisbon published a new edition in 1799. Its dissemination among devout Catholics is shown by the references which the writer Eça

110 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings” de Queiroz (1845-1900) makes to it. Available at: simetrikus.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/4/; Accessed on: Apr. 2011. 5 The example analyzed in this article dates from 1882 and is found in the collection of the Memorial Jesuíta of Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos). Unfortunately there is no information in it about the number of the edition of the work. CASTRO, João de. Mestre da Vida que ensina a Viver e Morrer Santamente. Novamente correto por um Religioso da Ordem dos Pregadores e oferecido à Virgem Santíssima do Rosário por mãos da sua prodigiosa imagem que se venera na Vila do Barreiro. Nova edição. Lisboa: Rolland & Semiond, 1882. 6 Analyzing inventories from 1759 and 1768, referring to the goods of Fazenda Santa Cruz –belonging to the Jesuit College of Rio de Janeiro –, which were made after the Company of Jesus had been expelled from Brazil, Marília de Azambuja Ribeiro, a researcher in UFPE, found that the Livraria of the Fazenda had “a set of books which we can classify with the label ‘liturgical’, both in the strict sense, in other words they were written to be used in liturgical rituals as Missals, Rituals, Breviaries, Books of Hours and Martyrologies,” and “books aimed at the Christian community in a broader manner, such as Breve aparelho de bem morrer by Estevão Castro, Mestre da vida que ensina a viver e morrer by João Franco [sic] or Gritos do inferno by Joseph Boneta.” The reference to the manual Mestre da Vida among the works which were part of the collection of the library in Fazenda de Santa Cruz, no Rio de Janeiro, in the second half of the eighteenth century, confirms its circulation in American colonial dominions and points to the diffusion of the prescriptions contained it among Catholics in Portuguesa America. RIBEIRO, Marília de Azambuja. A Livraria da Fazenda Santa Cruz (2011). In print. 7 FERREIRA, Tânia Maria Tavares Bessone da Cruz. Livros, bibliotecas e censores: os im- pedimentos para os leitores no Brasil do século XIX. In: HEYNEMANN, Cláudia Beatriz; VALE, Renata William Santos do. Temas luso-brasileiros no Arquivo Nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2010. 8 GILMONT, Jean-François. Reformas protestantes e leitura. In: CHARTIER; CAVALLO, 1999, p.59. 9 Reflections inspired by TORRES, Magda Maria Jaolino. O “livro-teatro” jesuítico: uma leitura a partir de Foucault. In: RAGO, Margareth; VEIGA-NETO, Alfredo (Org.) Para uma vida não-fascista. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009. 10 FLECK, Eliane Cristina Deckmann. Cartografia da sensibilidade: a arte de viver no campo do outro (Brasil, séculos XVI e XVII). In: ERTZOGUE, Mariana; PARENTE, Temis (Org.) História e sensibilidade. Brasília: Paralelo 15, 2006. p.217-248. 11 Like Chartier, we believe that discourses “are produced and diffused in a specific social space which has its own places, hierarchies and objectives.” Thus, thinking about the “relations which the works maintain with the social world” implies considering the variations between the text and the social realities, the text and the meanings and plural appropriations, the text and the various forms of transmission and reception. CHARTIER, Roger. À

June 2012 111 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann beira da falésia: a História entre certezas e inquietudes. Porto Alegre: Ed. UFRGS, 2002. p.258, 259. 12 PESAVENTO, Sandra Jatahy. História & História Cultural. 2.ed. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2004. p.70. 13 According to Beatris dos Santos Gonçalves, “the economy of salvation presupposes a distribution of functions or a ‘sharing of tasks’ within the societas christiana”. GONÇALVES, Beatris dos Santos. Os marginais e o Rei: a construção de uma estratégica relação de poder em fins da Idade Média portuguesa. Doctoral dissertation in History – UFF. Rio de Janeiro, 2010. p.31. 14 HUIZINGA, Johan. O outono da Idade Média: estudo sobre as formas de vida e de pensamento dos séculos XIV e XV na França e nos Países Baixos. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2010. [1919], p.269. According to some of those who studied the question, Marian dogma originated in passages of the New Testament in which Mary is present in scenes of Jesus’ life and in reports about virginal maternity. It is as a result of this condition that Mary is considered to be a saint, and is presented as the model for virgins. Cfe. SESBOÜÉ, SJ. BOURGEOIS, H. PAUL TIHON, SJ. História dos dogmas. Tomo 3: Os sinais da salvação (século XII–XX). São Paulo: Loyola, 2005. p.467-480. 15 SOUZA, Maria Beatriz de Mello e. Mãe, mestra e guia: uma análise da iconografia de Sant’Anna. Revista Topoi, Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, n.5, p.232-250, 2002. In Colonial Brazil, Mary was the most important saint. Her image and hagiography were also used as a method of conversion, appearing, for example, in iconographic documents produced by the Company of Jesus, notably scenes referring to his life and death, with a biblical interpretation. See more in TORRES, 2009. 16 In his analysis of images which circulated in Hispanic America, Gruzinski emphasized the Virgin of Guadalupe, which exploited “the miracle [which] seeks to reunite around the common intercessors in the ethnicities which composed colonial society: Spanish, Indians, mestiços, blacks and mulattos.” Later various baroque images of the Virgin Mary reinforced the religious fervor, saturating daily life, invading residences, clothes and family objects. Indigenous painters appropriated the Christian image of the Virgin, transforming them into a new expression of faith and identity. GRUZINSKI, Serge. A guerra das imagens: de Cristóvão Colombo a Blade Runner (1492-2019). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006. p.160-161. 17 VAINFAS, Ronaldo; SOUZA, Juliana Almeida de. Nossa Senhora, o fumo e a dança. In: NOVAES, Adauto (Org.) A outra margem do Ocidente. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1999. p.203. 18 ALVES, Franciele. As imagens da Virgem Maria nos vitrais da Catedral de Chartres. II ENCONTRO NACIONAL DE ESTUDOS DA IMAGEM, 2., 12-14 maio 2009, Londrina (PR). Anais... Available at: www.uel.br/eventos/eneimagem/anais/trabalhos/pdf; Accessed on: 7 June 2011. Mircea Eliade and Ioan Couliano state that in the “Twelfth century Renaissance” new religious ideas appeared, with this new age being “marked by a special devotion to the Virgin, Mother of God, which made her equal, if not by right then at least

112 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings” in a de facto manner, to the members of the trinity, a real regina coeli, a beneficent star who intercedes for men. Cathedrals, generally dedicated to Our Lady, which emerged in the north of France around 1150, are the visible symbol of the new spirituality.” ELIADE, Mircea; COULIANO, Ioan. Dicionário das religiões. Trad. Ivone Benedetti. 2.ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999. p.109-110. 19 ZIERER, Adriana. Paraíso versus Inferno: a Visão de Túndalo e a Viagem Medieval em Busca da Salvação da Alma (séc. XII). Revista Mirabilia, n.2. Available at: www.revistamira- bilia.com/Numeros/Num2/tundalo.html; Accessed on: 7 June 2011. In addition to the historiographic studies mentioned until now, there are also recent theological interpretations which give great emphasis to the figure of Mary, such as those found in works, such as the Grupo de Dombes book, a French ecumenical group for reflection, which reference is Maria no desígnio de Deus e a comunhão dos santos: na história e na Escritura – controvérsia e conversão. Aparecida (SP): Ed. Santuário, 2010. Also from a theological perspective we can highlight the article by IWASHITA, Pedro. A relação entre experiência e dogma mariano – Sensus Fidelium e Psicologia da profundidade. Revista Eletrônica Espaço Teológico, v.5, n.8, jul.-dez., p.4-16, 2011. The theological interpretation of Marian dogma was not considered in the analysis we make in this article, to the extent that we propose to look at the circulation of an eighteenth century manual in Europe and in American colonial dominions, as well as the appropriation of guidance related to devotional practices, virtues and acceptable social conduct. 20 PEREIRA, Teresa Lopes. O culto de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires em Alcácer do Sal, a Senhora da Cinta e as Cantigas de Santa Maria. Medievalista, ano 5, n.6, 2009, p.1-23. Available at: www2.fcsh.unl.pt/iem/medievalista; Accessed on: 6 Dec. 2011. According to Rejane Jardim “the Cantigas were the most attractive Mariologies, a work which reflected the devotion, beliefs and concerns of that epoch, in which the Virgin was one of the principal protagonists ... In many of the Cantigas there occurs a reference to the participation of the community in the celebration of Marian miracles ... The Cantigas presented in a combined form, six nouns referring to St. Mary: Mother, Virgin, Queen, Lady, Saint and Glorious.” JARDIM, Rejane. Ave Maria, Ave Senhoras de todas as graças! Um estudo do feminino na perspectiva das relações de gênero na Castela do século XIII. Doctoral dissertation in History – PUC-RS. Porto Alegre, 2006. p.85-89. 21 In light of the Reformation, Mary was seen as the “Damsel of Nazareth, bearer of total and complete human nature, a peasant girl, chosen by the will of God to abandon common life and to assume her great and historic role in the drama of salvation.” PELIKAN, Jaroslaw. Maria através dos séculos: seu papel na história e na cultura. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000. p.220. Based on theological studies, V. Buarque stated that during the period which runs from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939- 1958), Mariology had been excessive, even implying ‘Marian jingoism.’ We believe that this evaluation needs to be relativizied, to an extent that it starts with an assumption of the existence of a immutable cult and devotion to Mary over a long period, not taking into account the implications of the different contexts in the historical construction of faith in Mary. BUARQUE, Virgínia et al. Devoção à Virgem em Mariana colonial: religiosidade,

June 2012 113 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann cultura e poder. In: ENCONTRO DO GT NACIONAL DE HISTÓRIA DAS RELIGIÕES E RELIGIOSIDADES, Anpuh, 1., 2007, Maringá (PR). Available at: www.dhi.uem.br/gtreligiao/pdf/; Accessed on: 6 June 2011. 22 VOVELLE, Michel. As almas do purgatório, ou, O trabalho de luto. Trad. Aline Meyer e Roberto Cattani. São Paulo: Ed. Unesp, 2010. p.170. This omnipresence of the Virgin in Catholic doctrine has crossed through the centuries and reaching the present day in such a consolidated manner that the anthropologist Mísia Reesink classified it as a “privileged symbol of conversion, reaffirmation and seduction of Catholicism ... being omniscient and omnipresent ... and almost omnipotent.” REESINK, Mísia Lins. Nossa Senhora de Angüera, Rainha da Paz e do mundo católico contemporâneo. In: STEIL, Carlos; MARIZ, Cecília; REESINK, Mísia. Maria entre os vivos: reflexões teóricas e etnografias sobre aparições mar- ianas no Brasil. Porto Alegre: Ed. UFRGS, 2003. p.132, original emphasis. For an analysis of Marian devotion in Brazil as one of the principal traits of Brazilian religiosity, see CIPOLINI, Pedro Carlos. A devoção mariana no Brasil. Teocomunicação, Porto Alegre, v.40, n.1, p.36-43, jan.-abr. 2010. 23 The investigation included the treatises Principios de Cirugia, by Geronimo de Ayala, Medicina Practica de Guadalupe, by Francisco Sanz de Dios, Medicina y Cirugia Domestica, by Felipe Borbon, Doctrina Moderna para los sangradores, by Ricardo Le Preux, Secretos Medicos y Chirurgicos, by João Curvo Semmedo, Medicina Ilustrada Chymica Observada and Chirurgia Methodica Chimica Reformada, by Francisco Suarez de Ribera and a manuscript of Materia Medica Misionera, written in America by the Jesuit brother Pedro Montenegro. In our analysis we found that all were dedicated to a member of the royalty or to a Catholic saint, especially Our Lady –, and contained prologues, censures, or approvals granted by the qualifying clerics from the Holy Office or by doctors who were generally linked to some university. In this still unpublished article [it is in print], we present the writing strategies – adopted by authors and editors – which we identified in these texts – which preceded the actual content of the treatises of surgery and medicine –, and which by highlighted suitable paths of reading, were aimed at the diffusion of certain scientific knowledge in Spain and in areas of its vast colonial Empire. 24 Moreover, the control which the Holy Office exercised over the publication may have implicated a type of self-censorship by the authors of these treatises on surgery and medicine, determining a type of writing in harmony with the norms of approval and circulation in force at the time. It should also be kept in mind that this type of Dedication could determine and/or interfere in the judgment of the censor(s) – who were usually members of the Catholic Church –, to the extent that the acknowledgement by the author of the work ended up being represented in it. According to Michel de Certeau, the author could add de- vices to the work, with the aim of directing the interpretation of the reading, thereby avoiding possible controversies which might arise. Self-censorship was thus a form of controlling or curbing the criticisms of the content of texts and their probable prohibition, confirming both the power exercised by the Church, through the Inquisition, and the use of strategies to evade it by men of science of the epoch. CERTEAU, Michel de. A Escrita da História. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 1982.

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25 According to Jean Marcel França, Jemima remained in Bahia from August to September 1764, during which time she wrote seven letters. FRANÇA, Jean Marcel Carvalho (Org.) Mulheres viajantes no Brasil (1764-1820): antologia de textos. Jemima Kindersley, Elizabeth Henrietta Macquarie, Rose Freycinet. Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio, 2008. p.15-16. 26 HAUCK, Fagundes. Visão histórica da devoção Mariana no Brasil. In: CALIMAN, Cleto (Org.) Teologia e Devoção Mariana no Brasil. São Paulo: Paulinas, 1989. p.73. According to Virgínia Buarque, Mariology – as a specific form of knowledge about Mary –is theological knowledge, of interest to the historian as ‘imaginary production.’ BUARQUE, Virgínia et al. Devoção à Virgem em Mariana colonial: religiosidade, cultura e poder. In: ENCONTRO DO GT NACIONAL DE HISTÓRIA DAS RELIGIÕES E RELIGIOSIDADES, Anpuh, 1., 2007, Maringá (PR). Anais... Available at: www.dhi.uem.br/gtreligiao/pdf/; Accessed on: 6 June 2011. 27 The title Theotokos, which signified Mother of God, was given to Mary in the fourth century, but it only crystallized after the Council of Ephesus in 431, which considered Mary to be the Glorious Mother of God and always Virgin. Later, especially during the Middle Ages, the devotion of Christians to Mary was testified in Cathedrals and in the hymns dedicated to her and in the devotion to the rosary (SESBOÜÉ, 2005, p.467-485). 28 NEBEL, Richard. Santa María Tonantzin Virgen de Guadalupe: continuidad y transfor- mación religiosa en México. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995. p.48. 29 In Europe until the middle of the nineteenth century, the habit of reading was much greater than or writing; reading was stimulated by the Church and ‘essentially aimed at young girls,’ becoming a characteristic of societies marked by semi-literacy. CERTEAU, Michel de. A invenção do Cotidiano. v.1: artes de fazer. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 1994. p.263. Reading, not just of Catholic manuals, but also of travel reports, fables, and novels, was more common among the feminine reading public, especially women from bourgeois families. WITTMANN, Reinhard. Existe uma revolução da leitura no final do eighteenth century? In: CHARTIER; CAVALLO, 1999, v.2, p.143. 30 The rosary was created by Canon Domingos de Gusmão in Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in compliance with the message he received from Our Lady. The rosary, a “means of prayer which intermixing the Hail Mary with small dogmatic medita- tions of the Life, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ, contained all of Christian doctrine, and finished with a prayer very dear to the heart of the Holy Virgin, suitable for the most humble persons, teaching ... placing them in an attitude of humility towards the Mother of the Savior of the World.” LIMA JÚNIOR, Augusto de. História de Nossa Senhora em Minas Gerais: origens das principais invocações. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica; PUC-Minas, 2008 [1956]. p.89. 31 Laura de Mello e Souza highlights cases of Portuguese women who, accused of false sanctity, were exiled to Brazil in the eighteenth century. It is worth bearing in mind that the writings aimed at believers, such as Mestre da Vida, used erudite expression and dogmatic concepts of religiosity, not always with the popular range desired by the Church. Popular religious experiences were characterized by strong mystical appeals, distant from the dog-

June 2012 115 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann matic. SOUZA, Laura de Mello. Inferno atlântico: demonologia e colonização, séculos XVI- XVIII. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993. p.137. 32 This was, without a doubt, the purpose of a manual of devotion: the intimate connection of the believer with the sacred. However, it is necessary to consider that the public dimension of faith and its exteriorization in ceremonies such as processions was also important. Cf. SOUZA, 2008, p.34. 33 The observance of this advice in the meditation of the rosary is still maintained in the present, as can be seen in the “Movement of the Perpetual Rosary”– a Marian devotion from Parana –, which starts that the “Rosary... should be, above all, an oration of meditation which leads us to penetrate the Mysteries which faith proposes us to believe.” Necessidade de Meditar o Rosário. Available at: www.rosarioperpetuo.com.br; Accessed on: 6 July 2011. 34 DELUMEAU, Jean. História do medo no Ocidente. 1300-1800: uma cidade sitiada. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. p.311. 35 For an anthropological analysis of the universalizing spirit of the Church and its synthesis in the spirit of Mary, see REESINK, 2003. 36 FLECK, Eliane Cristina Deckmann. Almas em busca da salvação: sensibilidade barroca no discurso jesuítico (seventeenth century). Rev. Bras. Hist. [online], v.24, n.48, p.255-300, 2004. Available at: www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102- 01882004000200012&lng=pt&nrm=iso; Accessed on: 6 June 2011. 37 OSSANNA, Tulio Faustino. A Ave-Maria: história, conteúdo, controvérsias. São Paulo: Loyola, 2006. p.30, 87, 94. 38 The Company played an active role in the dissemination of Marian devotions, especially in the eighteenth century. One of the works which highlighted the ‘benefits’ and the protection of the Virgin Mary for Inacianos was Maria Rosa de Nazaret nas montanhas de Hebron, a Virgem nossa Senhora na Companhia de Jesus. Lisboa, na Officina Real Deslandesiana, 1715. Cfe. SANTOS, Zulmira. Emblemática, memória e esquecimento: a geografia da sal- vação e da condenação nos caminhos do “prodesse ac delectare” na História do Predestinado Peregrino e seu Irmão Precito (1682) de Alexandre de Gustmão SJ [1629-1724], 2004. Available at: ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/3785.pdf; Accessed on: 6 June 2011. 39 Devotion to the Virgin was one of the striking traits of Luso-American religiosity, being present in the imagination, in prayers, in sermons, in churches, chapels and festivities, as highlighted by Juliana Souza e Ronaldo Vainfas in a 1999 work. It is interesting to highlight that some members of CEHILA are concerned with studying the devotion to Mary in Brazil, notably: HOORNAERT, Eduardo et al. História da Igreja no Brasil: ensaio de inter- pretação a partir do povo. Primeira época. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 1992, which refers to the existence of numerous churches and hermitages built in Olinda, as well as other buildings constructed by bandeirantes in the ‘interior’, according to the reports of the Franciscan chronicler Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria, in his 1634 text Santuário Mariano. This text was also a primary source for the work on devotion to the Virgin in: SOUZA, Juliana

116 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “Your grace in our feelings”

Beatriz de Almeida. Virgem Imperial: Nossa Senhora e império marítimo português. Luso- Brazilian Review, v.45, n.1, p.30-52, 2008, as well as two other articles mentioned in the present text. 40 The rosary is defined as a relic which identifies the Virgin Mary, which in addition to adoring her, confers rhythm to the prayer in its praise. At present it is identified in Portuguese as ‘terço’, and is prayed by believers. In the festivities in honor of the Virgin of the Rosary in Catalão (GO), according to research carried out by the historian Cairo Katrib, the rosary is always prayed and repeated numerous times. The Catholic Church in this town in Goias, according to Katrib, is greatly interested in maintaining the practice, since in this way, it remains present in the religious expressions of the population. KATRIB, Cairo Mohamad. Foi assim que me contaram: recriação dos sentidos do sagrado e do pro- fano do Congado na festa de Nossa Senhora do Rosário. (Catalão-GO-1940-2003). Doctoral dissertation in History – UnB. Brasília, 2009. p.95-96. Also in relation to the rosary, Reesink highlights that in its structure, “there are five mysteries, with the first two referring to Jesus, the third to the Holy Spirit, and the last two to Mary, terminating with a Hail Mary, which shows respect to her.” REESINK, 2003, p.131. 41 This document is in the Arquivo Público Mineiro, entitled “Registro da breve recopilação e sumário das graças e indulgências concedidas aos confrades de Nossa Senhora do Rosário e confirmadas por Inocêncio XI em 31 de julho de 1679”, Casa dos Contos, CC – Cx. 16 – 10323, datado de 1721, caixa 16, rolo 505. Available at: www.siaapm.cultura.mg.gov.br; Accessed on: 16 Dec. 2010. 42 This argument was inspired by REESINK, 2003, p.130. According to the researcher, “the model centered on Maria had greater ‘seduction’ power and greater appeal, capable of attracting many souls.” 43 It is interesting to note that Pope Benedict XVI has also conceded plenary indulgences to believers. One of the examples, among many others, was widely announced on Catholic sites: “Pope Benedict XVI will grant a plenary indulgence at the next solemnity of the Immaculate Conception to all the faithful who, fulfilling the habitual conditions to obtain this gift, participate on 8 December in a sacred rite in honor of the Virgin or who witness their Marian devotion before an image of the Immaculate Conception. Stated in a decree published this Tuesday signed by the Higher Penitentiary of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal James Francis Stafford”. Available at: reporterdecristo.com/indulgencia-plenaria- na-imaculada-conceicao; Accessed on: 17 Dec. 2011. 44 CHARTIER, Roger. Textos, impressos, leitores. In: _____. A História cultural: entre práti- cas e representações. Lisboa: Difel, 1990. 45 SELIGMANN-SILVA, Márcio. O local da diferença: ensaios sobre memória, arte, literatura e tradução. São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2005. p.105. 46 IHS is the abbreviation of the name of Jesus in Greek or the Latin script of the name as used in the middle Ages: Ihesus. It is a Christological trigram propagated in the fourteenth century by the preacher St. Bernard of Sienna. In the sixteenth century it was used with the meaning “Jesum habemus socium”, which means “We have Jesus as a companion.” After St.

June 2012 117 Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck and Mauro Dillmann

Francis of Assisi, it was St. Ignatius of Loyola who most contributed to the diffusion of the IHS symbol. The founder of the Company used it in his principal letters and writings, and also as the official seal of the Order in its principal publications, such as, for example, the first edition of the book of spiritual exercises. 47 RAMBO, Arthur. Restauração Católica no Sul do Brasil. História – Questões & Debates, Curitiba, n.36, p.279-304, 2002. p.302. 48 This perception appears to be confirmed when we find a text produced in the middle of the twentieth century by the journalist and historian from Minas Gerais, Augusto de Lima Júnior, in which in addition to referring to a significant number of Marian devotions in Minas Gerais, reaffirms his faith and admits his admiration “for living and dying in the faith.” LIMA JÚNIOR, 2008 [1956], p.33. 49 “The Project for Catholic Restoration emanated from Rome and was implemented via Bishop, parish priest and directorates of communities in parishes and chapels, producing its effects without delay. The sacramental life became the foundations of pastoral action. The priest in this case was actually a true priest, whose sole objective consists in ensuring that the faithful live in accordance with the commandments and the dictates coming from Rome and its episcopates.” RAMBO, 2002, p.293.

Article received on 27 January 2012. Approved on 21 May 2012.

118 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks: an analysis of the role of priests in the ‘sertão’ of Minas Gerais (1822 and 1831) Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva*

Resumo Abstract A consolidação dos Estados nacionais The consolidation of modern national modernos implicou combinações múlti- states involved multiple combinations plas entre mentalidade cristã e raciona- of secular rationalism and Christian lismo secular. Apesar disso, as relações mentalities. Nevertheless, relations be- entre poder temporal e espiritual nem tween temporal and spiritual powers sempre foram congruentes e harmonio- were not always congruent and harmo- sas. Tampouco limitaram-se ao âmbito nious. Nor were they limited to institu- institucional. No caso brasileiro, muitos tional frameworks. In Brazil many cler- clérigos aliaram de modo peculiar a for- ics combined in a particular way mação pastoral e intelectual à atuação pastoral and intellectual formation and política, em favor de seus interesses pri- political action in favor of their own in- vados, buscando usufruir de suas redes terests, seeking benefits from their sode sociabilidade para resistir às normati- cial networks to resist the rules enacted zações encaminhadas pelo Estado nacio- by the state since 1822. Aiming at pre- nal, desde 1822. Visando preservar ou serving or even increasing attributes mesmo galgar aqueles atributos garanti- dores de distinção, riqueza e poder e that were guarantors of distinction, atuando, sobretudo, por vias informais, wealth and power, and acting especially esses clérigos protagonizaram alguns dos through informal channels, these clerics conflitos ocorridos no sertão de Minas caused some of the conflicts which oc- Gerais, os quais, conforme analisa o pre- curred in the Minas Gerais ‘sertão,’ sente artigo, desafiaram a competência which as this article examines, chal- governamental em garantir a estrita ob- lenged government competence to en- servância da Lei, denunciando novas for- sure strict observance of the law. mas de fazer política, personificadas na Keywords: politician priests; constitu- figura do ‘padre político’. tionalism; Minas Gerais. Palavras-chave: padre político; constitu- cionalismo; Minas Gerais.

* Centro de Ciências Humanas e Sociais Aplicadas. Faculdade de História, PUC-Campinas. Rodovia Dom Pedro I, km 136, Parque das Universidades, Cidade Universitária. 13086-900 Campinas – SP – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 119-143 - 2012 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva

The European eighteenth century witnessed a reinterpretation of the nature of government which had profound repercussions on state structures. Based on new conceptions developed since the seventeenth century of the origins of “civil and political society, the pact or contract between the ruled and rulers, the nature of sovereignty, the most rational regime or political system, the liberties and rights inherent in citizenship,”1 this phenomenon which had repercussions all over Western Europe and in the American colonies implied the progressive affirmation of temporal power over the spiritual, “as if this was affirmed in advance as the final critique of the organization of the terrestrial life of man.”2 In this way, prefixing the ‘utility of the Republic’ to the ‘precepts of ethics,’ secularization appears as its essential mark, as an expression of the new form of liberty and autonomy, of ‘being in the world’ of modern man.3 However, the tendency in question does not imply a unison reply of philosophers to the question of religion, nor, the impossibility of coexistence between apparently irreconcilable elements, such as “faith and science, the philosophical tradition and rational and experimental innovation, theocentrism and anthropocentrism.”4 To the contrary, the Enlightenment movement involved a marked eclecticism in the philosophic plane,5 as well as guarding profound asymmetries between the historical circumstances which saw it born and between those who identified as ‘men of letters’ in the same cultural space. As a result religion was at the foundations of the Catholic Enlightenment – characteristic of the Italian and Iberian states – and even in the countries which were the stage of modern democratic and liberal experiences,6 their ‘spokespersons’ were men linked to their civilizations and committed to the religious sphere of power.7 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a symbiosis emerged between the old order and the consolidation of modern national states, implying multiple combinations between the Christian mentality and secular rationalism. From this perspective the criticism of religion and the later separation between Church and State did not eliminate the active participation of the clergy in the ongoing process, nor did it result in the complete replacement of faith by reason, or of religion by nationalist ideology. There was thus no short- age of cases in which it was sought to constitute the nation as a community of believers using Christian symbols to sacralize them,8 or giving up the religious liturgy to commemorate the nation, a process in which the support provided by clergy for the national cause was fundamental.9 After all in a world structured by religion, the Church, through its representatives was the only power

120 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks

Politician priests and their solidarity networks with the effective capacity to assert itself over the broad sectors of society, from the “most humble, daily and immediate, such as families and communities, to the international sphere, in which it coexisted with the powers of kings and emperors.”10 In the construction processes of modern national states, however, the relations between temporal and spiritual power were not always congruent and harmonious. Nor were they limited to the institutional sphere. Many clerics allied in a peculiar manner pastoral and intellectual activities to political activism, seeking to use their sociability networks, the retinue of believers enveloped in the mystical aura of sacerdotal power, for their own interests, resisting the rules enacted by the state being constructed. In the Brazilian case, although recent contributions have advanced the understanding of the participation of the ‘political clergy’ in the process of independence and the formation of the imperial state,11 little emphasis has been given to the role of the priests who acted in non-institutional ways. Mixing with the laity and assuming alternative political projects, their forms of action did not fit into the ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ positions which polarized parliamentary discussion about the Church and religion in Brazil.12 In addition to active participation in the construction of new spaces of sociability – “political, patriotic, philanthropic and Masonic, public and secret”13 – which jointly with the representative spheres constituted a central dimension to the construction of public spaces in Brazil, priests acted through more even informal paths of power, adding values and codes of conduct parallel, and even averse, to the preparation of the constitutional order. This profile of the Brazilian political clergy has been attributed in part to the precarious manner in which the Tridentine reform was conducted in Brazil,14 according to which the clergy had to stand apart from the laity, assuming an aura of purity and sanctity. To the contrary of this:

the priests of colonial Brazil were little different from their flocks in their daily lives. In addition to their involvement with questions of a temporal nature, it was not rare to see priests without their sacerdotal habit participating in profane festivities, entering into concubinage and raising children. This proximity of priests with the daily life of the population meant that they ended up sharing the same problems, demands and feelings as their believers. Consequently, priests became much more apt at assuming the role of spokespersons for the people, transforming themselves into potential popular leaders. (Souza, 2010, p.46)

June 2012 121 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva

Moreover, the education of the clergy active in the context of independence and the initial stages of the construction of the Brazilian national state was guided by “Pombaline Catholic regalism.”15 This, although far from re- suming priestly activity in the “systematization” and “moralization of religious practices and representations,”16 attributed a civil dimension to it, mixing the functions of public man and priest. This education –which we will discuss in greater detail below – resulted in the wide-ranging public and civil insertion of the Brazilian clergy at the moment of the establishment of forms of political representation, when they gained new channels and comprehensiveness. At the same time, the actions of these clerics was associated with violence and the indiscipline characteristic of the resistance of local potentates to the ongoing imposition of new rules, aiming to preserve, or even expand, those attributes which guaranteed distinction, wealth, and power, such as land, slaves and titles. In this article a privileged focus is taken for the analysis of the actions of these clerics, at the moment when the national state carried out the first institutional adaptations necessary for the creation of the – material and symbolic – conditions of its existence. Specifically, I look at some of the political conflicts which occurred in areas of the Minas Gerais sertão, which illustrate the weight of disputes sponsored by local clerics. Traditionally in a region “so vast, so deserted, so far”17 from the centers of political decision making, and most often the seats of bishops, the actions of these clerics took place in conditions of great power and autonomy, making them almost potentates who supported by the immediate representatives – generally relatives, agregados (sharecroppers), believers – not only interfered in the affairs of justice, but converted themselves into ‘another legislation,’ furthermore complicating the picture painted by José de Sá Bettencourt Acióli in 1799:

almost all of the sertão which lies at the extremities of the captaincies of Bahia, Minas Gerais, Goiases and Pernambuco suffers great inconveniences from the lack of administration of justice, due to the long roads and for the same reason: respect for royal authority in these places is very like the light, whose rays are weaker the greater the distance from the focus.18

In the context of independence and the implementation of modern political forms, these ‘representatives of the laws of God,’ feeling their personal and institutional power questioned by constitutionalism, wove alliances and voiced political practices, nuanced not by questions of a religious nature, but

122 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks by concepts of power related to a singular regional trajectory, values and political practices which, in the conception of the judges and magistrates based in those regions, were associated with the risks of ‘anarchy’ and ‘despotism’, extremes averse to the moderate liberal cause. In the following reflections we have sought to situate some of these conflicts caused by clerics in the Minas sertão, which give density to a process which was clashing with an essential competence of public administration: the strict observance of the law. Without ignoring the fact that the resistance and jurisdictional conflict in this process of qualitative transformations in conceptions of representation, sovereignty, and the foundations of the Monarchy, came from the judicial and civil authorities in the provinces, we are interested in the emergence of new forms of politics, personified in the figure of the ‘political priest’.

The education of Enlightened Luso-Brazilian clergy and its political implications

For the Luso-Brazilian case, the association between spiritual and temporal power resides in the concession that the popes made to the Portuguese and Spanish monarch of the ‘padroado’ (patronage): the right to administer ecclesiastic business aimed at “expanding the faith and the empire.”19 This concession, however, did not express a monolithic trajectory towards secularization, since the padroado represented the force of the Catholic Luso-Brazilian mentality – its cultural base and the foundations of the legitimacy of any form of government20 –, which unfolded in the secular action of the Church in Brazil, making the religious and political spheres, the sacred and profane, practically inseparable. This connection between religious practice and politics took specific form whilst the Marquis de Pombal was prime minister of King José I (1750-1777). Historically associated with enlightened Portuguese reformism, the government of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo inaugurated a policy known as regalism, aiming to place the Church under the wardship of the state, national- izing it and making its members ‘public servants.’21 As in Portugal, the Jesuits exercised an ideological monopoly which had lasted centuries22 – through a conception of teaching based on Ratio Studiorum (plan of study), which drew on classical humanism from the second scholasti- cism –, and resulted in a set of policies fundamentally conceived through the

June 2012 123 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva binomial Reformism-Pedagogy. Identifying the cultural backwardness of the kingdom as the principal obstacle to be overcome in the process of inverting its economic decadence, a particular type of pedagogical concern was derived from it, based on the central critique of the Jesuits: the question of teaching method based on the ‘prevalence of the peripatetic philosophy;’ in the ‘neglect of the study of Greek and Latin;’ the ‘disordered content taught in university subjects;’ the ‘lack of subsidiary disciplines and in the fragmentation of knowledge,’ as well as in the ‘absence of eclecticism.’23 In the Compêndio Histórico do Estado da Universidade, prepared by the Junta de Providência Literária (Board of Literary Providence), created on 23 December 1770 with the aim of examining the state of the University of Coimbra and to serve as the foundations for the writing of its New Statues, these reflections were systematized, unraveling a methodology in harmony with that advocated by the Enlightenment. Analyzing the means through which the Jesuits took possession the University, they complaining about the lack of practical guidance for students, suffocated by the use of speculative procedures and reasoning, inhibitors both of erudition – requisite for the interpretation of old texts – and experimentation, and thus of the empiricism of the Enlightenment, concluding with the impossibility of using any of the old Statutes, in force since 1598, “nothing ... for the purpose of reform.”24 In the recently reformed university regalist and Galican-Jansenist25 ideas rapidly spread, notably in the courses of Law and Theology, in which Jusnaturalismo (natural law theory) typical of the school of natural law and of people was adopted. Roman law thus lost its character of absolute and homogenous truth, also being transformed into a historic product, with the eternal being distinguished from the contingent. What was being sought was the secularization of Portuguese political thought, through the negation of the primacy of theological truths over canonic and of canon law over civil, a primacy until then present in Jesuit education. In this process, while on the one hand the ‘natural order’ was not questioned – because it was prescribed by God and revealed through the authority of the Church –, on the other it became intelligible to the extent that it was interpreted in light of history, both the sacred and profane, reducing its character as an absolute truth. Though historicization, it was possible to find arguments for renewed politico-religious attitudes. In both the metropole and the colony– where the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1759 left the teaching system destructured, introducing the regalist classes – ecclesiastics continued to be active in the progress of the Pombaline re-

124 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks forms.26 With this there emerged an essentially Catholic enlightenment, led by ‘enlightened’ men from within the Church27 who, far from making it available to the regalist objectives of the state, preserved the liturgical vision of the world in which the set of beliefs and religious values was understood as indispensible to the conservation of society. The reforms carried out in the University of Coimbra marked the intellectual education of a large part of the Luso-Brazilian statesmen who, especially those who studied law and theology between 1780 and 1790,28 were involved in the implementation of the Enlightenment reforms designed for the state and the Ultramar (overseas) and after 1820, in the process of the independence and consolidation of the Brazilian national state. Molded according to the reformist optic of the ideal profile for the public man necessary to carry out the reforms and to overcome the economic and intellectual backwardness of the Kingdom, these statesmen received an education based on the “rational study methods,” capable of educating men who were simultaneously “useful for the Republic and Religion.”29 Although not all the clerics who were involved in the phase of Brazilian national construction had obtained a university education, and even though only a small percentage had frequented the University of Coimbra – target of the Pombaline teaching reforms –, it is licit to extend the profile of the formal orientation received there to the body of priests in a general manner, a phenomenon attributed to the fact that other educational establishments in Brazil – starting with Olinda Seminary, created in 180030 – as well as the extra-scholastic spaces of sociability frequented by clerics,31 tended to adopt the model of ecclesiastic education propagated by Pombal. From this landmark in the education of Brazilian clergy there emerged the figure of the ‘political priest,’ who associated in a very peculiar manner pastoral and intellectual activities with his activities as a public man. An education which, although not exclusively confined to seminaries,32 made them more vulnerable to involvement with mundane memories, as well as contributing to the sedimentation of a type of contempt for the institutions themselves as a primordial space for sacerdotal education (Souza, 2010, p.194). This profile was related to the various complaints and accusations by provincial authorities at the moment of the affirmation of constitutionalism in Brazil, when the supposedly ‘disorderly’ action of these clerics involved in local networks of solidarity and leaders of private retinues made them similar to local potentates, appearing with alternative political projects to those of the central power.33

June 2012 125 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva

It should clarified here in relation to this apparently contradictory behavior of clerics, that the implementation of constitutional political structures reinforced their traditional ‘civil-religious action.’34 The independent Brazilian state could not dispense with the administrative and bureaucratic structure long since organized by Church, it had to use the latter´s documentary and information control system for the local population, as well as its infrastructure of personnel and buildings. As Françoise de Souza has stated:

the best example of this phenomenon can be seen in the dependence that the state in the initial period of its formation had on priests to carry out elections. By doing this it encouraged the involvement of priests in the electoral process, naturalizing even more the association between religious practice and political practice, as well as providing the men of the Church with instruments to control and manipulate elections. (Souza, 2010, p.47)

Simultaneous to the availability of documentation, space and bureaucratic personnel in the organization of elections and the progress of electoral processes, the Brazilian clergy also revealed its electoral performance in a direct manner, occupying various spaces of public power, including the Brazilian parliament. However, despite the breaches opened by constitutionalism, for the clergy to be able to continue not just exercising traditional lay functions, but as- cending into new spheres of political representation, there hovered over its representatives – as well as over the rest of the civic authorities of the various provinces – a great legal confusion about the specific attributions of civic and ecclesiastic positions, aggravated by the lack of knowledge of the ones that existed. Moreover, although the new lay attributes conferred on clerics configured a structuring dimension of the efforts to internalize the dominion of decisions and laws, captained by the central power, it involved men who through the trajectory of their education would not flee from the stigma most commonly applied to the laity: the development of ties with their respective locations, redounding in favoritisms in the disputes they arbitrated, as well as the infiltration of private questions in bureaucratic affairs. This scenario minimized the possibilities of a rational administration, hindering the predictability of order, allowing a form of conduct for the laity and clerics which reinforced, in various dimensions, its autonomous nature in

126 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks relation to both religious precepts and the power of the imperial state, causing a type of ‘competitive cooperation’35 between these authorities. In the rest of the article we will try to map out some of the patterns of social insertion recurrent among clerics based in the areas furthest from the seat of provincial power in Minas, which tore a form of action reproduced at the expense of, and often through, the law itself.

Political priests and their solidarity networks: between ‘despotism’ and ‘demagoguery’

In the perquisition of the tangible aspects which permeated the mounting of a public space in nineteenth century Minas, the logic of ‘not knowing subordination’ was presented as a characteristic mark of the actions of clerics, magistrates and other authorities based in the regions furthest from the seats of provincial power, configuring a profile of “disorder that must exist in a body without a head.”36 In the circumstances analyzed by us, the actions of these authorities – lay and religious – was most notable in the Comarca (district) of Paracatu, situated in the northwest of Minas. Unlike the material conquests which favored landholders in the center and south of the province,37 in Paracatu the traditional impermeability towards the law was loosened, a characteristic that could be associated with its geographic distance from the political and administrative center of the province – until 1815 it was still subordinated to the ouvidoria of Rio das Velhas, based in Sabará –, or the role played there by the powerful landholders, with wide-ranging and relatively autonomous political power, enrooted through the ties of kinship and clientelist networks, and consolidated during process of settling the region.38 An autonomy which favors many types of iniquities and even reproduces itself in the body of ministers charged with applying the law, and affecting the recurrent disputes for spaces of power between magistrates, judges and local power.39 In correspondence issued by the provisional government of Minas Gerais in 1823, the cause of these conflicts was still imputed to the administration of the Comarca of Paracatu, consisting of people little “apt for governance and almost none unconnected to ties of kinship and affections.”40 In relation to ecclesiastic power, the situation was even more complicated. This was because the parish priests sent to those sertões put themselves from the very beginning under the protection of the power landholders, enlarging

June 2012 127 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva their retinues,41 the ecclesiastic government based there was submitted until 1676 to the only bishopric in Brazil – that of Salvador – and from that year onwards, with the elevation of the prelacies of Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco to dioceses, it was subordinated to the Archbishop of the latter captaincy. All of the Paracatu region became part of the diocese de Olinda42 – whose boundaries extended along the São Francisco river, covering its left bank, the territory of Minas and Goiás – where in the first half of the eighteenth century the figure of the ‘despotic and absolute’ priest Mendes Santiago stands out. On 9 April 1738, the king signed an arrest warrant for him, accusing him of causing “serious disturbances in São Romão.”43 The warrant was not enforced, as the accused had crossed the frontier to the right bank of the São Francisco, starting to act as a ‘self-employed vicar’ in Paracatu, carrying out baptisms, as well as acting as a trader, rancher, cattle breeder, owner of a sugar mill and a cassava mill, as well as breaking the law, and taking possession of goods belonging to the crown – the mineral wealth of Córrego Rico – and charging expensively for his professional duties. The example of Fr. Santiago was followed by others, characterizing the profile of a clergy formed of men who were “violent, political and quarrelsome” (ibidem, p.198-201), who, until the advent of the Empire, had exercised great influence on local political life. According to the diagnosis of the French natu- ralist and traveler Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, who passed through the region at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to a great extent the problem was due to the distance from the seat of the bishopric, implying that “no vigilance can be exercised over the clergy in this part of Brazil.”44 He commented that the “priests could follow with impunity the examples of the laity who surrounded them and their conduct could not have an impact on the latter.” In the words of another contemporary traveler– Emanuel Pohl – the clergy was ‘numerous,’ and were ‘exclusively from the city,’ who possessed ‘much land’ and who were concerned with ‘economic activities.’45 In the vila (town) of Paracatu, the weight of political disputes sponsored by the local clergy was present from the moment of the formation of the provisional government, due to the opposition of Vicar Forâneo Joaquim de Mello Franco – who had held the position of ouvidor of the Comarca since 1812 – to new holder of this position, the recently invested Coronel Antonio Baptista da Costa Pinto, who had to overcome a series of political difficulties, due to the great influence of his predecessor who became, according to the Coronel, the main political influence in the area.46 When he refused to award the Vicar’s nephew, Francisco Antonio de Assis, the title of Cavalleiro, the priest led a

128 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks rising of the people against the acting Ouvidor intending to depose him and proclaim a provisional autonomy. This was reported in the correspondence from the ouvidor of the Comarca – then taking refuge in his ranch – to the provisional government, in which he denounced that he found “the people restless and the Magistrates prevented from enacting Justice freely, and all caused by a rebellious man, who has raised himself as a Despot and who intends to be the judge of all,” not recognizing any “Superior, deeming that everything is permitted to him.”47 According to the coronel, the authoritarianism of Antonio de Assis had been shown during the election of the provisional government for Minas when he sought

with all efforts as soon as the Parochial Electors arrived, to make their spirits nervous and to move them to unite to create in this Vila a Provisional Government, in which project he would be the President, and who, with all his seductions and private invitations made to some Officers of the Militia, was causing a great revolution which fortunately was interrupted by the lack of union.

Nonetheless, the document continues, even after the provisional government took power and the notice of this had reached the vila of Paracatu,

that restless man still dared to invite the Electors, Lieutenant José Luiz da Costa Araújo Arios … and the Ensigns José Carneiro, José Lopes, and Fr. Miguel de Mello Chaves and Captain João Pereira da Costa … for the new Revolution and the Creation of a new Government independent of the legitimate one …

While in this episode the nephew of the vicar from outside, Francisco de Assis, saw himself favored by the widespread influence of his uncle, a short while later, when he already held the position of judge, he was overlooked in the indication of his successor, due to the influence of another cleric from the Comarca: Rev. Manoel Carneiro de Mendonça, twin brother of the father-in- law of the then ouvidor of the Comarca, Antônio Limpo Paulino de Abreu. According to Francisco de Assis, when the ouvidor found it necessary to absent himself to take up the position of deputy in the Legislative Assembly, he had to appoint his successor to the position, and ignored the right of the ‘preference of the oldest,’ appointing Rev. Manoel Carneiro de Mendonça to the detriment of Francisco de Assis, “due to the relations of affinity and inti- macy, with which he was linked to the Reverend.”48

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Dissatisfied with this, Antônio de Assis came to cause disorder in the Vila, defying the interim ouvidor– Manoel Carneiro de Mendonça – and stating that he did not recognize his jurisdiction, inflaming the people and the other members of the Câmara (municipal council) against him, as well as disrespecting other authorities, as registered in an official letter sent by the interim ouvidor to the president of the province.49 He accused Judge Francisco Antônio de Assis of having “preference because he was, although the youngest in age, the longest in the position, and because he had some intelligence of the Law, and the Chicanos (acquired solely through the concourse of its frequent demands).” For this he drew on “art. 179 of Title 8º of the Imperial Constitution no. §14” which declared that “Any Citizen can be admitted to public, civic and military position, without any difference other than their talents and virtues.” However, the interim ouvidor stated that this “his strongest support did not breach the existing Laws, nor give him any preference” and “finally the simple complaint, and representation made to the Superiors, was not enough for him to carry out the business in question, to protect compliance with the law, suspend the march of Justice and leave a Comarca without an Ouvidor” (idem, fl. 3). Reporting other conflicts involving Francisco de Assis, he concluded that “these reasons, which reach any limited spirit, do not loom before the eyes of a man who only listens to the voice of his own love, and to the van- ity of preceding.” Described in these terms, the movement that occurred in Paracatu suggests the weight of the disputes sponsored by local potentates in the political game of independence, a dimension still little explored by the historiography, and which will certainly result in more objective readings of the institutional and cultural relations between religion and politics in its regional extraction. On these occasions, the representative of spiritual power seeks not only to take advantage of the new spaces of political representation – disputing important positions –, as well as encouraging a simultaneous and skillful instrumentalization of modern and archaic political practices and values, denouncing the prevalence of a modus vivendi that was still Ancien Regime. After all, as Rev. Manoel Carneiro de Mendonça stated, the Constitution did not derogate ‘the existing Laws.’ In the documentation researched there appear various other reports of conflicts of jurisdiction and public disorders captained by clerics. Thus, in an official letter addressed to the Presidency of the Province, dated 20 March 1824, the interim ouvidor of Paracatu, Miguel Alves de Sousa, defended himself for the accusation made against him by his successor, who had been co-opted

130 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks by the ‘fearful party’ who always sought to ‘contrast him’ with the “scoundrels responsible for this conspiracy ... Fr. João Gaspar Esteves Rodrigues, his friend Joaquim Pimentel Barbosa ... and their retinues from the two families, Baptistas and Portelas, who are their followers,” as well as their “Agents, in Salgado, Captain Serrão, and S. Romão the said former judge João Pereira, and Vicar Manoel Caetano de Moraes Cabalão”, who “seduce parties against me.”50 According to the ouvidor, “there is not one of those who have served in the court who had not stayed with Slaves or the goods of Absentees, and I wish it were for their fair prices in the market.” As an example of these infractions, he cites

Fr. João Gaspar [who] being the Prosecutor stayed with a mulatto called Adão from the goods collected from a Manoel da Costa Oeiras from Fazenda das Vazantes ... Joaquim Pimentel [who] being the Clerk of the Court, as well as having received from a Eliziário de something ... a female slave with the name Maria to comply with a tax collection... [all this, according to him] carried out by the aforementioned vicar of the Vara (District) and by his friends ... (idem, fl. 2v)

In other cases, these vicars, “with a cheating genius, and with little friend- ship for the Popular Authorities” simply ended up refusing to provide spiritual services to the local populations, preferring to private business, as mentioned in the Ofício (letter) from the Justice of the Peace of the District of São Gonçalo and Milho Verde, Jerônimo Júlio Baracho Brasileiro, who on 10 December 1831 notified the provincial government about the complaints of the inhabitants

from the district of S. Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras ... who found themselves in this Arraial (settlement) with the church closed, without them being able to fulfill the precepts of the Church because the curate of the chapel is an insolent and immoral man, an affect of the Religion who only seeks to encourage among his flock intrigue and with his arbitrary power to oppress and embarrass the Peoples, stopping to celebrate Mass in this chapel and denying the keys of the church to the other priest existing in his place so that no mass will be said to the people ... such behavior has never been seen.51

In an annexed document there are other complaints against the “omission of the priest to minister sacraments and to celebrate mass,” having let a slave of a local landholder died “without salvation,” by denying him extreme unc-

June 2012 131 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva tion, or also “having received alms to say Mass, the curate... did not do this,” having gone “to a private property” (idem, fls. 8v-9). The complex interweaving of the social networks woven by those charged with “implementing the Laws of God,” as well as their involvement with private business, appears in various other official letters sent by the court and other authorities of the Comarca of Paracatu, extending to the most northern districts of the Comarca of Serro, equally far from the Bishoprics of Mariana and Rio de Janeiro and where for a long time the clergy had been involved in political questions.52 Thus, in an official letter from the Justice of the Peace of the District of São Romão, Joaquim José dos Santos, to the Presidency of the Province on 12 April 1827, the former denounced the tumults which “occurred on 6 and 7 April 1827, organized by the parish priest of the freguesia,” in which there “was found the participation of soldiers, bribed by the parish priest.” Although the document did not clarify the purposes of this uprising, the following occurred:

Captain S. M., commander of 7th Company, was contacted by the parish priest, and interested in the 200$ rs promised him, he notified in person the soldiers of his company, Ângelo Custódio, José Carlos, Leandro Petracho and others to present themselves on 7 April ready for the uprising, which was set for the said day at eight in the morning, in the house of the parish priest, from where they were to leave. The aforementioned soldiers were unwilling and did not turn up, for which reason the aforementioned commander appeared alone at the time set.53

The co-opting of military officers by clerics and local potentates in breach of public order and the insubordination of the people was not a novelty, being incorporated in the traditional social insertion of these segments, always involved in excesses committed during diligences and in other abuses, “a reflection of the increasing militarization of the captaincy during the eighteenth century.”54 Used to great autonomy and the respect and distinction conferred by military rank and the carrying of arms, these officers refused to submit to the authorities charged with enforcing the law, according to the denunciation of the Justice of the Peace of Brejo do Salgado, in an official letter to the Presidency of the Province dated 12 November 1828, according to which “the militia attached to their privilege did not want to be called by the police inspec- tors and when there is disobedience to be brought before … these officials in accordance with the law.”55

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In the documentation researched, no disorder perpetrated by the joint interests of clerics and military officers seems to have assumed the proportions of the incident that occurred in the Lavra (mining settlement) called Independência, located in Descoberto do Ourussu, in Serro Comarca, which had been embar- goes by the state. Here, according to Joaquim de Carvalho – a police inspector, or oficial de Quarteirão, in S. Miguel e Almas, and Justice of the Peace according to the law –, “being charged by the meritorious Ouvidor and internal superintendent to maintain good order and to preserve” the said lavra,

being made fully aware that Furriel Januário Ferreira dos Santos, Commander of the Detachment stationed there to prevent theft on the National day, with the convenience of others working there in a mine whose shaft was under land already embargoed, and because it was his duty to report to the Superintendent the malpractice of this Employee, he did this and he was ordered by this Magistrate to go to the place and stop the work of the said Furriel, and his partners.

Having done this, “this Furriel who was a despot by nature went to the place where the” justice of the peace lived and “in uniform arrested him ... bringing him to the Barracks.” However, “not satisfied with the this, the Furriel in a similar outrage went to the place embargoed by the order of the Superintendent and by the Supplicant executed in his position as Justice of the Peace, deemed this embargo to be of no effect, and took the possessions of the goods,” “in which act he robbed the work of the company.”56 In a petition sent by the people of the district of São Miguel e Almas to the president of the province, it was also alleged that the Rev. Luis José Ferreira took part in this, and “digging in embargoed mountains a mine with 20 and something flights” conspired, together with the above mentioned Furriel, against the national interests. According to the supplication of the Justice of the Peace “the necessary measures had to be taken so that this Jesuit, and his hunchback colleague called Furriel Januário Ferreira Carvalho, could not feed on the treasure of others, especially that of the Nation.”57 In the eyes of these provincial authorities, no aspect in these conflicts was more alarming that the fact that the political alliances and conclaves enacted by local powers worked in a vertical sense, mobilizing what were designated as the ‘little classes,’ the ‘crude people,’ the ‘plebian anarchy,’58 expressions which allude to the “infinite tramps, white men, those of mixed race, pardos (colored), cabras (literally goats – mestizos of undefined origin) and crioulos forros (liberated Creole slaves),”59 frequently linked to the slavery of the province.

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From the perspective of the groups which wove cohesion around the moderate liberal project, the always latent threat of insurrection from these social groups was tied to the action of the supposed “enemies of the Sacred cause of Brazil,”60 represented by any tendency rival to the one they had chosen: guaranteeing ‘the just equilibrium’ between the extremes of ‘Demagoguery’ and ‘Absolutism.’61 It was in these terms that during the First Kingdom, these ‘disorderly priests’ personified the ‘risk of revolution’ imputed by provincial authorities to the demagoguery “which was characteristic of people who proclaimed themselves defenders of the ‘people’ for their own benefit,” using for this means contrary to the Constitutional System and which for this reason were associated with despotism/absolutism, real ‘political slavery.’62 In the context of the First Kingdom – and especially after 7 April –, the actions of these clerics were politicized, being identified as the party of the ‘Restoration.’ This is the cause of the concern registered in the official letter sent by the interim circuit court judge of Vila do Príncipe, João Nepomuceno de Almeida, about the need for the Enlightenment of peoples as a way to bar the proliferation of ‘subversive principles.’ Agreeing that “the first duty of rulers is to make the possible efforts to enlighten the popular masses – since with enlightenment domestic and public virtues come, and as a consequence there is happiness, which is the aim of all association,” – he recommended that in addition to “establishing public schools, permitting and protecting Freedom of the Press, and the duty of avoiding cautiously anything that can contribute to the intellectual backwardness and the stultification of the people,” the established government should “blunt the instruments of barbarity which the enemies of civilization and of Liberty have resorted to.”63 According to the circuit court judge it was these “emissaries of the bishop, and perhaps the former Emperor” – since the letter is from December 1831 – who had departed for the countryside “to preach subversive principles against the entire social order which sustained them, that the citizen should be indifferent to the public cause, blindly obeying the authorities and other similar absurdities,” as the “decanted Missionaries of Caraça” proceeded. In their missions the latter were making the “populace an instrument for vengeance, who respired and promised the now stunted but still not extinct servile party,” creating “even more dire intestinal dissent that those of the other Provinces,” because it was corroborated “by Religious fanaticism.” The accusation of the judge was repeated in another official letter sent by the interim ouvidor of Serro, José Ferreira Carneiro, alarmed with the coming

134 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks of the priests in question to Vila do Príncipe to “preach anarchy,” as it was a strategy of these “enemies of the current system,” who “have looked for the link of religion to unite them to villainy.”64 In no other location in Minas, however, did the subversion of the ‘small classes,’ sponsored by clerics, assume the proportions of the movement that occurred in São João Del Rei in the middle of 1831, which culminated in the well known Carrancas slave revolt.65 From there the substitute Justice of the Peace, Domingos Teodoro de Azevedo, reported that “one Francisco, a mixed race slave of Joaquim de Sousa Paes, has publically stated that the Vicar of this Freguesia, Joaquim José Lobo, had solicited him to make the slaves of this Freguesia revolt, insinuating to them the means by which this could be done.” Carrying out an investigation with witnesses the judge proved the reports, having found “under the bed [of his master] a slave of Fr. Joaquim Leonel de Paiva at 10 at night, this slave having been arrested and interrogated confessed that he intended to kill his master and join the slaves from other plantations in doing the same and to go afterwards to Rio de Janeiro, and there to formu- late better the insinuation of the Rev. Vicar Joaquim José Lobo”.66 Despite being named as “the head of this insurrection,” the cleric – who according to the justice of peace “is not gifted with those qualities appropriate for a true Pastor who should only look after the spiritual pasture of his sheep” – appears to have betrayed his supposed rebels, causing the revolt of the slaves who “shouted in the streets that the Vicar had betrayed them,” in the middle of this disturbance he was arrested, as well as the above mentioned slave, his ally. The progress of the resulting lawsuit highlighted the limits of the law in dealing with a social framework with such complexity. Thus, despite the seriousness of the events, the Circuit Court Judge for the Vila – Francisco de Paula Monteiro de Barros – judged in another official letter sent to the Presidency of the Province that there was not enough evidence in relation to the ‘plans for insurrection’ drafted in Arraial de Carrancas, sending for judgment only the case of the “intended murder against the life of the Rev. Joaquim Leonel de Paiva by this slave,” a crime which – according to the conclusion obtained from the interviewing of nine witnesses –, “was insinuated by the slaves of Lieutenant Francisco Machado Azevedo, father of the Justice of the Peace; to whom the same would have been done after the death of Fr. Leonel, and that at the end of all this they would all have been freed.”67 However, due to the involvement of the Justice of the Peace in the lawsuit, the circuit court judge argued that he could not “carry out the Devassa (investigation) with the papers that had been sent to him, nor carry out the indirect

June 2012 135 Ana Rosa Cloclet da Silva corpus delicti, without first the judgment of the Justice of the Peace being over- turned,” an incumbency which was not part of the attributes of the criminal judge, since in addition to the fact that the “Law of 6 June of this year” does not declare “that these could judge, even less in a summary form, or sentence the Defendants, except in the crimes of the Police,” and that among these “the crime of insurrection was not classified in the New Criminal Code.” Moreover, he noted that of the nine witnesses interviewed by the justice of the peace, six were slaves, which annulled the power of the evidence, since “Slaves are excluded by law from being witnesses and can only be admitted to give testimony, at the exaction of this law, about domestic facts and when otherwise the truth cannot be known” (idem, fls. 2-2v). Thus, “due to the omission in our Laws in relation to this case,” the circuit court judge justified, and despite “wanting to proceed with all prudence and circumspection in relation to this; with the crime being very serious when it was real and existed,” he stated that he had acted in “accordance with legal knowledge,” ordering “the two prisoners to be released... without the slightest fear of having infringed any Law” (idem, fl. 3v).

Final considerations

From the beginning of colonization the Church carried out ‘civil-religious action,’ which made it a link between the state apparatus and the subjects (believers), later citizens. At the moment of the implementation of constitutional political forms in Brazil, it accumulated new functions, acting in the building of new public spaces under the inspiration of the liberal ideal, as well as functioning, in a systematic and institutional form, as the center of electoral registers and elections themselves. This simultaneously religious and lay insertion opened breaches for the Brazilian political clergy to mold the process of the construction of spheres of constitutional power at both a national and provincial level. In addition to the skillful manipulation of the law and to the attributes of distinction conferred by the positions, there were priests who resisted the ongoing regulation through more informal ways, as this article has sought to demonstrate. Above all, in the areas most distant from the seats of temporal and ecclesiastic power, these clerics had their actions politicized, converting themselves into a powerful link between dimensions which at that moment were undergoing profound transformations and re-articulations: Brazilian society in formation and the state apparatus; regional impulses and imperial political centraliza-

136 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks tion; the delimitation of spheres of jurisprudence between the political and religious power; the sedimentation of an national identity coexisting with references of an intended universal nature. In this process, although it does not configure a uniform posture – fruit of the diversified liberal formation and of strikingly regional interests – these priests used to commanding and a typically Ancien Regime form of politics resisted the ongoing institutional adjustments, adding clientelist networks, codes of conducts and various references of cohesive power, capable of imposing limits on the process of transforming the administration into an active and rational instrument suitable of preserving order and maintaining the social equilibrium.68 Motivated by temporal questions, but also by the preservation and successive re-signification of religious identity, the actions of these clerics loosened other facets of the secular action of the Church in Brazil, allowing it a more objective reading of the institutional and cultural relations between religion and politics, which conferred complexity on the process of the formation of the state and the Brazilian nation. This article, thus, aims to stimulate reflection which, broken down into a dual dimension – historical and historiographical – can contribute to the consolidation of a less reductionist reading of what royal patronage was in the first half of the nineteenth century.

NOTES

1 FALCON, Francisco J. C. Da Ilustração à Revolução – percursos ao longo do espaço- tempo setecentista. Acervo, Revista do Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, v.4, n.1, jan.-jun. 1989. p.55. 2 DOMINGUES, Francisco Contente. Ilustração e catolicismo. Teodoro de Almeida. Lisboa: Colibri, s.d. p.90. 3 PEREIRA, Miguel Baptista. Modernidade e secularização. Coimbra: Almedina, 1990. p.7. 4 FALCON, Francisco José C. A época pombalina (Política Econômica e Monarquia Ilustrada). 2.ed. São Paulo: Ática, 1993. p.430-431. 5 SILVA, Ana Rosa Cloclet da. Ilustração, história e ecletismo: considerações sobre a forma eclética de se aprender com a história no século XVIII. História da historiografia, Ouro Preto: Ufop, n.4, p.75-87, mar. 2010. 6 ISRAEL, Jonathan. Iluminismo radical: a filosofia e a construção da modernidade 1650- 1750. São Paulo: Madras, 2009. 7 VOVELLE, Michel (Dir.) O homem do Iluminismo. Lisboa: Presença, 1997.

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8 LENHARO, Alcir. A sacralização da política. São Paulo: Papirus, 1986. p.18. 9 HAUPT, Heinz-Gerherd. Religião e nação na Europa no século XIX: algumas notas com- parativas. Estudos Avançados, São Paulo, v.22, n.62, p.77-94, 2008. Available at: www.scielo. br. 10 SOUZA, Françoise Jean de Oliveira. Do altar à tribuna: os Padres Políticos na formação do Estado nacional brasileiro (1823-1841). Doctoral Dissertation in History – Uerj. Rio de Janeiro, 2010. p.42. 11 As examples of work in this area, see: SOUZA, 2010; MICELI. Sergio. A elite eclesiástica brasileira. 1890-1930. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009; SERBIN, Kenneth. P. Padres, celibato e conflito social: uma história da Igreja católica no Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008; WERNET, Augustin. A Igreja paulista no século XIX: a Reforma de D. Antônio Joaquim de Melo (1851-1861). São Paulo: Ática, 1987; ROMANO, Roberto. Igreja contra o Estado: crítica ao populismo católico. São Paulo: Kairós, 1979; RUBERT, Arlindo. A Igreja no Brasil: galicanismo imperial (1822-1889). Porto Alegre: Pallotti, 1993. v.4. 12 Despite the common inheritance of the regalism inherited from the Luso-Brazilian enlightenment, there were priests who were religiously guided by liberal principles, as was the case of Diogo Feijó and some political priests close to him, such as Custódio Dias, José Bento, Amaral Gurgel and Maria de Moura, amongst others. These priests had very liberal ideas about the liberty of the Brazilian Church in relation to the universal Church. Assuming that there was a distinction between dogma and discipline, they sought to accommodate religious discipline to the circumstances of Brazil, with the purpose of giving the Church of the Empire its own characteristics, which were more national and closer to the religious model they advocated. For this they believed in the competence and the legitimacy of the interference of the civil power to examine the subjects which appeared in papal bulls, as well as determining the internal reforms which the Church should undergo. Without fleeing from the field of influence of regalist thought, but imposing serious restriction on the interference of the state in Church matters, was the group of priests led by the Archbishop of Bahia, Romualdo Antônio de Seixas, assisted by the Bishop of Maranhão, Marcos Antônio de Sousa, known in the historiography as the ‘conservative Catholics.` To the contrary of the ‘liberal clergy,’ they defended a greater alignment with the directives of Rome, proposing the regeneration of the Church according to the patterns established in the Council of Trent. They defended a Church for Brazil with a more universal nature and Europeanized, at the same time that they proposed greater autonomy for the Brazilian Church in relation to temporal power. 13 MOREL, Marco. As transformações dos espaços públicos: imprensa, atores políticos e so- ciabilidades na cidade imperial (1820-1840). São Paulo: Hucitec, 2005. 14 AZZI, Riolando. O clero no Brasil: uma trajetória de crises e reformas. Brasília: Rumos, 1992. 15 BRASIL, Gérson. O Regalismo brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Cátedra, 1978. 16 BOURDIEU, Pierre. A economia das trocas simbólicas. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2007. p.37.

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17 Citado em ARAÚJO, Emanuel. Tão vasto, tão ermo, tão grande: o sertão e o sertanejo nos tempos coloniais. In: DEL PRIORE, Mary (Org.) Revisão do Paraíso. Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2000. 18 Citado em ARAÚJO, 2000. p.78. 19 FILHO, João Dornas. O padroado e a igreja brasileira. São Paulo: Cia. Ed. Nacional, 1938. 20 LASLETT, Peter. O mundo que nós perdemos. Lisboa: Cosmos, 1975. 21 SILVA, Ana Rosa Cloclet da. Inventando a Nação: intelectuais ilustrados e estadistas luso- brasileiros na crise do Antigo Regime Português. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2006. 22 LOURENÇO, Eduardo. Portugal e os Jesuítas. Oceanos, Lisboa: Comissão Nacional para a Comemoração dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, n.12, 1992. 23 CARVALHO, Flávio Reis de. Um Iluminismo português? A reforma da Universidade de Coimbra (1772). São Paulo: Annablume, 2008. p.52. 24 Compêndio Histórico do Estado da Universidade de Coimbra no Tempo da Invasão dos Denominados Jesuítas e dos Estragos Feitos nas Ciências e nos Professores e Diretores que a Regem pelas Maquinações, e Publicações dos Novos Estatutos por eles Fabricados. Lisboa: Régia Officina Typ., 1771. p.IX-X. 25 The Oratorian priests were responsible for the introduction of these ideas in Coimbra. They did this through Lyon Theology, also called Lugdunense Theology, a manual which gave Christian rulers and princes the right to convoke Councils and to alter disciplinary points of the Church. It was condemned by Rome for this reasons and placed on the Index in 1792, which did not prevent it “from becoming the third most read manual among Brazilian clerics.” Another instrument for spreading Galican-Jansenist ideas was the Catecismo de Montpellier, by the Oratorian François-Aimé Pouget. This work, which re- placed Jesuit catechisms, called on the clergy and the literate laity to read the bible daily, approximating Protestantism. (AZZI, Riolando. A crise da Cristandade e o projeto liberal: história do pensamento católico no Brasil. São Paulo: Paulinas, 1991. v.II). 26 It is worth highlighting that the royal professors were to a great extent members of the clergy. The lack of qualified personnel obliged the state to use clergy, leading to an apparent return to the situation before the expulsion of the Jesuits, in which teaching was intimately associated with the ecclesiastic institution. (ANDRADE, Antônio Alberto Banha de. A Reforma Pombalina dos Estudos Menores em Portugal e no Brasil. Revista de História, São Paulo: USP, v.LVI, ano XXVIII, n.112, out.-dez. 1977). 27 The principal evidence of this fact was in the assistance sought from the Oratorians – recognized as the first to publically oppose the ‘confused and dark’ scholastic methods – many of whom were chosen for professorships in the future reformed university(SILVA, 2006). 28 CARVALHO, José Murilo de. A construção da ordem: a elite política imperial. Brasília: Campus, 1981.

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29 SILVA, Ana Rosa Cloclet da. A formação do homem público no Portugal setecentista: 1750-1777. Intellèctus, Rio de Janeiro: Uerj, v.2, 2003. 30 NEVES, Guilherme Pereira das. O Seminário de Olinda: educação, cultura e política nos tempos modernos. Dissertação (Mestrado) Instituto de Ciências Humanas e Filosofia, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). Niterói (RJ), 1984. 31 In these spaces what were important were masonry, the Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute (Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro), the Society of Assistance for National Industry (Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional) and the Society for the Defense of National Independence and Liberty (Sociedade Defensora da Independência e Liberdade Nacional), as well as multiple insertions in the spheres of education and the periodical press in this period (SOUZA, 2010, p.90-109). 32 The propensity of the Brazilian clergy to approximate the ideas of the century even occurred within the ambit of this institutional formation, since these ideas infiltrated seminaries. BERNARDES, Denis Antônio de Mendonça. O patriotismo constitucional: Pernambuco, 1820-1822. São Paulo: Hucitec; Recife: Ed. UFPE, 2006. 33 This theme is recurrent in the documentation of the General Councils of the Provinces, the first draft of provincial legislative power, written in 1823. In researching this documentation for the case of Minas Gerais, it was possible to systematize the problematic related to the actions of priests who destabilized the ongoing institutional arrangement. See: SILVA, Ana Rosa Cloclet da. A aplicação da justiça em Minas Gerais: tensões e controvérsias em torno da lei, 1822-1831. In: OLIVEIRA, Cecília Helena de Salles; BITTENCOURT, Vera Lúcia Nagib; COSTA, Wilma Peres (Org.) Soberania e conflito: configurações do Estado Nacional no Brasil do século XIX. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2010. p.287-336. 34 This action varied from education to the civil registration of births, deaths, marriages and wills, including meeting needs for assistance and holding religious rituals and sacraments. See: HAUCK, João Fagundes; FRAGOSO, Hugo et al. A História da Igreja no Brasil: ensaio de interpretação a partir do povo. Segunda Época século XIX. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 1980. p.14-15. 35 VELLASCO, Ivan. As seduções da ordem: violência, criminalidade e administração da justiça: Minas Gerais – século 19. Bauru (SP): Edusc; São Paulo: Anpocs, 2004. p.113. 36 “Ofício de D. Rodrigo José de Menezes a Martinho de Melo e Castro, de 31 de dezembro de 1781”, cited in ANASTASIA, Carla Maria Junho. A geografia do crime. Violência nas Minas Gerais Setecentistas. Belo Horizonte: Ed. UFMG, 2005. p.45. 37 According to Clotilde Paiva, along with Minas Novas, Sertão do Alto São Francisco, Triângulo, Extremo Noroeste and Sertão do Rio Doce, Paracatu shaped the group of regions with the lowest level of development. PAIVA, Clotilde Andrade. População e economia nas Minas Gerais do século XIX. Doctoral Thesis – Depto. de História, FFLCH, USP. São Paulo, 1996. p.117. 38 MATA-MACHADO, Bernardo. História do Sertão Noroeste de Minas Gerais (1690-1930). Belo Horizonte: Imprensa Oficial, 1991. p.50; SOUZA, Marcos Spagnuolo de. A ocupação

140 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Politician priests and their solidarity networks do Vale do Rio São Francisco: século XVII e XVIII. Masters Thesis – Universidade Federal de Goiás. Goiânia, 2002. 39 In relation to the nature of these disputes, see: SILVA, 2010. 40 “Registro de Ofícios do Governo Provisório ao Ministério”, de 28 ago. 1823. In: Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial – SP 07, fls. 191v e 192. 41 According to Carla Anastasia, this was the case of the Vicar of Matias Cardoso – who had been working to extend his jurisdiction in the immense territory, as well as instigating the insubordination of those loyal to the government of Minas –, who was supported by the most famous régulo (chief) of the sertão of São Francisco, Manoel Nunes Viana, who had tormented royal authorities in the region since the Emboabas War (ANASTASIA, 2005, p.79-80). 42 Only in 1854 did Paracatu Parish come to be part of the jurisdiction of Diamantina. 43 According to Oliveira Mello, this was an ‘adventurer, quarrelsome and wandering priest,’ who insisted on living in the villages on the left bank of the São Francisco river, since these belonged to the Bishopric of Pernambuco from which they were about 500 leagues distant. Among the arbitrary things he practiced was resisting the visits of priests sent by the Bishopric of Rio de Janeiro. MELLO, Oliveira. As minas reveladas: Paracatu no Tempo. 2.ed. Paracatu (MG): Prefeitura Municipal, 2002. p.179. 44 SAINT-HILAIRE, Auguste de. Viagem às nascentes do Rio São Francisco e pela província de Goiás. Tomo I. São Paulo: Cia. Ed. Nacional, 1944. p.204-205. 45 POHL, Johann Emanuel. Viagem no interior do Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; São Paulo: Edusp, 1976. p.102. 46 GONZAGA, Olympio. Memória histórica de Paracatu. Uberaba (MG): s.n., 1910. p.26. 47 Movimento político em Paracatú (1822). RAPM, ano de 1898, v.III, p.288-290. 48 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Presidência de Província, PP1/30, Cx 2, doc 5, 25/ fev/1826. 49 Ofício de Manoel Carneiro de Mendonça – Ouvidor interino – ao Presidente da Província, de 5 ago. 1826. (Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Presidência de Província – PP 1/18, cx 328, doc 53). 50 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18 cx 328, Doc. 1 (São Romão, 20 mar. 1824). 51 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 1, cx 198, Doc. 27 (Distrito de S. Gonçalo e Milho Verde, em 10 dez. 1831). 52 In relation to this, it is worth noting the example of the inconfidente Fr. Rolim, a resident of Tejuco, supposedly responsible for spreading the revolutionary ideas in Serro and in the District and whose goods were confiscated by the state. MACHADO FILHO, Aires da Mata. Arraial do Tijuco – Cidade Diamantina. São Paulo: Martins, s.d. p.93-94.

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53 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18, cx 152, Doc. 1 (São Romão, 12 abr. 1827). 54 SILVEIRA, Marco Antonio. O universo do indistinto: Estado e sociedade nas minas setecentistas (1735-1808). São Paulo: Hucitec, 1997. p.144-145. 55 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18, cx 152, Doc. 3 (Brejo do Salgado, 12 nov. 1828). 56 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18 cx 336, doc. 49. 57 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18 cx 336, doc. 51. (Manoel Joaquim de Carvalho Juiz de Paz do Distrito de S. Miguel e Almas, 25 jun. 1831). 79 names are on the petition. 58 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18, cx 152, Doc. 7. In Bluteau’s vocabulary the entry ‘plebian’ appears as a synonym of ‘people,’ ‘common people,’ stripped of those attributes which defined the condition of noble: the ‘honors and estimation,’ conferred by blood or by the authorization of the Prince. BLUTEAU, Raphael. Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino. Lisboa, 1721. v.6, p.546. 59 Carta Missiva de José Fernandes de Sousa para o presidente da Assembleia Nacional, di- rigida à Comissão do Ultramar, apresentando os vários pontos que haja necessidade de serem discutidos para o bem do povo daquela Comarca, de 15 set. 1821. (Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Seção de Manuscritos, Avulsos do Conselho Ultramarino – Minas Gerais, ms 544, cx 188, rolo 174, doc 24). 60 “Ofício do Presidente da Província à Câmara Municipal de Ouro Preto”, de 4 jun. 1831. (Arquivo Público Mineiro, Câmara Municipal de Ouro Preto, 249, p.75). 61 According to Morel, the expression ‘moderate liberalism,’ before being used in Brazil was part of the political vocabulary of the Iberian peninsula, signifying a determined conception of the state inspired by the Girondins of 1791 (revolution with the king) and the 1688 English parliament. In its Spanish version it sought the ‘equilibrium between monarchical authority and Parliament.’ In the Portuguese case, it was characterized by the predominance of monarchical sovereignty, cohabiting with the representation of the Councils. In the Brazilian case, it was expressed in its conservative version – wanting “to preserve the social order and to implement some transformations in the political order” –, which implied in the scenario of the First Kingdom removing the extremes of absolutists and the exalted. Thus, the dilemma in intending to “found a new order and to avoid the rupture of a national revolution.” MOREL, 2005, p.117-127. 62 “Congratulação da Câmara de Ouro Preto a V. M. I. pela visita realizada à Província de Minas Gerais, em 1831”. (Arquivo Nacional, pac. 758). 63 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PM, PP 1 / 18 cx 315, Doc. 37 (Vila do Príncipe, 11 dez. 1831). 64 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18 cx 336, doc. 55. (Vila do Príncipe, 11 dez. 1831).

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65 ANDRADE, Marcos Ferreira de. Rebeldia e resistência: as revoltas escravas na Província de Minas Gerais. Masters Thesis – UFMG. Belo Horizonte, 1996. 66 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18 cx 187, Doc. 8. (Vila de São João Del Rei, jul. 1831). 67 Arquivo Público Mineiro, Seção Provincial, PP 1 / 18 cx 314, Doc. 20. (S. João, 10 ago. 1831). 68 SILVA, Ana Rosa Cloclet da. De comunidades a Nação: o tempo-espaço da modernidade política mineira. In: ALMANACK BRAZILIENSE (online), São Paulo, v.2, n.2, 2005. p.43-63.

Article received on 28 March 2012. Approved on 15 June 2012.

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Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil: the relationship between State and Church in the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930) Maurício de Aquino*

Resumo Abstract

Partindo da análise de documentação Based on the documentation found in consultada em arquivos do Brasil e do archives of Brazil and of Vatican, this ar- Vaticano, o artigo discute as relações en- ticle discusses the relationship between tre Estado e Igreja Católica Apostólica the State and Roman Catholic Church in Romana (ICAR) no período da Primeira Brazil in the period 1889-1930. It is con- República brasileira. Considera-se que a sidered that the Proclamation of the Re- Proclamação da República em 15 de no- public on 15 November 1889 was associ- vembro de 1889 foi associada, por algu- ated, in some portions the Brazilian mas parcelas das elites brasileiras da elites of the time, the ideas of progress época, ao ideário do progresso e da civi- and civilization, and one of his first tasks lização, sendo uma de suas primeiras extinction the patronage on 07 January tarefas a extinção do padroado em 7 de 1890. The laicism determined at that janeiro de 1890. O laicismo determinado time Decree 119-A has proved, however, nessa ocasião pelo Decreto 119-A reve- ambiguous and pragmatic. Freed from lou-se, entretanto, ambíguo e pragmáti- the constraints constitutionals of pa- co. Livre das amarras constitucionais do tronage, the State established a new field padroado, o Estado criou um novo cam- of the relations with the different reli- po de relações com as diferentes confis- gions according to their own institution- sões religiosas, segundo os seus próprios al interests. In this context, the Roman interesses institucionais. Nesse contexto, Catholic Church, in turn, initiated a a ICAR, por sua vez, empreendeu um process of reform and reorganization processo de reforma e reorganização ecclesiastical whose core consisted of the eclesiástica cujo fulcro consistiu na cria- creation of dioceses and similar jurisdic- ção de dioceses e jurisdições similares – tions – a broad and complex territorial,

* Doctoral Student, Unesp-Assis. Colegiado do Curso de História, Universidade Estadual do Norte do Paraná (Uenp), Campus Jacarezinho. Rua Padre Melo, 1200. 86400-000 Jacarezinho – PR – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 145-172 - 2012 Maurício de Aquino um amplo e complexo processo territo- political and discursive process which rial, político e discursivo ao qual se pode can be called diocesanization. denominar diocesanização. Keywords: State and Church in Brazil; Palavras-chave: Estado e Igreja no Brasil; republican modernity; diocesaniza- modernidade republicana; diocesanização. tion.

The ‘Fifteenth of November’ and the Republican modernity

The legitimacy of the Republic proclaimed in Brazil on 15 November 1889 principally consisted of the diffuse idea that it would be a bearer of progress and civilization – notions associated with modernity. Current historiography of the First Republic corroborates this, especially by demonstrating that Brazilian modernity, in its belle époque version, became a pressing question among the intellectual, political, military and ecclesiastic elites, defining the agenda of achievements at all the principal levels of the Brazilian state which was remade in the era of nationalisms.2 When the Republic was proclaimed these ideals of progress, desires of modernity and projects of civility were already part of the commitments of Brazilian elites, largely due to the dedication and passion of the second Emperor of Brazil to science and letters. Pedro II was actually responsible for the introduction of manuals of good manners in the Court, for the fight against carnival, for the constant Brazilian participation in scientific exhibitions and fairs, and for the creation ‘in the name of science’ of the Mining School of Ouro Preto. Pedro II also financed Brazilian students abroad, with the famous ‘pensions,’ some of the best known of whom were the lawyer Perdigão Malheiros, the painter Pedro Américo and the engineer Guilherme Schüch Capanema. Pedro II also regularly attended the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute (Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro – IHGB), of which he was a patron, going to public conferences, participating in public competitions by orally examining the candidates. In all his travels, both in Brazil and abroad, he visited schools and cultural institutes, as well as participating in the 1889 Universal Exhibition which commemorated the centenary of the French Revolution, breaking the boycott organized by the monarchies of the time of this exhibition. Ironically this was the last international public presentation of Pedro II as Emperor of Brazil.3 The public image of a man of letters and of sciences constructed by Pedro

146 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil

Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil

II did not undo the fact that Brazil was still a slaveocracy monarchy at the end of the nineteenth century. The adversaries of the Empire emphasized this primitive Brazilian condition. For the historian Maria Tereza Chaves de Mello, in the 1870s republicans initiated the task of associating the republic and progress to undermine the ideological basis of the monarchist regime personified in Pedro II. In the 1880s the republican movement undertook to spread their ideas through the popular abolitionist campaign. The republicans sought to convince the elites, but also the poorer parts of society, resorting to comic images and direct phrases presented in marches and popular demonstrations (Mello, 2009, p.27). In this context the abstract desires for civility and progress, associated with the concept of the republic, gained content in the corporative demands of the first military tenentismo based on the interventionist ideology of the ‘soldier-citizen,’ in the campaigns of the most radical republican advocates, such as Silva Jardim and Lopes Trovão, in the politico-economic interests of the Partido Republicano Paulista (PRP), in the preaching and positivist projects of Benjamin Constant and the Positivist Group of the Positivist Church of Brazil and in the many voices of liberals – such as those of the ‘English of Senhor Dantas’ –, former slaveholders frightened by the weakening of the social order – such as the ‘republicans of 14 May’ – who denounced, from different perspectives, the ‘brainless power’ or the ‘macrocephaly’ in Brazilian Empire, due to the progressive absence of Pedro II in public questions and in the constant changes of ministries, which compromised the centralizing imperial administration, considered incompatible at that moment with the new socio-political conditions of final quarter of the nineteenth century in a peripheral region of the capitalist economy.4 The Republic was not a historic fatality, nor was it limited to the superfi- ciality of a putsch or a military parade. In turn, the image of the ‘bestial people’ before the Proclamation of the Republic described by Aristides Lobo, a historic republican who seemed to look to the streets of Rio de Janeiro in search of the people who had stormed the Bastille, did not establish a definitive interpretation of the social participation of the lower classes, the nature of the new regime or even the scope and socio-political repercussion of the republican era. In the form of a military coup d’état it was an authoritarian response to the socio-political agitations of a period marked by transformations in the rhythm of life and by the utopias of progress which only seem to be achieved with the end of the monarchy (Janotti, 2005; Neves, 2008, p.15-44).

June 2012 147 Maurício de Aquino

The Post-Patronage Era and the new forms of relationship between the state and the Catholic Church in Brazil

Wrapped in the ideals of progress, the Republic became a tangible reality for the Catholic Church on 7 January 1890, when Decree 119-A determined the end of padroado (patronage) and established freedom of religion in Brazil.5 A week later, through Decree 155-B, dated 14 January, the first republican calendar was endorsed in which there were no holidays of a religious nature, including Christmas.6 These decrees indicated the nature of the socio-political transformation which republican modernity wanted to imprint on the new regime, discursively sustained on scientific and technological foundations. It was the beginning of the Post-Patronage Era in relations between the state and the Catholic Church in Brazil. For approximately four centuries the Catholic Church had been the official religious institution of the state in Portuguese America, afterwards Brazil. In the times of the ‘altar on the throne,’ the Catholic Church had been part of the Portuguese imperial administration and afterwards the Brazilian imperial one, enjoying certain prerogatives typical of the ancien regime, but also insti- tutionally surrounded by royal rights of placet and exequatur7 which determined the presentation of names for the episcopacy, the validation of documents from the Roman See in imperial territory, the creation of dioceses, seminaries, convents, the receipt of the ecclesiastic tithe, which in theory was to be used to pay the côngruas (subsidies) for bishops and priests, as well as the general maintenance of the ecclesiastic organization submitted at different times to the Table of Conscience and Orders, and to the Judge of the Chapel. Since 1872, with the beginning of the so-called ‘Religious Question,’ relations between the state and the Catholic Church quivered with the imprisonment of the bishops D. Vital Maria Gonçalves de Oliveira and D. Antônio de Macedo Costa. The amnesty granted to them by Pedro II on 17 September 1875, did not really bring an end to the ‘Question,’ and the nuclear problem of the conflicts between royalists, masons, and Jacobins versus Ultramontane Catholics persisted until the coup led by Marshal Deodoro on 15 November 1889. On 7 January 1890 this chapter of the history of the patronage in America reached a definitive end. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that this rupture had been considered by the final Imperial Cabinet and was one of the slogans of the republicans, in whose most exalted discourses about progress and modernity the figure of the deceiving cleric, the Machiavellian Jesuits and Romans stood out, as they were considered responsible for keeping the conscience of

148 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil the masses in ignorance and backwards. For this reason the Catholic Church, seen at that moment as a representative of the past, was to lose its universality, giving way to ‘Science.’8 Decree119-A, a republican attempt to neutralize conflicts of value with an ethical and religious nature at the advent of the new regime, imposing the state as the constructor and manager of Brazilian socio-political reality,9 was, however, not drafted without some participation on the part of the ecclesiastic elite – apropos, on the Monday immediately before the Proclamation Minister Quintino Bocaiuva sent a letter to the Apostolic Inter-Nunciate (the diplomatic representative of the Holy See) “assuring that the Provisional Government strongly desires to maintain the friendly relations that exist between the Holy See and Brazil.”10 It is known that between 15 November and 7 January, Rui Barbosa, responsible for preparing the decree extinguishing patronage in his position as interim Minister of Justice, and the Bishop of Belém do Pará, D. Antônio de Macedo Costa, corresponded about questions related to the place of the Catholic Church and religion in the incipient Brazilian republican regime. However, D. Macedo Costa was not the only member of the Catholic hierarchy to negotiate this situation directly with Rui Barbosa at the advent of the Republic as a large part of the historiography has confirmed. The inter- nuncio Monsignor Francesco Spolverini also did so, as shown by the correspondence and reports sent by him to the Vatican Secretary of State which are found in the Brazilian Nunciature Section (principally fascicles 330 and 344) of the Vatican Secret Archive, projecting the question to the field of international relations, making Rui Barbosa’s task harder, since the Republic of the United States of Brazil also had to obtain international recognition. D. Antônio de Macedo Costa, in turn, taking advantage of the fact that he had been the teacher of Rui Barbosa in Colégio da Bahia, wrote to him in December 1889 to remind him of his Catholic roots and the promises of important republicans – indications of other negotiations – such as Quintino Bocaiuva and Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca, about the preservation of certain rights of the Catholic Church. D. Macedo Costa asserted, supported by his experience from the north to the south of the country, that “Brazil is not Rua do Ouvidor.” A statement that is full of significance, used by the Catholic Bishop to unveil what he considered musing and outbursts of progress restricted to Rua do Ouvidor – in other words to the reduced and most elitist part of the Federal Capital –, cunningly and irresponsibly projected to the whole country. He concludes exhorting: “What is certain, however, is that if they want to have a republic, they should make it Christian.”11

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It can be evaluated that the solicitations12 of D. Macedo Costa and Monsignor Spolverini13 were only partially incorporated by Rui Barbosa in Decree 119-A, dated 7 January 1890, through which the separation between the state and the Catholic Church was established with the ending of the regime of patronage, emphasizing the secular nature of the nascent Republic, but rights to freedom of worship and the maintenance of ecclesiastic properties were guaranteed, the principal fear of the Brazilian episcopate due to the historic precedents14 of the confiscation of the goods of the Catholic Church which had accompanied the implementation of republican regimes in Europe, as well as in the Americas, in addition to the payment of côngruas and other ecclesiastic expenditures for one year – a type of transitory action on the part of the state in the change of its official relationship with the Catholic Church, taking into account that the notary work of the state had been carried out by clerics due to the regime of patronage. After the publication of the Decree the Inter-Nunciate acted rapidly, asking Brazilian bishops for their impressions of the new situation inaugurated on 7 January. In a reserved circular letter sent from Monsignor Spolverini to the episcopate the tone used was dramatic and urgent: “I ask Your Excellencies to answer as quickly as possible these questions of interest to the Church in all of Brazil.”15 The bishops responded to questions about religious teaching, the conditions of dioceses, the property of religious orders and the number of Catholic schools in relation to what was determined in Decree 119-A. They were also asked to give their impression of the new political and religious situation. D. Lino Deodato’s reply, then the Bishop of São Paulo, to the inter- nuncio’s request is significant:

In relation to the future, the Decree in its judicial and true interpretation will have a beneficial result, restoring liberty to the Church which until now has been opposed by Cesarism, which not knowing to a great extent the union and independence of the two power – civil and ecclesiastic –, the dogma of wardship and the conserver of all the others, tends to absorb the Church in this country, reducing it to a branch of the administration of the state.16

Publically, however, the episcopate showed itself to be confused about the new reality of the Post-Patronage Era, and even those who agreed with D. Lino, such as the Bishop of Diamantina, D. João Antônio dos Santos, were timid in defending and publically stating their own opinions. On 19 March 1890, the bishops officially adopted a position on the new situation created by Decree

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119-A in a document, which was somewhat discursively fragmented, which nonetheless became historic in the sense that it marked the beginning of a new period in the history of the Catholic Church and religion in Brazil, as well as containing the beginnings of ecclesiastic discourses and practices during the First Republic: the first Collective Pastoral letter of the Brazilian episcopate. Decree 119-A indicated and favored the development of secularization in Brazil with the creation of a lay state which, nonetheless, sought to mediate and accommodate, on the one hand, the anticlerical demands of Jacobins, masons and positivists, and on the other, Catholic demands made by a small, but prestigious, ecclesiastic elite with a national scope, and even international due to the increasingly close relations with the Holy See. However, with this Decree the Provisional Government pleased neither the anti-clericals, the anti-Catholics, or even the Catholics themselves, triggering a period of debates and discussion about religious questions, permeated with conflicts and tensions, which was only terminated in the constitutional sphere on 24 February 1891, with the promulgation of the first republican Constitution of Brazil. The exhortations of the Brazilian episcopate in the 1890 Pastoral Letter were ambiguous about the separation, moving between the lament for the loss of privileges and jubilation for institutional liberty. The bishops offered support at the same time that they intimidated the Brazilian republican government with apocalyptical threats of social disorder and war which could result in the besieging and persecution of the Catholic Church. They repudiated the liberal motto “Free Church in a Free State” by requesting the union – as distinct entities – of the Catholic Church and the state since they considered Catholicism to be the only true religion, and above all because it was the faith of the majority of the Brazilian people. They did not openly oppose the Republic nor did they defend the monarchy, after all they considered the Church “to be indifferent to all forms of government. It thought that all could achieve the temporal happiness of peoples, provided that they and those who govern do not despise Religion.”17 A willingness for conciliation was shown as long as the rights of religion were preserved. ‘Catholic Brazil,’ in the various senses attributed to this expression, which arises out of a certain type of foundational myth of the nation as Marilena Chauí has analyzed, would hereafter being the distich of the slogan of the Ultramontane struggle in the First Republic.18 For Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, it was undeniable that the 1890 Collective Pastoral Letter demonstrated the political option of the Brazilian episcopate for the Republic. The letter “emerges as almost a frank applause for the repub-

June 2012 151 Maurício de Aquino lican regime, created four months earlier, notwithstanding the fact that in principle it was almost impossible to approve the ideas of separation between Church and state.”19 Anna Maria Moog Rodrigues considers that the idea of separation is equivalent to opposition to the prelates, thus the insistence of the Pastoral Letter on union between the powers. Furthermore, the Brazilian bishops “had already initiated a bitter and systematic fight against the philosophy of secularization established with the Republic.”20 Maria Moog emphasizes the paradoxical nature of the posture of the episcopate, on the one hand celebrating the liberty stipulated in the 7 January Decree, and on the other repudiating the separation between state and church which equated Catholicism to the other beliefs. Thomas Bruneau has argued that this ecclesiastic posture transcribed in the 1890 letter “appears contradictory unless we take into account the historic manner of defining and exercising influence.”21 Rather than paradoxical or contradictory, it can be argued that it is better to understand it as ambiguous, concerned with a determined theological and political project of the Church in a contextual relationship between Church and state that belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century, sustained by a balance of tensions between these institutions. Actually the studies of José Carlos de Souza Araújo and Euclides Marchi have proposed that the 1890 Pastoral Collective should be understood as a program of Catholic demands and as an institutional directive of relations between Church and state during the First Republic.22 In this process what calls attention is the meeting of the Episcopal Seminary of São Paulo, from which resulted the Pastoral Letter, having been convoked by the inter-nuncio, Monsignor Francesco Spolverini, whom became the go-between between the bishops, the Holy See and the ministers of the Provisional Government. The actions of Monsignor Spolverini highlighted the consistent ecclesiastical organizational network which linked the Church in Brazil to the Roman See at the advent of the Brazilian Republic. A man of the times of Pius IX, Monsignor Spolverini sought to accompany everything from close up, though always with much prudence in relation to the government, as can be seen in this extract from a letter sent to Cardinal Rampolla:

the goods of the Orders are secure for now, or at least at the moment when the Marshal is at the head of the government. Certainly, his expressions in favor of these goods have been very clear and decisive. In reality, however, it is not so clear: the more or less latent danger always exists.23

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This extract from the correspondence allows us reflect on at least two points: one, the instability and precariousness of relations between the state and the Catholic Church in the period; the other the non-existence of an ace- phalic administration of the Catholic Church in Brazil in that context. Aware of the transitory nature of the 7 January Decree, valid until the new constitution was enacted, Monsignor Spolverini assumed a vigilant posture. After Decree 119-A the Inter-Nunciate came to coordinate all the nomi- nations and successions of bishops, though now there was no need to present the names to the Emperor. In the middle of the 1890s, in a consistory held in Rome there occurred the first designation and nomination of bishops to the Brazilian Church in the Post Patronage Era: D. Macedo Costa was promoted to the Archibishop Primate in Bahia, D. Cláudio Ponce de León was moved from Goiás to Porto Alegre, and the first bishops were appointed under the Republic, Manuel dos Santos Pereira, Silvério Gomes Pimenta, João Tiago Esberard, Jerônimo Tomé da Silva and Joaquim Arcoverde. At the end of the 1890s, the inter-nuncio thought it wise to consult the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Quintino Bocaiuva, about the possible change of the prelacy in the Federal Capital, in order not to displease the government, especially because a confessed monarchist, D. João Tiago Esberard, was going to be appointed. In a confidential dispatch, dated 31 December 1890, Bocaiuva stated that he was thankful for the consultation ordered by Cardinal Rampolla, Secretary of State of the Vatican, but abstained on answering the question, stating that “since Church and state have been separated, the nomination of bishops is a matter of exclusive competence of the Holy See.”24 This meeting determined the new directions of the Catholic Church in Brazil and the discourse, strategies and practices of the Brazilian episcopate in the new republican environment. Bocaiuva’s consultation was part of this project. It marked the respect of the Holy See for the government of the Republic, officially recognized by the Roman See, and its intensions of consecrating friendly relations between the two governments. The response of the Minster of Foreign Affairs, equally polite, outlined the republican historical vision of the independence of the state and religious confession, at the same time that it acknowledged the competence of the Vatican in Brazilian ecclesiastic questions. Furthermore, Bocaiuva’s position was considered by the episcopacy as a gesture of unity between the civil and ecclesiastic societies, and of the independence of powers. Furthermore, this letter was later used by the Roman See whenever the Brazilian government tried to interfere too much in the designation and nomination of any bishop. Drawing on Norbert Elias, in this social

June 2012 153 Maurício de Aquino figuration which was being created, the state and the Catholic Church from the beginning sought to maintain a certain equilibrium of tensions.25 The heated debates and conflicts involving the religious question were closed on the constitutional level by the promulgation of the first republican constitution on 24 February 1891.26 The articles related to the religious question bore the marks of Decree 119-A. The liberal principle of separation of church and state was preserved, as well as the determination of the secularization of cemeteries, state recognition of only civil marriage, freedom of worship once republican laws were respected, lay teaching in public schools, ineligibility of non-enlistable citizens, prohibition of the vote to those who swore oaths of obedience, prohibition of the subsidizing of worship or religious works by the Union or the states. Although the Catholic bishops did not obtain greater privileges for the Catholic Church, anti-clerical proposals, such as the confiscation of the goods of orders and congregations by the right of the state to mortmain, or the prohibition of the entrance of new foreign congregations, as well as the expulsion of the Jesuits, did not appear in the 1891 constitutional text. The Brazilian republican state that emerged was, nonetheless, secular, and wanted to establish itself as a modern state, with the results that disputes were unavoidable with the Catholic Church over the production and transmission of the meanings of the world through ritualistic and discursive resources.27 However the nature of its laicité expressed in the 1891 Constitution was not anti-religious or confessional, nor was it similar to the French or US laicité of that time. Roughly speaking, it can be called ‘pragmatic laicité’ (pragmatic involves here the notions of utility and practicality, but also implies the set of rules or formulas for Court and Church ceremonies), since the Brazilian state, by guaranteeing its own civil independence in relation to the ecclesiastic, created with Decree 119-A a large relational space with the different religious confessions to advantage of alliances, omissions, negotiations and persecutions, according to the state’s own interests, or better of those who controlled it. Promulgated in the name of the representatives of the Brazilian people and not in the name of ‘God,’ the first republican constitution responded to the conflicts and results arising out of the Brazilian historic process, establishing in the country a type of laicité characterized by the judicial recognition of religious confessions which, among other reasons, accommodated a large part of the social tensions inherent to the prelude to the republican regime in Brazil. Considering the observations of Valerio Zanone, this type of laicité became possible because:

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The theory of the lay state was based on a secular and not sacred conception of political power, seen as an autonomous activity in relation to the religious confessions. These confessions, however, placed on the same sphere and with equal liberty, could influence politics, in direct proportion to their social weight. The lay state, when correctly perceived, did not thus profess an ideology of ‘la- icité,’ if we understand by this an irreligious or anti-religious ideology.28

This ‘pragmatic laicité’ assumed by the Brazilian republican state allowed the social and legal recognition of various religious confessions in the country, at the same time that it favored the action of the owners of power with ecclesiastic institutions in special circumstances for republican projects. This was what happened, for example, in relation to the missions in the north of the country, a region that demanded enormous administrative attention and revealed the challenges and limits of the new political regime. The Provisional Government already considered indispensible the work of the missionaries in those sites far from the Federal Capital. In 1891 the first constitutional republican government, following policies put into action during the Empire, contacted Monsignor Spolverini to officially request the aid of the Capuchins in the north of the Amazon, assuring full support and all means necessary to carry out the project. In 1895 the same would happen in Mato Grosso involving the Salesians who created their missionary center in that state.29 In the first republican decade, in times of civil war and economic reces- sion, state and Catholic Church – notwithstanding the significant presence of masons and Protestants in the official political means and of Catholic monar- chists in the direct and indirect resistance to the Republic – drew close on more than one occasion to maintain social order and the stability of their institutions, such as during the Federalist and Navy Revolts (1893-1895), but above all, in the outcome of the Canudos War (1893-1897), a socio-religious movement in the Brazilian Northeast, led by Antônio Conselheiro, which put in check the legitimacy of the republican government and the moral conduct of the Brazilian ecclesiastic hierarchy. In the ad intra dimension, the Catholic Church in Brazil set out on a process of reform and reorganization based on the guidelines in the document entitled Instruções, dated 14 June 1890, and signed by Cardinal Rampolla, Secretary of State for the Vatican. The document determined certain central points for the Brazilian episcopate:

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1. Unity between bishops; 2. Reform of clergy; 3. Reform of religious orders and congregation in Brazil; 4. Control of brotherhoods and fraternities; 5. Missionary action in the interior of Brazil; 6. Introduction of European devotions, especially that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Family; 7. Intensification of catechism; 8. Formation of new dioceses; 9. Search for new sources of funding.30

These points were presented and discussed between 10 and 20 August 1890 in the first large conference of the Brazilian in São Paulo. On this occasion D. Macedo Costa prepared based on Cardinal Rampolla’s Instruções a document entitled Alguns pontos de reforma na Egreja do Brasil – Memória para servir às discussões e resoluções nas Conferencias dos Snrs. Bispos (Some points for the reform of the Church in Brazil – Memorial to serve for discussion and resolutions in the Conferences of Bishops), dated 2 August 1890. The first chapter of the document dealt with the purpose of the conferences and the need for the union of the Brazilian episcopate (an old wound with D. Macedo Costa, who had complained many times about the lack of support from bishops during the ‘Religious Question’) in times considered adverse to the Church:

In the extremely serious situation of religious affairs in Brazil, all of us Bishops are meeting in accordance with the wishes manifested by the Apostolic Holy See, so that as brothers we can discuss and decide on practical measures that shall now be put into action uniformly in all the dioceses, in order to restore the discipline of the Clergy, to resolve evils, reform abuses, give all decorum and luster to the worship of God, so that in this way we can make the faith, piety and good customs flourish once again among the believers who trust in our pastoral care.31

Chapter IX covered what D. Macedo Costa considered in this document as the “point so important for the prosperity of Religion in our country,” that related to dioceses:

The argument that the dioceses in proportion to the vastness of the country, with numerous populations distant from the center, was always a desire manifested often to the government, on whom the respective approval was dependent. Now the Holy See is free to create new dioceses, without any interference from any part of the state, I think it the only difficulty is the lack of a convenient allocation, so that the new Sees can be created on the foundations of the Tridentine Conc.32

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D. Macedo Costa also highlighted the need of continuing catechetical work with the Indians, a clear claim of the civilizing character of Christianity. In Chapter V, about Mission, he presented his ideas about the theme in “Article II – The savages”:

Also these Missions we have to be very open to expand in Brazil the kingdom of God. The Holy See expects that the state will recognize that only religion can propagate civilization, as proved by the history of the patria and universal history, will furnish, with always more of less faith, the means for this catechism, and that the zeal of the Bishops to seek Missionaries for the poor Indians will not go without effect.33

The work with the indigenous population continued to be for D. Macedo Costa the link capable of somehow keeping the state and the Catholic Church together. At the end of the discussion, it was proposed to hold a National Council in 1891, but this was not done due to the death of D. Antônio de Macedo Costa during that year, as well as articulations against it on the part of the republican government and even the Roman Curia. In fact, this council would only be held much later, in 1939.

Diocesanization, a strategy of the Catholic Church in republican modernity

Based on the Instruções of Cardinal Rampolla, and Alguns pontos de reforma da Egreja, by D. Macedo Costa, it can be stated that the creation of dioceses was the strategy par excellence of the Ultramontane project of the making the presence of the Catholic Church ubiquitous in Brazil under the auspices of the self-comprehension of the ‘perfect society’ outlined in the 1890 Pastoral Letter. Dioceses were advanced units of socio-political and religious action for the Catholic Church in whose territorial limits the ecclesiastic reforms substantially outlined by Cardinal Rampolla and by D. Macedo Costa were carried out. Under the analytical inspiration of Michel de Certeau, strategy is understood as the act of creating a place that is considered legitimate and specific for a subject to want and have in the space of another, and through this specific place relations can be managed with an exterior of targets or threats. In Michel de Certeau’s words:

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Strategies are thus actions which thanks to the postulate of a place of power (the property of a specific person), theoretical places are prepared (totalizing discourses and systems), capable of linking a set of physical places where the forces are distributed. These combine three types of place and aim to dominate them, some by the others. Spatial relations are thus privileged.34

Diocesanization as a strategy was the solution found by the Catholic Church in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe to compensate the loss of ecclesiastical territories in the Italian peninsula and other places. A religious territoriality35 was created which in principle subjected the whole world to ecclesiastic jurisdictional interventions. The world could be divided into dioceses, prefectures, prelacies, parishes, etc. In this way, it can be considered that this strategy preserved and expanded in the spiritual arena and in the sphere of religious control, the old dominions of the Church, transposing for this new territoriality the symbolic capital and the institutional might acquired by Roman Catholicism during its millenary history. In Brazil before 1890 the creation of these ecclesiastic circumstances depended on the state, which did not build them, above all, for financial reasons, though at the end of the Empire political reasons had predominated. After 1890, the Holy See took the responsibility for the founding of new dioceses and “the Brazilian bishops deemed that the moment had arrived to expand these organisms of ecclesiastic power.”36 The first results of the evaluations and discussions about the creation of new dioceses in Brazil took place in 1892 when Pope Leo XIII created through the bull Ad universas orbis ecclesias,37 dated 27 April, the dioceses of Amazonas, Curitiba, Niterói and Paraíba,38 in addition to elevating Rio de Janeiro to an Archdiocese and dividing Brazil into two Ecclesiastic Provinces: the Northern, with a seat in Salvador; and the Southern with a seat in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This was the first effective action in the process of diocesanization, with the increase of the number of dioceses from 12 to 16. In fact, the question of bishoprics was the object of increased attention of the Catholic Church during the Plenary Latin-American Council held in Rome in 1899. The Decrees of this Council, in particular articles 179 to 203, associated bishops with dioceses. In addition, these were defined, above all, as territories governed by bishops. It can even be said that at that time the notion of diocese (territory delimited by the pastoral action of the bishop) was absorbed by the notion of bishopric (area of dominion of the bishop). In general, an elevation in the ecclesiastic hierarchy also occurred within this bishop-diocese

158 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil relational field, since, for example, to become an archbishop or cardinal a bishop had to be given an archdiocese, a metropolitan see. Years later, the 1917 Canon Law Code confirmed this territorial emphasis of the diocese and the personal dominion of the bishop over it, principally in articles 215-217.39 The need to increase the number of bishops, with the tangential resource to appoint auxiliary bishops or coadjutors, propelled the creation of new dioceses. In the 1894 encyclical Litteras a vobis, Pope Leo XIII wrote that among the many causes of the decline of Catholicism in Brazil, especially important was the small number of bishops for such vast regions, preventing the necessary vigilance over the behavior of priests and believers in order to ensure the dignity of Catholicism. It can be understood from this text that for Pope Leo XIII the absence of bishops was responsible for the fragility of Catholicism in Brazil and for the consequent separation between the state and the Catholic Church at the advent of the Republic. For this reason he took advantage of the occasion of the creation of new provinces and dioceses in 1892, to exhort the authority of the bishop in his diocesan territory, as well as respect for their responsibilities in the education of new priests in seminaries in Brazil and in the Pio Latino-Americano college in Rome, and in the assiduous vigilance of the behavior of clerics and the laity.40 With the Republic the old imperial provinces assumed the status of fed- erations, implying considerable judicial and administrative freedom for the states. Each state, for example, had its own constitution, making efforts to distinguish itself from the other federative units in the Republic. This reality demanded a certain adjustment of their administration from the Brazilian episcopate and the Nunciate in Brazil in order to deal in a particular manner with each state. In this environment the creation of dioceses in these new territories became preeminent for ecclesiastic projects. However, this does not signify that the dioceses were created in the wake of the establishment o federal capitals and regional districts. In other words, the diocesanization of Catholicism in Brazil occurred at the Catholic Church’s own rhythm, in a time of widespread institutional restructuring and not simply in the wake of events in republican politics as Sérgio Miceli insinuates in A elite eclesiástica Brazileira,41 apparently reducing ecclesiastic efforts to the construction of an oligarchic pact. It has to be emphasized that the creation of a diocese on the threshold of the republican order established a new space of socio-political reference, and its acceptance by the civil authorities furthermore legitimated a determined ecclesiastic space in society juxtaposed on lay space. After all, the official rec-

June 2012 159 Maurício de Aquino ognition of a diocese was in effect the recognition of the legitimacy of the institutional action of the Catholic Church which, however, was interpreted by the Republic of Councilors as extremely favorable to the Brazilian intentions of internal progress and leadership in South America in the search for a leading role in the window of international capitalism. In 1903-1904 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the prestigious Baron Rio Branco, after the successful negotiation which resulted in the consolidation of the Brazilian Embassy in the Vatican and the raising of the Inter-Nunciature to an Apostolic Nunciature in Brazil, made efforts to obtain from the Roman See a cardinalate for a Brazilian bishop, which in Rio Branco’s words, cited by Magnoli, “help to consolidate and increase the prestige of Brazil in the world, particularly among our neighbors.”42 The prestige was obtained, since in 1905 the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, D. Joaquim Arcoverde de Albuquerque Cavalcanti, was graced with the cardinal’s purple. Rio Branco and Rodrigues Alves, leading names in the Republic of Councilors, approximated the Catholic Church due to its institutional power and international prestige it enjoyed. At this moment in the second decade of republican government, the preeminent need to consolidate national frontiers with the South American countries sealed once and for all the good relations between these Councilors and the Roman Curia. For a young republic the definition of territorial borders was a basilar question of the sovereignty of the state and fulcrum of the civilizing project which it was supposed to carry out in the age of nationalisms, as Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm have asserted. In addition, in those times constant vacant territories could attract the greed of imperialist powers, which concerned the Brazilian government.43 The secular presence of Brazilian Catholic missions in the frontier regions was favorable to Brazil during the arbitration of territorial litigations to the extent that the principle of uti possidetis44 underpinned the verdicts. In 1904 the participation of the Nunciature in these processes was direct. The nuncio in Brazil, Giulio Tonti, was chosen by the Brazilian and Peruvian governments to lead the arbitration tribunal responsible for defining the borders between the two countries. The work was long, only being completed in 1910, with Brazil acquiring a large part of the contested territories, but it had to pay Peru £52,240.00 sterling and 180 contos de réis. The result left Baron Rio Branco very happy, who he publically showed his gratitude for the work of the Nunciature and the Holy See.45 In this way the diocesanization of Catholicism in Brazil, as part of an international movement of the reorganization of the Catholic Church, was pre-

160 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil sented as a fundamental ecclesiastic strategy to expand the ecclesiastic presence in Brazilian society, responding to the demands of the Roman Curia and to the specific socio-political and religious needs in each federative unit of the Brazilian Republic. Diocesanization also indicated the ambiguous and tense relation of the Catholic Church with modernity, after all, it incorporated many of its new scientific and technological novelties, but combated its moral and religious repercussions. Inscribed in these contexts and processes, the diocesanization of Brazilian Catholicism during the First Republic was responsible for creating a network of dioceses, prelacies and prefectures which gave an unprecedented territorial capillarity to the Catholic Church in its history in Brazil, especially because of its institutional incursion into the ‘sertões.’ This phenomenon is what is most emphasized in the historiography of Catholicism during this period, seen by some as the result of a successful movement of institutional construction which provided the necessary support for the implementation of ultramontane Catholicism, following European patterns and for a new type of collaborative relationship between Church and state denominated ‘Neo-Christianity.’46 For other analysts, this phenomenon of the creation of ecclesiastic jurisdictions and of Catholic colleges did not lead to a real connection between the Catholic Church and society, and notwithstanding the expressive number of circumscriptions created in this movement, Catholicism was physically and doctrin- ally, very distant from the problems and the lives of the majority of the Brazilian population.47 In relation to this, the geographers Roberto Lobato Correa and Zeny Rosendahl have analyzed the process of the spatial diffusion of the Catholic Church in Brazil through its dioceses and prelacies between 1551 and 1930. They emphasize that this analysis should take religious territory to be “a de- marcated territory in which access is controlled and within which authority is exercised by a religious professional. It has its specific structures, including a mode of spatial distribution and the management of the sacred” (Correa; Rosendahl, 2006, p.7). The set of practices developed by groups or institutions to control the territory is called territoriality. Correa and Rosendahl evaluate that until 1890 Catholic territoriality aimed to guarantee the appropriate of the vast territory for the official state religion, under the system of Patronage. After Decree 119-A, “the process of creating dioceses was accelerated... 68 new dioceses were created in forty years.” In a new institutional phase, the Church had to proceed in such a way that its symbolic power was territorially materialized. Correa and Rosendahl state that the spatial concentration of seats of these

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Catholic territories reproduces in general terms the pattern of settlement in Brazil through complex patterns of diffusion, reflecting and conditioning the actual territorial dynamics of the country (ibidem, p.7). With the aim of exploring these considerations, Figure 1 expresses the movement of the creation of archdioceses, dioceses and prelacies in Brazil between 1551, the year of the first diocese (in Salvador), the situation in 1889, the occasion of the Proclamation of the Republic, and in 1930, the end of the First Republic. What stands out is the quantity of ecclesiastic circumscriptions created between 1890 and 1930, the time of the real diocesanization in Brazil, the phenomenon of the historic rupture and the structuring of the later actions of the Catholic Church in Brazilian society.

Figure 1 – The expansion of the number of archdioceses, dioceses and prelacies in Brazil between 1551 and 1930. Source: Ceris: Catholic annuaries, 1965 and 2000. Arquivo da Cúria Metropolitana de São Paulo.

70 60 50 40 Archidiocese 30 Diocese 20 Prelacy 10 0 1551 1889 1930

Archdioceses, dioceses and prelacies correspond to the most usual Catholic jurisdictions of the period, with vicarages and apostolic prefectures also existing. TheseNorthern circumscriptions established a hierarchization of space, as 2% can be noted in the reading of articles related to the theme in the 1917 Code 48 of Canon Law. Archdioceses and dioceses wereNorthern founded in territories considered to be civilized andNortheas worthytern of holding a bishopric. The archdioceses Southern 21% Northeastern were a38 step% above dioceses to the extent that they were the metropolitan seats Eastern of an ecclesiastic province formed of a set of dioceses, usually created in the Central old territory of an archdiocese, maintaining a territorial link with the latter. The bishopCentra ofl an archdioceseEastern was differentiatedSouthern from his diocesan homonym, 5% 34% receiving the title of metropolitan archbishop, and in some cases was directly graced by the pope with the title of Cardinal, which put him in the Sacred College and qualified him for the Conclave.

162 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Southern 5%

Central 19% Northern Northeastern Eastern Northern Eastern 5% 52% Central Southern Northeastern 19% Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil

Prelacies, in turn, were recognized by the 1917 Code of Canon Law as dioceses, but in practice were directed by a male religious congregation, whose abbot, or prior, or superior was the ordinary of the prelacy, a circumscription created in regions close to mission lands. In the lands considered to belong to missions, the Catholic Church established vicarages and apostolic prefectures, not always directed by bishops and under the control of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio Propaganda Fide).49 Vicarages and apostolic prefectures were created in lands of savages and those uncivilized from the European Christian perspective. At the beginning of the twentieth century Brazil was administratively organized in twenty states and the Federal District. In 1913 the first territorial division of the country into five Brazils was proposed: Northern Brazil or Amazonian including Acre, Amazonas and Pará. Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco and Alagoas formed Northeastern

Brazil70 . Eastern Brazil grouped Sergipe, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro – where60 the Federal District, the seat of Brazilian government was based – and Minas50 Gerais. São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul were part40 of Southern Brazil. Finally, Goiás and Mato Grosso, constituted ArchidioceseCentral Brazil. Diocesanization affected the Brazils of the First Republic in an unequal 30 Diocese manner, as can be seen in Figure 2, giving the regional percentage of dioceses 20 Prelacy created in the period, confirming the hierarchization between the regions and 10 states do Brazil based on two cores: Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. 0 1551 1889 1930 Figure 2 – Percentage of Dioceses created in the five Brazils of the First Republic. Source: Ceris: Catholic annuaries, 1965 and 2000. Arquivo da Cúria Metropolitana de São Paulo.

Northern 2%

Northern Northeastern Southern 21% Northeastern 38% Eastern Central

Central Eastern Southern 5% 34%

June 2012 Southern 163 5%

Central 19% Northern Northeastern Eastern Northern Eastern 5% 52% Central Southern Northeastern 19% 70 60 50 40 Archidiocese 30 Diocese 20 Prelacy 10 0 1551 1889 1930

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In the first 20 years of the Republic 25 dioceses were created, while in the final 20 years anotherNorthern 31 new dioceses were. Between 1908 and 1922 alone, 32 of the 56 dioceses founded2% in the First Republic were created. The Southern and Eastern Brazils were those in which new dioceses were most concentrated Northern in the period, accumulating Northeas72% oft ernthe total. The Northern and Central Brazil, Southern 21% Northeastern with the lowest38% percentages of dioceses created, were, nevertheless, were the areas with the highest number of prelacies and apostolicEaster nprefectures, as can be seen in Figure 3. Northern or Amazonian Brazil housedCentra morel than half of the 18 prelaciesCent andral three apostolicEastern prefectures duringSouthern the period. 5% 34% Figure 3 – Percentage of Prelacies and Prefectures created during the First Republic in the five Brazils. Source: Ceris: Catholic annuaries, 1965 and 2000. Arquivo da Cúria Metropolitana de São Paulo.

Southern 5%

Central 19% Northern Northeastern Eastern Northern Eastern 5% 52% Central Southern Northeastern 19%

From what has been discussed it can be stated that the diocesanization of Catholicism, in other words, the territorial and institutional expansion of the Catholic Church in Brazil during the First Republic, re-dimensioning physical, political and discursive places, was assumed by the Roman Curia and the Brazilian episcopate as the basilar strategy (in the Certeaunian sense) for the Ultramontane reform of Catholicism and the renovation of the presence of the Catholic Church in society, as can be perceived in the analysis of the principal ecclesiastic documents from the period. It was in the reference space created by the diocese/prelacy/prefecture that Ultramontane Catholicism gained legitimacy and was able to develop. An institution which considered itself as a ‘perfect society,’ holder of spiritual power, the Catholic Church consolidated a concept of religious territoriality which tied territorial questions to spirituals, civil to ecclesiastic, nonetheless, emphasizing the supremacy of the spiritual and ecclesiastic under its control, recog-

164 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil nized, by historic vicissitudes and socio-political needs as the geographic reality with a judicial personality by the Brazilian state itself, whose leaders adopted an ambiguous and pragmatic conception of laicité which was well accepted by the Catholic hierarchy, despite the discourses made in favor of the prerogatives of the Catholic Church, which put an end to the idea of a Catholic party – whose experiences in Brazil were always unsuccessful – and established a tense, but continuous, articulation between the state and Catholic Church in the First Brazilian Republic, with profound effects on the forms and dynamics of the control of national territory.

NOTES

1 This article contains part of the results obtained in my doctoral research about the creation of dioceses in Brazil during the First Republic, carried out in FCL-Assis-Unesp since 2009, under the supervision of Prof. Ivan Esperança Rocha, with a doctoral grant from CNPq. I would like to dedicate this work to the memory of Prof. Eduardo Basto de Albuquerque, who died on 24 June 2009. 2 COSTA, Angela Marques da; SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz. 1890-1914: no tempo das certezas. 2.reimpr. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. p.15 passim; HEIZER, Alda; VIDEIRA, Antonio Augusto Passos (Org.) Ciência, civilização e República nos trópicos. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad; Faperj, 2010. p.7 passim; SEVCENKO, Nicolau. Introdução. O prelúdio republicano, astúcias da ordem e as ilusões do progresso. In: ______. (Org. Vol.) República: da Belle Époque à Era do Rádio. 8.reimpr. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008. v.3, p.7- 48 (História da Vida Privada no Brasil, v.3); HARDMANN, Francisco Foot. Trem-fantasma: a ferrovia Madeira-Mamoré e a modernidade na selva. 2.ed. rev. ampl. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005. p.63 passim; NEVES, Margarida de Souza. Os cenários da República: o Brasil na virada do século XIX para o século XX. In: FERREIRA, Jorge; DELGADO, Lucilia de Almeida Neves (Org.) O tempo do liberalismo excludente: da Proclamação da República à Revolução de 1930. 3.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2008. p.13-44 (O Brasil Republicano, v.1); RAGO, Margareth. Os prazeres da noite. 2.ed. rev. ampl. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2008. p.21-33; MELLO, Maria Tereza Chaves de. A modernidade republicana. Revista Tempo, Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal Fluminense, v.13, n.26, p.15-31, 2009; JANOTTI, Maria de Lourdes Mônaco. O diálogo convergente: políticos e historiadores no início da República. In: FREITAS, Marcos C. (Org.) Historiografia brasileira em perspectiva. 6.ed. São Paulo: Contexto, 2005. p.119-144; LUCA, Tania Regina de. República Velha: temas, interpretações, abordagens. In: SILVA, Fernando Teixeira da; NAXARA, Márcia R. Capelari; CAMILOTTI, Virginia C. (Org.) República, liberalismo, cidadania. Piracicaba (SP): Unimep, 2003. p.33-49; FALCON, Francisco J. C. Historiografia republicana e historiografia da República. In: HOMEM, Amadeu Carvalho; SILVA, Armando Malheiro da; ISAÍA, Artur César (Coord.) Progresso e religião: a República no Brasil e em Portugal 1889-1910. Coimbra: Ed. UC; Uberlândia (MG): Ed.

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UFU, 2007. p.389-410; GOMES, Ângela de Castro; FERREIRA, Marieta de Moraes. Primeira República: um balanço historiográfico. Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro, v.2, n.4, 1989. p.244-280. 3 SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz. As barbas do imperador: D. Pedro II, um monarca nos trópi- cos. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998. p.315-350; CARVALHO, José Murilo de. A Escola de Minas de Ouro Preto: o peso da glória. 2.ed. rev. Belo Horizonte: Ed. UFMG, 2002. p.29-86; CARVALHO, José Murilo de. D. Pedro II. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. p.98 e 227; COSTA; SCHWARCZ, 2007, p.127. 4 CARVALHO, José Murilo de. Forças Armadas e Política no Brasil. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2006. p.38; CARVALHO, José Murilo de. Os Bestializados: o Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi. 3.ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. p.11; CASALECCHI, José Ênio. O Partido Republicano Paulista: política e poder (1889-1926). São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987. p.56; LEAL, Elisabete da Costa. O calendário republicano e a festa cívica do descobrimento do Brasil em 1890: versões da história e militância positivista. Revista História, São Paulo, v.5, n.2, 2006. p.64; HOLANDA, Sérgio Buarque de. O Brasil Monárquico: Do Império à República. 8.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2008. p.409. (História Geral da Civilização Brasileira; t.2; v.7); CARVALHO, José Murilo de. A con- strução da ordem: a elite política imperial. Teatro de sombras: a política imperial. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2006. p.418; VILLA, Marco Antônio. A queda do Império: os últimos momentos da monarquia no Brasil. São Paulo: Ática, 1996. p.96-106. 5 BRASIL. Decreto 119-A, de 7 jan. 1890. Available at: www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_/decre- to/1851-1899/d119-a.htm; Accessed on: 12 March 2011. The Ius Patronatus (Right of Patronage) had a medieval historical origin and consisted of an agreement between a subject or state and the Catholic Church. Through the agreement the institution, subject or state, in the condition of Patron, bound itself to make Catholicism the official religion of the region under its control, taking responsibility for the creation and maintenance of everything necessary for the religion; as a counterpart the Patron received Papal concessions to build sanctuaries and churches and to present names to the clergy, as well as the right to collect the ecclesiastic tithe. 6 LEAL, 2006, p.64. Sunday was not mentioned in the decrees remaining as the day of the week under the care of religion, while All Souls’ Day was kept as a holiday. It is worth noting that 1910s the religious symbols were gradually returned to public spaces and in the 1920s and 1930s the religious festivals were again included in the civil calendar. 7 Dispositions of Ius Patronatus (Right of Patronage) exercised by the Monarch over the Church in his lands, Placet (sentence, opinion) and Exequatur (implement) could validate or void a determined document or ecclesiastic act. 8 ROMANO, Roberto. Brasil: Igreja contra Estado. São Paulo: Kairós, 1979. p.115. 9 It is worth noting that the Patronage which was in vigor in the Empire in Brazil was not based on official bilateral concessions. The 1824 Constitution established the Patronage based on the sovereignty of the Empire in Brazil without taking into account any official concession of the Pope. Peter I actually sent, after political emancipation, Monsignor

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Francisco Correia Vidigal to negotiate the recognition of the independence of Brazil through a Concordat. Due to Portuguese pressure against this agreement, the Holy See only recognized the legitimacy of the Empire of Brazil in 1826, and not in the form of a Concordat, but the transmission of the rights of patronage for Brazil from the Portuguese Crown. The commission of the Chamber of Deputies charged with judging the merit of the articles corresponding to patronage in Leo XII’s (1760-1829) bulls Solicita Catholicas Gregis cura (15 July 1826) and Praeclara Portugaliae (30 May 1827) had no political difficulty in ignoring the papal concession, denying the placet to these articles. Patronage in the Empire emanated from the sovereign power of the state – a regalist principle which also sustained the promulgation of Decree 119-A in 1890 in relation to the power demanded by the state in the (judicial) establishment of Brazilian socio-political reality. Generally speaking regalism can be understood as the control exercised by Brazilian monarchical institutions over the Catholic Church in its sui generis implementation of patronage; on the other hand, Ultramontanism designated in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the following one, a set of ideas and practices gradually assumed by the Brazilian episcopate, with an emphasis on the theocratic authority of the Pope in spiritual and temporal questions. Cf. SANTIROCCHI, Ítalo. O ultramontanismo no Brasil e o regalismo do Segundo Império (1840-1889). Doctoral dissertation in Ecclesiastic History – Pontifícia Universidade Gregoriana. Roma, 2010. p.72-74; VIEIRA, Dilermando Ramos. O processo de reforma e reorganização da Igreja no Brasil (1844-1926). Aparecida (SP): Ed. Santuário, 2007. p.48-57. 10 MINISTRO QUINTINO BOCAIUVA. Carta ao internúncio apostólico do Brasil, monsenhor Francesco Spolverini. Rio de Janeiro, 18 nov. 1889. In: CALAZANS, Mylène Mitaini. A Missão de Monsenhor Francesco Spolverini na Internunciatura do Brasil (1887- 1891), segundo a documentação Vaticana. Tese (Doutorado em Teologia) – Pontificium Athenaeum Sanctae Crucis. Roma, 1997. p.408-409. 11 D. ANTÔNIO DE MACEDO COSTA. Carta a Rui Barbosa. Paineiras, 22 dez. 1889. Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.68, fasc. 330. 12 In December 1889, D. Antônio de Macedo Costa prepared a proposal for the decree extinguishing patronage in seven articles. These guaranteed liberty to all religions, but determined that the state recognized the Catholic Church as the one of the majority of the Brazilian population and maintained the regular payment of côngruas (subsidies) to sustain the staff of the Catholic Church. Cf. CALAZANS, 1997, p.81-82. 13 Of importance here is the role of Monsignor Spolverini in the negotiations with Rui Barbosa which resulted in Decree Decreto 119-A. The researchers Oscar Lustosa and Ivan Manoel do not mention in their work, due to their aims and the sources they used, the action of the Inter-Nunciate, in the person of Monsignor Francesco Spolverini in the negotiation process and in relation to the pressure put on the Provisional Republican Government in defense of Catholic prerogatives. The presence of the Inter-Nunciate pushed these negotiations to the area of international relations demanding from the Jurist Rui Barbosa much more care in their deliberations, finally influencing the conciliatory decision among the parties in litigation in this process which can be called the “The Religious Question of the First Republic,” something which was only concluded with the 1891 Constitution. In ac-

June 2012 167 Maurício de Aquino cordance with the analysis of the correspondence contained in the Archive of the Brazilian Nunciature (principally fascicles 330 and 344), in the Arquivo Secreto Vaticano, there were intense contacts between Rui Barbosa and Monsignor Spolverini, often mediated by D. Macedo Costa, with the inter-nuncio keeping the Secretary of State of the Holy See well informed about what was going on in Brazil. To compare and confront: LUSTOSA, Oscar de Figueiredo. Separação da Igreja e do Estado no Brasil (1890): uma passagem para a lib- ertação. Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira, Petrópolis (RJ), v.35, fasc. 139, set. 1975. p.631; MANOEL, Ivan Aparecido. D. Antônio de Macedo Costa e Rui Barbosa: a Igreja Católica na ordem republicana. Pós-História, Assis (SP): FCL-Unesp, v.5, p.67-81, 1997; Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.68, fasc. 330. 14 CARTA PASTORAL COLETIVA DO EPISCOPADO BRASILEIRO (19 Mar. 1890). In: RODRIGUES, Anna M. Moog (Sel. Org.). A Igreja na República. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 1981. p.43. It is worth noting that the right of the Catholic Church to emphyteusis was not mentioned in either the decree of 7 Jan. 1890, nor in the text of the Constitution of 24 Feb. 1891. However, the Brazilian ecclesiastic hierarchy would find itself involved in various litigations over assets, sometimes with foreign religious orders (as happened in 1890, with the epicenter being the actions of Mons. Spolverini), other times with the state, and also with Irmandades (fraternities), until at least 1917, when the dioceses were definitely recognized as having a judicial existence in the former of common justice, undermining once and for all the old rights to emphyteusis. 15 MONSENHOR FRANCESCO SPOLVERINI. Carta Circular ao episcopado brasileiro. S. Paulo, Mosteiro de S. Bento, 12 jan. 1890. Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.68, fasc. 330. 16 D. LINO DEODATO. Carta ao internúncio do Brasil, monsenhor Francesco Spolverini. São Paulo, 21 jan. 1890. Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.68, fasc. 330. 17 CARTA PASTORAL COLETIVA DO EPISCOPADO BRASILEIRO (19 Mar. 1890). In: RODRIGUES, 1981, p.54. 18 CARTA PASTORAL COLETIVA DO EPISCOPADO BRASILEIRO (19.03.1890). In: RODRIGUES, 1981, p.43; CHAUÍ, Marilena. Brasil: Mito fundador e sociedade autoritária. São Paulo: Perseu Abramo, 2000, p.9-10. 19 HOLANDA, Sérgio Buarque de. Raízes do Brasil. 26.ed. 4.reimpr. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995. p.118. 20 RODRIGUES, Anna M. Moog. Introdução. In:______., 1981, p.5. 21 BRUNEAU, Thomas C. Catolicismo brasileiro em época de transição. Trad. Margarida Oliva. São Paulo: Loyola, 1974. p.67. Bruneau drew on André Vallier’s concept of influence, namely the capacity of an individual, group, or institution, to create sufficient engagement to impose direction on a structure and in this way change a situation. 22 ARAÚJO, José Carlos de Souza. Igreja Católica no Brasil: um estudo de mentalidade. São Paulo: Paulinas, 1986. p.84; MARCHI, Euclides. A Igreja e a questão social: o discurso e a

168 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil práxis do catolicismo no Brasil (1850-1916). Doctoral dissertation in History – FFLCH, USP. São Paulo, 1989. p.114. 23 MONSENHOR FRANCESCO SPOLVERINI. Carta ao Cardeal Mariano Rampola del Tindaro – Secretário de Estado da Santa Sé. Rio de Janeiro, 23 abr. 1890. In: CALAZANS, 1997, p.424. 24 MINISTRO QUINTINO BOCAIUVA. Carta ao monsenhor Francesco Spolverini, in- ternúncio apostólico do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 31 dez. 1890. In: ALMEIDA, Alceste Pinheiro de. O Cardeal Arcoverde e a reorganização eclesiástica. Doctoral dissertation in History – FFLCH, USP. São Paulo, 2003. p.112. A similar event happened in the United States shortly after the independence of the thirteen colonies. Ambassador Benjamin Franklin was consulted by the papal nuncio in Paris about the possibility of creating a diocese in the United States. After Congress was consulted, the latter stated that this question was outside the jurisdiction of the government. Satisfactorily surprised with the response the Roman Curia proceeded to create the Diocese of Baltimore whose first Bishop, John Carroll, was from a important Maryland family which had supported the American Revolution. The cousin of Bishop John, Charles Carroll, was one of those who signed the Declaration of Independence. Cf. REESE, Thomas J. O Vaticano por dentro. Trad. Magda Lopes. Bauru (SP): Edusc, 1999. p.319. 25 ELIAS, Norbert. A sociedade de corte. Trad. Pedro Süssekind. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2001. p.158; ELIAS, Norbert. A sociedade dos indivíduos. Trad. Vera Ribeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1994. p.121. This mobile equilibrium in the state-Church tensions undoubtedly takes into account groups and institutions which presented themselves as a third part to these relations. By way of example, it is worth mentioning the anarchist criticism of the policy state-Church approximation in 1910: “It appears that there is gathered in S. Paulo a monumental assembly of all the bishops, and also, from what it appears to us, the Arco- Amarello (Yellow Arch). This Council will deal with important subjects, including: the project to transfer from the Vatican to Brazil the nomination of cardinal and bishops of various Brazilian rulers and republicans ... the transfer from the government to the Sé Church, the purchase of an altar for the Chamber of Deputies...”. CONCILIO de S. Paulo. A Lanterna: folha anti-clerical de combate, Ano IV, n.51, p.1, 1 out. 1910. Centro de Documentação e Apoio à Pesquisa – Cedap-Unesp. 26 BRASIL. Constituição da República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil (24 fev. 1891). Available at: www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/Constitui%C3%A7ao91.htm; Accessed on: 15 May 2011. Cf. IGLÉSIAS, Francisco. Constituintes e Constituições Brasileiras. 4.ed. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987. 27 Cf. ROMANO, 1979, p.99. Romano considered that the secularization of marriage and cemeteries was not simply linked to economic interests in times of immigration and the internationalization of capital, but, above all, to the actual essence of the modern state that was emerging. 28 ZANONE, Valerio. Laicismo. In: BOBBIO, Norberto; MATTEUCCI, Nicola; PASQUINO, Gianfranco (Org.) Dicionário de política. Trad. Carmen C. Varriale et al. 5.ed. Brasília: Ed.

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UnB; São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2000. p.670. In relation to the general picture of relations between laity and religion at the turn of the twentieth century, see: HERVIEU-LÉGER, Danièle; CHAMPION, Françoise. Vers un nouveau christianisme? Introduction à la sociolo- gie du christianisme occidental. Paris: Cerf, 1986; FILORAMO, Giovanni. Che cos’è la reli- gione: temi, metodi, problemi. Torino: Einaudi, 2004. 29 VIEIRA, 2007, p.380-383; BEOZZO, José Oscar. Entrevista. In: DINES, Alberto; FERNANDES JR., Florestan; SALOMÃO, Nelma (Org.) História do poder: 100 anos de política no Brasil, v.1: Militares, Igreja e Sociedade Civil. São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2000. p.39-65. 30 CARDEAL MARIANO RAMPOLLA DEL TINDARO. Instrucções da Santa Sé ao Internúncio Apostólico para as conferencias dos bispos brasileiros. Roma, 14 jun. 1890. In: CALAZANS, 1997, p.453-457. 31 D. ANTÔNIO DE MACEDO COSTA. Alguns pontos de reforma da Egreja do Brasil – Memoria para servir às discussões e resoluções nas Conferencias dos Snrs. Bispos. Rio de Janeiro, 2 ago. 1890. Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.71, fasc. 346. p.1. 32 D. ANTÔNIO DE MACEDO COSTA. Alguns pontos de reforma..., n.71, fasc. 346. p.23. 33 D. ANTÔNIO DE MACEDO COSTA. Alguns pontos de reforma..., n.71, fasc. 346. p.17-18. 34 CERTEAU, Michel de. A invenção do cotidiano: 1. Artes de Fazer. Tradução de Ephraim Ferreira Alves. 11.ed. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 2005. p.102. 35 Territoriality is seen by Zeny Rosendhal as: “the set of practices developed by institutions or groups with the aim of controlling a given territory. It is in this powerful geographic strategy of controlling people and things, expanding many times control over spaces, that religion is structured as an institution, creating its territories.” ROSENDHAL, Zeny. Espaço e religião: uma abordagem geográfica. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj, 2002. p.59. It can be perceived that Certeau’s concept of strategy involves the notion of territoriality (physical place) inscribing it in political relations (place of power) and in totalizing discourse (theoretical places). The approach to the diocese through concepts of spaces, representations and powers already has a referential book, namely: CHAIX, Gérald (Dir.) Le diocèse: es- paces, représentations, pouvoirs – France, XVe-XXe siècle. Paris: Cerf, 2002. 36 AZZI, Riolando. Presença da Igreja na sociedade brasileira e formação das dioceses no período republicano. In: SOUZA, Rogério Luiz de; OTTO, Clarícia (Org.) Faces do catolicismo. Florianópolis: Insular, 2008. p.18. 37 LEÃO XIII. Ad universas orbis ecclesias. (27 abr. 1892). Available at: pt.wikipedia.org/wi- ki/Ad_universas_orbis_Ecclesias; Accessed on: 25 May 2011. 38 In September 1890, D. Macedo Costa presented Cardinal Rampolla with a project for the creation of ten new dioceses so that all twenty Brazilian states would have at least one diocese. At the beginning of 1891, however, D. Macedo was concerned with, until his death in month in March, of the creation of the first four dioceses in the Republican period of Brazilian history. Cf. CALAZANS, 1997, p.144. 39 ACTAS Y DECRETOS DEL CONCILIO PLENARIO DE LA AMÉRICA LATINA. Roma:

170 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Republican modernity and diocesanization of the Catholicism in Brazil

Tip. Vaticana, 1906; CÓDIGO DE DERECHO CANÓNICO Y LEGISLACIÓN COMPLEMENTARIA. Texto latino e versión castellana, con jurisprudencia y comentarios. Madrid: La Editorial Catolica, 1957. Biblioteca D. José Gaspar, Faculdade de Teologia, PUC-SP. It can be stated that the 1917 Code of Cannon Law emphasized the notion of bishopric (territory of the dominion of a bishop) while the 1983 Code of Cannon Law emphasized the diocese (pastoral territory of Episcopal action). Nevertheless, the linguistic use which makes the meanings of bishopric and diocese common helps to consider the interdependences of the realities highlighted in these two notions. 40 LEÃO XIII. Litteras a vobis. (02 jul. 1894). Available at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/ leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_02071894_litteras-a-vobis_en.html; Accessed on: 23 May 2011. 41 MICELI, Sérgio. A elite eclesiástica brasileira (1890-1930). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. p.65. 42 MAGNOLI, Demétrio. O corpo da pátria: imaginação geográfica e política externa no Brasil (1808-1912). São Paulo: Ed. Unesp; Moderna, 1997. p.221. The need to maintain, in Elias’ term, the equilibrium of tensions in the social configuration of the First Republic, con- stitutionally secular, prevented the civic authorities from participating (despite having made a financial contribution) to the large dinner for the reception of Cardinal Arcoverde, something which the Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Merry Del Val, found strange. In correspondence sent to the Brazilian nuncio at that time, D. Giulio Tonti, he showed himself surprised and discontent with the actions of the Brazilians to remain only behind the scenes, despite so much insistence by the Holy See and the honor conceded to Brazil to have received the first purple in Latin America. CARDEAL MERRY DEL VAL. Carta ao núncio apostólico do Brasil, D. Giulio Tonti. Roma, 28 abr. 1906. Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.106, fasc. 521. 43 It has to be taken into account that the definition of the Brazilian nation used in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth by the political elites did not represent a rupture with the old metropole, or better with the European ideal, as strongly asserted by the historian Manoel Salgado, “the new Brazilian nation saw itself as continuing the civilizing task initiated by Portuguese colonization.” GUIMARÃES, Manoel L. S. Nação e civilização nos trópicos: O IHGB e o projeto de uma história nacional. Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro, n.1, p.5, 1988. Sobre nação, nacionalismo e território: ANDERSON, Benedict. Comunidades imaginadas: reflexões sobre a origem e a difusão do nacionalismo. Trad. Denise Bottman. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008. p.239; HOBSBAWM, Eric J. Nações e nacionalismos desde 1780: programa, mito e realidade. Trad. Maria Celia Paoli e Anna Maria Quirino. 5.ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2008. p.126; SEVCENKO, Nicolau. Literatura como missão: tensões sociais e criação cultural na Primeira República. 2.ed. rev. ampl. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003. p.144-145; QUEIROZ, Paulo Roberto Cimó. As curvas do trem e os meandros do poder: o nascimento da estrada de ferro Noroeste do Brasil (1904-1908). Campo Grande (MS): Ed. UFMS, 1997. p.104. 44 The principle of uti possidetis establishes in Diplomacy the right of a country to a deter-

June 2012 171 Maurício de Aquino mined territory on the base of its effective and prolonged occupation. According to Demétrio Magnoli, the Brazilian Empire adopted the principle of uti possidetis de facto and not de juris, in other words the old treaties. This position was maintained and exploited by Baron Rio Branco at the beginning of the twentieth century with the acceptance of most of the South American republics. Cf. MAGNOLI, 1997, p.253. 45 The actions of the nunciature in the arbitration of these territorial questions with an outcome that was appreciated by Rio Branco, who was very grateful for the work of the representatives of the Holy See, was remembered by the Secretary of State of the Vatican in the instructions to Monsignor Angelo Scapardini on the occasion of his taking of office in the Brazilian nunciature in 1917. SEGRETERIA DI STATO DAL VATICANO. Istruzioni per Mons. Angelo Scapardini Arcivescovo Tit. Di Damasco Nunzio Apostolico in Brasile. Gennaio 1917. Arquivo Secreto Vaticano – Nunciatura do Brasil, n.163, fasc. 816, p.7-9. 46 Cf. MICELI, 2009, p.29; VIEIRA, 2007, p.513; MAINWARING, Scott. Igreja Católica e política no Brasil (1916-1985). Trad. Heloísa Braz de Oliveira Prieto. 1.reimpr. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2004. p.41. 47 Cf. MOURA, Sérgio Lobo de; ALMEIDA, José Maria Gouvêa de. A Igreja na Primeira República. In: FAUSTO, Bóris (dir.) O Brasil Republicano: sociedade e instituições (1889- 1930). 8.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2006. p.357. (História Geral da Civilização Brasileira; t.3; v.9); CORREA, R. L.; ROSENDAHL, Z. Difusão e territórios diocesanos no Brasil, 1551-1930. Scripta Nova – Revista Eletronica de Geografia y Ciencias Sociales, Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, v.X, n.218, ago. 2006. p.7. Available at: www.Ub.Es/ geocrit/sn/sn-218-65.htm; Accessed on: 30 Oct. 2008. 48 CÓDIGO DE DERECHO CANÓNICO Y LEGISLACIÓN COMPLEMENTARIA. Texto latino e versión castellana, con jurisprudencia y comentarios. Madrid: La Editorial Catolica, 1957, art. 215, 337-339, p.88, 134-136. Biblioteca D. José Gaspar, Faculdade de Teologia, PUC-SP. 49 CÓDIGO DE DERECHO CANÓNICO Y LEGISLACIÓN COMPLEMENTARIA. Texto latino e versión castellana, con jurisprudencia y comentarios. Madrid: La Editorial Catolica, 1957, art. 215, p.88. Biblioteca D. José Gaspar, Faculdade de Teologia, PUC-SP.

Article received on 13 February 2012. Approved on 22 June 2012.

172 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ Christiane Jalles de Paula*

Resumo Abstract O objetivo deste artigo é analisar as co- The aim of this paper is to analyze the lumns de Gustavo Corção na imprensa columns of Gustavo Corção in the Bra- brasileira (Diário de Notícias e O Glo- zilian press (Diário de Notícias and O bo) entre 1964 e 1968. A hipótese é que Globo) between 1964 and 1968. The hy- Gustavo Corção foi um dos artífices na pothesis is that Gustavo Corção was one esfera pública brasileira da legitimação of the artifices in the Brazilian public das bases antidemocráticas da ‘demo- sphere for legitimizing the anti-democracia’ do regime militar. Além disso, a cratic foundations of military regime sua definição pela ‘linha-dura’ relacio- ‘democracy.’ Moreover, his adoption of nou-se aos inimigos escolhidos, quase the hard-line was related to enemies he sempre personalidades católicas. Com chose, who were almost always Catho- isso poderemos perceber tanto aspec- lic. With this we can thus understand tos da participação do laicato como da both aspects of the participation of the relação que se estabeleceu entre o Esta- laity, as well as the relationship estab- do brasileiro e a Igreja católica no pe- lished between the Brazilian state and ríodo em tela. O artigo procura de- Catholic Church during the period. The monstrar que é preciso mais atenção à article tries to demonstrate that more recuperação dos sentidos de democra- attention is needed to recover the sense cia que os grupos sociais mobilizaram of democracy that social groups mobi- naquele período, menos para justificar lized in that period, not to justify their suas ações, e sim para entendê-las e actions, but to understand and contex- contextualizá-las. tualize them. Palavras-chave: Gustavo Corção; Igreja Keywords: Gustavo Corção; Catholic católica; regime militar. Church; military regime.

*Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil (CPDOC), Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV). Praia de Botafogo, 190 – 14º andar – sala 1423, Botafogo. 22253-900 Rio de Janeiro – RJ – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 173-196 - 2012 Christiane Jalles de Paula

“Communist activity is configured as a crime against the rights of man, and it would be infinitely stupid, in the name of a political philosophy, to ‘respect’ the nomination, immunities, the rights that they themselves violently destroyed.”

The words of this epigraph, written by Gustavo Corção2 in the Carioca morning paper Diário de Notícias on 5 April 1964, a few days after the overthrow of the João Goulart government on 31 March, illustrate the clear perception that it was neither liberalism nor constitutionalism which would set the path for the newly installed regime. It was necessary to seek other foundations to legitimate the new regime. At that time Gustavo Corção was one of the main leaders of the lay Catholic movement – the other was Alceu Amoroso Lima – and was one of the most active supporters of the military regime in the mainstream press and in the Catholic sphere.3 This article seeks to ‘revive’ the experiences of Gustavo Corção in the Brazilian press (the newspapers Diário de Notícias and O Globo) between 1964 and 1968 – from the civil-military coup to the publication of Ato Institucional nº 5 (AI-5 – Institutional Act 5) which made the regime much more ‘closed’ or harsh. In doing this, we believe in the teaching of Pierre Rosanvallon, for whom “history does not consist only of appreciating the weight of inheritances, in simply ‘clarifying’ the present through the past, but in trying to revive the succession of presents, assuming them as experiences which inform ours.”4 We will commence with two statements. The first is that Corção was one of the artifices in the Brazilian public sphere of the legitimation of the anti- democratic foundations of the ‘democracy’ of the military regime. The other is that, in addition to this, his choice of the revolutionary ‘hard-line’ is related to his chosen enemies, who were almost always Catholics. We thus seek to show how Corção used the rhetoric of the atonement of guilt and the communist threat to legitimate both democratic eloquence, used as a basis for the deposition of Jango, and for the ‘order’ established by the civil-military coup. His actions during the period in question also allow us to unravel aspects of the relationship between the Brazilian state and the Catholic Church, and principally the participation of Catholic lay intellectuals. The methodology used to deal with Corção’s columns was discourse analysis, which looking at his columns shows the meanings of his discourse, the dialectic contradictions and the game they play in the text.5 The article seeks to recover the meanings which social groups gave to democracy at that time, less to justify his actions, but rather to understand and contextualize them.6

174 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’

To understand Gustavo Corção’s participation between 1964 and 1968, the article is divided into three parts. In the first part we will present the argumentative construction made by Corção of the character of the civil and military movement of 31 March 1964 as being essentially Christian (or better Catholic) and ‘democratic.’ Following this, we will advance to understand the paths which led the military to opt for a more closed regime and on which arguments they based this option. In the third and last part we will look at the argumentative trajectory which led Corção to propose violence as a legitimate resource of the government to counter any opposition to the new ‘order,’ and also his appeals to the Hierarchy to adopt energetic measures against ‘communist infiltration’ in the Brazilian Catholic world.

Defense of the new regime

In the early morning of 31 March 1964, General Olímpio Mourão Filho, commander of the 4th Military Region, based in Juiz de Fora (MG), started the rebellion. On the night of 1st April, the president of the National Congress, Senator Moura Andrade, declared the presidency vacant, investing the position in the same act in the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli. The new government was in place. For Corção, in the column published in Diário de Notícias on 3 April, the outcome of 31 March was the triumph of “democracy [which], with its tenacious and obscure values, returns to its offended rights and the natural returns at a gallop.” On the same occasion, he concluded that the communists “had underestimated the rosary of Our Lady, underestimated human nature and thought that the people would like disrespect and subversion.” The anarchy produced by communism in the country was responded to with order, considered a natural element of man. And the agent of order was a divine gift: the rosary. In other words, a providential aspect, a part of Christian civilization, had triumphed and ended the government ‘of shame and of fear.’ In short, the East had not managed to defeat the spiritual force of the West. From this perspective, the ‘revolution’ of 31 March 1964 has a positive meaning of counter-revolution; and ‘democracy’ assumes a very different meaning from what is understood by liberal representative democracy: with regular elections and respect for constitutional rules. Democracy is instead a way of living, a Christian and Western style of organizing society. The offense to Christian values included the kernel of an argument which would organize Corção’s thought and activism: democracy was only valid for ‘good’ men, in

June 2012 175 Christiane Jalles de Paula other words the winners. For the winners the path would be purges and punishments. For this reason, for Corção the mission of the ‘democrats’ did not end with the overthrow of Jango. There was much to do. It was necessary to continue the fight – now for the definition of the meaning that the new government should give to politics, to the economy, in short to Brazilian society. It was important to implement a series of ‘moralizing measures,’ such as: the extinction of the National Union of Students (União Nacional dos Estudantes – UNE) and the Superior Institute of Brazilian Studies (Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros – ISEB), the purging of ‘communist’ politicians, members of the army, and public employees, which would ‘naturally’ legitimate the government. The enactment by the military junta of the first Institutional Act (Ato Institucional – AI, later AI-1),7 on 9 April was applauded by Corção. Days later, the voices of the editor Ênio Silveira, the columnist of Correio da Manhã Carlos Heitor Cony, the literary critic Otto Maria Carpeaux, the journalist Marcio Moreira Alves and Alceu Amoroso Lima, were raised against the ‘purification’ implemented by the Military Junta.8 In defense of the measure and principally of the regime which was being compared to the 1937 ‘coup,’ Corção stated that the analogy between the two historical events could only be perceived by the fact that there had been constitutional discontinuities. However, the differences were complete. In his column of 12 April, Corção stated that the AI was “an act of legitimate defense of the regime,” although it “always had a fringe of discussable justice.” Returning to the subject on 15 April, he said that power had been taken by those who already held it, to remain so indefinitely. In 1964 who were expelled from power were “indignant occupants, and everything indicated that the desire of the military leaders would be to return power to the routine of institutions as soon as they had finished the expulsion of the bad public servants from the country.” Moreover, in 1937 the denunciation of communist infiltration was a farce created by Getúlio Vargas; while in 1964 there existed a ‘communist occupation.’ Finally, the men who supported Vargas’ coup were the ‘fascists,’ while in March 1964, it was the ‘democrats’ who took to the streets against the “communist fraud and in defense of the rights of man.” However, the point was that the exceptionality of the context justified any ‘eventual’ abuses, since the regime’s actions needed to be appreciated in light of the ‘moralizing,’ ‘purification,’ and ‘punishment’ actions in place of judicial rules and an ideal of ‘justice.’ In the column published in Diário de Notícias on 21 April, Corção re- torted the accusations of the illegitimacy of the regime made by its adversaries,

176 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ who argued that the taking of power breached the 1946 Constitution, which equaled Brazil to a dictatorship. For Corção, what was illegitimate was the lack of government before the ‘Redemption.’ The use of the expression redemption, with the first letter in a capital, is significant of the perception that the category is homogenous and indisputable. The dictatorship was legitimated by the facts and it had a positive connotation, taking into account its sovereign and revolutionary nature. It was thus a revolutionary dictatorship.9 Dear to Catholic cultural politics, the idea that within the heart of anarchy there breeds order belongs to the reactionary conservative thought produced after the French Revolution in which ‘revolution’ also assumed a meta-political significance.10 For this, anarchy justified and legitimated counter-revolution which, according to Count De Maistre, “was not a contrary revolution but rather the contrary of revolution.” Based on this matrix of political culture, on 6 June Corção argued that the new regime could not be described as totalitarian, since it was not possible to call the João Goulart government democratic, if one understood by democracy a regime of government which “respected hierarchies, differentiations and principally natural law.” Rather the regime established in March 1964 which fought for decency, was democratic, since even though it acted outside judicial norms, it was based on the natural order of thing, namely Catholic culture. In this way, Corção showed he was concerned with the debates which raged about the moment of return to democratic judicial regularity, since he realized that the threats to order had not been eliminated. Starting with this diagnosis, Corção turned against President Castelo Branco, who refused to discuss the prorogation of his mandate, despite being aware that his government’s actions would not have favorable results by the time of the 1965 election. For Corção, Castelo Branco’s attitude would probably signify the defeat of the revolutionary forces in the upcoming election. However, the hard-line officers pressurized him and finally in July 1964, the president gave in and sent to the National Congress a constitutional amendment extending his mandate. Simultaneously voted on was a Proposal for a Constitutional Amendment – known as the Electoral Reform Law – which covered questions such an absolute majority and voting rights for illiterates. On 3 July, Corção positioned himself against the thesis of absolute majority, asking: “would it not be better to make the election indirect right away?” In November Castelo’s mandate was extended to 15 March 1967, with the elections being set for October 1966. A few days later the political reform was also approved. An aspect which calls attention in Corção’s 1964 columns is his belief that

June 2012 177 Christiane Jalles de Paula the dictatorship would be temporary, since it would be able to deal with the communist threat in a short period. From this point of view, it is understand- able that on 27 December he wrote: “One of the dangers which threatens to delay the recovery is the idea of the so-called hard-line which intends to continue the revolutionary process. This mentality should be combated because the time of extraordinary measures has passed.” However, Corção did not need much to reconsider his position, concluding that only the ‘hard-line’ would maintain order. This is the subject of the next section.

The choice of the hard-line

On 9 March 1965 a student demonstration against the president in Universidade de Brasília (UnB), and shortly afterwards the publication of a manifesto in which dozens of intellectuals demanded the re-establishment of democratic liberties and civil rights, served to alert Corção. The manifesto especially caused him concern and reaction because its signatories demanded the return of liberal precepts. On 20 March he wrote: “they call for the release of political prisoners, [however] there can be no political prisoners because there is no political crime.” The next day the reaction of the Castelo Branco government to the manifesto and the student actions was admonished by Corção, who argued that a dispute was being waged in the public sphere and the government was losing, since it had adopted too much of a ‘liberalizing’ style. After that the binomial liberty-authority came to dominate his pen. As well noted by Alceu Amoroso Lima upon Corção’s departure from Centro Dom Vital in 1963, the fear of liberty and the cult of authority became the basis of Corção’s arguments, positions and anti-communist activism. In April the latent tension between the ‘Castelistas’ and the ‘hard-line’ became public with the decision of the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF – Federal Supreme Court) to grant habeas-corpus to the former governor Miguel Arraes. The hard-line officers who commanded the Inquérito Policial Militar (IPM – Military Police Investigation) were opposed to the measure. On 28 March Corção commented on the case, stating: “Above the STF is the democratic spirit of the Revolution, to which all the powers of the Republic owe their survival.” In the same column he sent the following message to his fellow Catholic Sobral Pinto who was defending communist prisoners, as he had done during the Estado Novo, when he had been the lawyer of Luís Carlos Prestes: “The

178 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ lawyers of the communists also behave as if nothing had happened and if the spirit of legality can only be understood in terms of strict judicial compliance.” On 15 July 1965, Corção bearing in mind the accusation made by a reader that he was one of those responsible for the cases of torture which happened in the country, instead held responsible the “writers, intellectuals, Marxist or Catholic, the agents of Soviet interests, who led [young men] to colorblindness in seeing the colors of hope in the red flag of the Kremlin,” also declaring: “A society should defend itself energetically from a regime which abundantly proved its complete failure.” In his schematization of responsibilities intellectuals had and have a determinant role. Despite the belief in the role of the intellectual in the clarifica- tion of public opinion, the question of freedom of thought constitutes a product of consumption restricted to the Right. This gives sense to the selection of qualities and positions established by Corção which allowed writers to have freedom of expression. In this way the censorship of dissenting ideas is justified. In short, there was torture because there was still liberty for intellectuals to continue to spread they communist ideas, deluding part of Brazilian youth. For these intellectuals Corção suggested that the punishment should be exemplary, since they had not complied with their social mission. On 3 October 1965, date of the direct election for state government, Corção wrote a libel against representative democracy, popular pronouncement and consequently the ‘predicted’ result for the 1965 election – once again Corção is in agreement with the Catholic political thought that emerged in reaction to the French Revolution. In relation to the scenario, the appeal for the hardening of the regime, although not explicit, is evident between the lines:

I do not see [the elections] to be in any way an edifying or significant civic spectacle of the democratic structure of our regime. To the contrary, I consider it to be expressive of our political pathology... General will, infallible pronouncement of the ballot boxes, etc., are not part of my democratic creed.

The victories in the October 1965 state elections of Negrão de Lima in Guanabara, and Israel Pinheiro in Minas Gerais, confirmed the diagnosis and were perceived as serious threats to the ‘revolution.’ Responsibility for the defeat was attributed to President Castelo Branco. For Corção, Castelo had rushed and not adopted harsher measures, such as a greater effectiveness of punishments in IPMs for cases of subversion, which had been pushed into second

June 2012 179 Christiane Jalles de Paula place after those of corruption. The consequence of this negligence was the permanence of ‘men from the ancien regime.’ During October the national scenario was dominated by the crisis unleashed by the election results, though this was quelled on 26 October, when the pressure from the more radical sectors was given into with the enactment of AI-2.11 Despite these exceptional measures, the government kept the National Congress open, allowed freedom of the press and the elected governors to hold office, giving an appearance of legality to the military regime. Nonetheless, this did not prevent internal and external critics from denouncing the option of the Brazilian government for military dictatorship. The restrictions imposed by the military regime fulfilled Corção’s desires. His unconditional defense of the measures adopted and their authoritarian logic is not surprising. For him, AI-2 was the response to the provocations of the sectors who intended to destroy ‘the essential things of the regime.’ In relation to the negative evaluations that it would create a dictatorship in the country, he rebut- ted these criticisms in his column on 28 October:

I believe that many measures of this authoritarian type can be taken. If these measures tend towards a reinforced totalitarian dictatorship, they will form a set of measures serving an intrinsically evil policy, since totalitarianism deforms and deteriorates society ... Dictatorship is a lesser evil ... They are good as a bitter medicine ... [They are effective] is they promote true redemocratization through the elimination of the indiscipline which runs from the barracks to the universities and the removal of pernicious elements.

In Corção’s perspective democracy is not reduced to the ‘mechanics of institutions,’ in other words to elections, but rather to the spirit that animates it. In such a manner what mattered were the ‘souls,’ the constitution of a government of ‘good men,’ for a regime to be considered democratic. In this meaning, democracy was not the presence of a judicial body which could regulate institutions, as it was also not the free elections, nor equality. Making a prescriptive (or axiological) use of democracy,12 Corção classified dictatorship positively: an interregnum, or in his words, ‘a lesser evil,’ whose objective was to restore as quickly as possible ‘true’ democracy. Therefore, in his judgment of the negative value of the Brazilian representative democratic experience since 1946, Corção counterpoises the regime which, with sprinklings of authoritarianism, is still called ‘democratic.’ An autocratic and elitist democracy. Due to these characteristics democracy would not allow liberty to be

180 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ converted into licentiousness, since the ‘good men’ – the Armed Forces – controlled, regulated, and impeded the absence of moral and political breaks. Democracy, thus, came to be understood as a combination of liberty and authority “in a process in which it is defined arbitrarily what it was to be free.”13 In this way the reservations about the authoritarianism of AI-2 did not dele- gitimize the national democratic reality; it was only a control mechanism. Corção used a rhetorical and conceptual game to clarify that democracy and authoritarianism were not exclusive. What denoted a distortion of the essence of democracy was its asymmetry with totalitarianism. Thus, in the intellectual spheres of the opposition there was a certain conceptual ‘confusion’ between democracy and democratism. This antagonism was used to argue that there were only two paths: either the democracy of Western regimes or the totalitarianism of communist regimes. Between dictatorship and a Marxist regime, the choice was obvious. There was nothing in-between. The Manichaeism of this view left no doubt that the positions were inscribed in the friend-enemy logic. In light of this, any criticisms of the military regime were understood as a defense of communism. In October intellectuals opposed to AI-2 presented a manifesto to the nation calling for the reestablishment of democratic legality, the principle of independence, the harmony of powers, respect for the decisions of courts and judges, the sovereignty of legislative bodies and the integrity of each person and family. This manifesto – led by Alceu Amoroso Lima – drew a response from Corção on 31 October, which elucidated his conception of the role of intellectuals in national life:

Poor Brazil! As if the treason of politicians was not enough ... we suffer the shame of ‘trahison des clers’ [sic] ... At the time of the bitter medicine these intellectuals scream, kick and offer shelter to the poor people, the marijuana of the depraved intelligentsia.

The use of the expression trahison des clercs, coined by Julien Benda, is significant of the normative approach reserved for ‘leftwing’ intellectuals or opposed to the regime. By dedicating their vocations to ‘private causes,’ they abandoned the real meaning of intellectual activities. They broke with the mission of being guardians of universal principles and became participants in the game of political passions. In doing this they disqualified themselves, offering erroneous arguments of liberty and redemocratization. With the aim of de- moralizing the opposition of these intellectuals to the government, Corção

June 2012 181 Christiane Jalles de Paula accused them in December of being ‘men of the ancien regime’ and of not having fought the ‘atheist and inhumane’ communism which was driving Brazil away from the democratic path. Once again Corção repeated that the ‘revolution’ was carried out with the intention of ‘restoring’ the ‘essence’ of Brazilian democracy, and that the way found for this was authoritarianism which did not oppose democracy. On 10 March 1966, Corção complained again about the initiatives of President Castelo Branco to return to constitutional legality, and abandoning the fight against communism. He stated: “the Castelo Branco government has excessive haste to become legal ... and has taken corruption much more than subversion as a criteria for punishments.” In the same article, Corção returns to the criticism made in October 1965 that the IPMs had been abandoned and fallen into innocuousness, especially those which investigated those accused of subversion. Without a doubt, Corção’s actions were ever more in tune with what was identified as the hard-line. The ambiguity of Castelo Branco’s government concerned him. In the letter he wrote to Sobral Pinto on 29 June, Corção left clear the reason for his discomfort with the Castelo Branco government, as well as reaffirming the ‘revolutionary’ nature of that scenario:

I have to tell you I am not a great admirer of this government. It is said that the army saved Brazil from a communist invasion, but it is not said that from then on they ruled badly. My hurt is contrary to yours: I think they were timid and wanted to enter to quickly into the terrain of legality. The institutional acts, which the military had the bad idea of ordering from the most illustrious jurists, in my opinion are garbage. For me the current government is provisional and like an intermediary. I seek to judge its acts more by its revolutionary success than its judicial regularity. Thinking this way, I am convinced that I want the very best for Brazil.14

Also in 1966, on 25 July there was a bomb explosion in Recife which left fatal and hurt victims. The explosion occurred in Guararapes Airport and was timed to happen right after the Minister of War, Costa e Silva, landed. On the same day another two bombs exploded in the Pernambuco capital: one in the State Union of Students (União Estadual dos Estudantes – UNE), injuring one person; and another in the press office of the US consulate. For Corção the union between ‘wavering priests’ and students, the fragility of government action against UNE and the ‘near certainty’ that participation in these actions

182 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ in Recife would lead him to definitely forget the thesis of the provisional nature of the regime and to ask, in the column published on 29 July, for an energetic response from the Castelo Branco government:

The outrage in Recife is launched as a challenge. No evasion or scapegoats: we have to see, understand the connections and properly learn the parallel between the bomb in Recife and the disorder of the bad students in Belo Horizonte. There is a need for some reaction so it can be said that at least the blood of the poor victims will contribute in some way to redeem Brazil.

No explicit suggestions are made about what the measures of reaction could be. However, in the context of that time, it is not improper to suggest that Corção credited the forces of repression with being the path to eliminate the enemy found in the student sphere. And what about the means? Corção did not hesitate to answer: consummate the accusations of the IPMs, in other words, criminalize and arrest those guilty of subversion, especially the leaders of the student movement. The violence of his attacks drew a reply from Sobral Pinto, who sent Corção a letter dated 8 August 1966, in which he contested the proposed solutions and warned:

I know that you have deservedly great influence on the thought and action of Muniz de Aragão [Minister of Education]. You walk together with arms linked. For this reason I am afraid that your word will lead Muniz de Aragão to use the authority he has to confront the students in the mood of exaltation that you do not cease to create in your university struggles.15

Corção waged a bitter war in the sphere of the laity, specifically against Alceu Amoroso Lima, accusing him in his column of 16 September of being one of the intellectuals who incited “the youth to demonstrations and disorder on behalf of the communist cause.” These attacks were not meaningless, since at that moment the student movement had once again taken to the streets, demonstrating against the government, with Alceu being one of the principal names in the Brazilian press to support them.16 In March 1967, the publication of the encyclical Populorum Progressio by Paulo VI was received, even by the military government, with enormous enthusiasm.17 The similarly warm repercussions among the most progressive segments of the clergy was evidently not well regarded by Corção. The main bones of contention were the fear that the encyclical would be used by the communists and the translation of some Latin words into Portuguese – such as, for

June 2012 183 Christiane Jalles de Paula example, progressio for development.18 As Corção summarized in his column of 2 April 1967, “here in our society we will not lack in those opportunists who will try to take possession of the papal encyclical. Does it not repeatedly use the word development? So, they conclude, it is our idea, it is our cause which will triumph.” After the papal publication, various members of the Catholic hierarchy came out against the military regime. This was the leitmotiv for increasingly radicalized columns in which demanded an even stronger and more energetic reaction from the government. As he gave occasional classes in the Superior School of War (Escola Superior de Guerra – ESG) and was a professor of electronic engineering in the Military Institute of the Army (Instituto Militar do Exército – IME), Corção had very close relations with the military. Moreover, the similarity between his rhetoric and that of the officers who presided the IPMs and the members of the hard-line, is striking. The labels, accusations, and the strategy of combat also shown a rhetorical and ideological convergence. Terms such as communists, subversives, agitators and remote-controlled were recurrent both in Corção’s argument and those of the members of the ‘hard- line,’ as well as the denunciations in relation to all those who did not accept the restrictions on constitutional guarantees imposed by the regime.

There is good violence. There is holy violence.

On the occasion of the commemorations of 1 May 1967, Corção’s accusations reached other members of the Catholic hierarchy. The demonstration of workers against the government with the participation, as the celebrant of the mass, of the Bishop of Santo André, D. Jorge Marcos de Oliveira, was violently condemned in the column published on 7 May: “We have before us... a bishop of the Catholic Church directing ceremonies of savagery and foolishness, or, which is even worse, preaching a doctrine of hate with false and stupid motivations.” At the end of July UNE held its XXIX Congress, in a Benedictine monastery close to Campinas, in São Paulo state. On 2 August 11 US priests were arrested together with the students. The same day Benedictines and Dominicans, amongst other orders and congregations, demonstrated in São Paulo outside the building of the Department of Political and Social Order (Departamento de Order Política e Social – Dops) against the detention of participants in the congress. The event gave Corção further data about the joint path of Catholic segments with ‘false students.’ On 4 August, he once again

184 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ repeated his appeals to ‘relevant authorities’ about the need to punish the “false students who had mutinied for reasons that had nothing to do with study or university life;” telling the press that is would symbolically stop treating them as students or the student movement, since they were rioters; and stated that it was no use doing this to the priest, since it ‘was useless and stupid.’ With the approximation of the II Congress of the Lay Apostolate – an important Catholic meeting held in October –, in his 17 September article Corção highlighted the challenges for the laity in the country: communism, Teilhard de Chardin, the declared philo-communists, the Marxist religious houses, the responsibility of priests in the conflict between parents and children. A summary of his enemies, with Catholic sectors being labeled as communists and Marxists. On 12 November 1967, Corção highlighted the presence of Ação Popular (AP), still active them. The union of Catholic sectors and the organization and the negligence of the ‘relevant authorities’ had resulted in a libel, whose appeal and the confusion about the direction of the government were clear. He stated:

AP [is] an organized movement against the regime, against Democracy, against Christianity, against Man, and principally against God... It is incredible that there still exists a phenomenon with this inspiration, after the complete failure of Brazilian communists in 1964. Easy victory appears to have mollified the combativeness of the military government, and its appears to have fallen asleep at all levels.

A few days after the publication of this article by Corção, four young people were arrested in Volta Redonda (RJ), accused of subversion. They had thrown pamphlets against the government out of the window of the diocesan minivan. Two of them belonging to the parish youth group – a deacon and a seminarist. The diocesan bishop, D. Waldir Calheiros, denounced the case to the press and army soldiers searched the bishop’s residence looking for supposedly subversive documents.19 The case had enormous repercussions and the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil – CNBB) released a declaration at the end of the month in which it showed solidarity for the victims of the repression. On 26 November Corção’s reaction clarifies for us once again his position in favor of radical military action:

I would like that their Eminences, the bishops, reflect well on the current episode and on its essential traits: a group of individuals preached civil war, rebel-

June 2012 185 Christiane Jalles de Paula

lion, direct action. Why? ... they want to implant in Brazil a regime that has had good results nowhere, which dishonors man and offends God. And in this singular task ... they found support among priests.

The communism which for Corção had already dominated the ‘hearts and minds’ of the youth, increasingly threatened the Catholic Church – bastion of order. In December D. Avelar Brandão, Archbishop of Teresina, declared that the encyclical Populorum Progressio corroborated the thesis of the just war and the ‘new Church,’ and that this signified that in a very unjust situation the people could take up arms and start a just war. This statement led Corção to show that the principal threat came from Catholic circles who were having a misrepresenting reaction to both Vatican II and Populorum Progressio. Due to this diagnosis, in his column of 29 December Corção warned the government: “these people, laity or priests, and even bishops, who are not the Catholic Church” and, “to the contrary of what the government has been doing, dialogue should be abandoned.” This proximity with the military government, to the point of clarifying and advising what the ‘healthy’ Catholic sphere would be like, was not meaningless for someone who had direct access to the president of the country. Gustavo Corção’s archive, kept in the National Library, includes significant correspondence between the Catholic leader and the military, as well as requests of his to the ‘owners of power’ in this period. Emblematic of this is the request for the nomination of Gladstone Chaves de Melo to the Federal Council of Education,20 made to President Costa e Silva, who took office in March 1967. This request, made through General Emílio Garrastazu Médici,21 would be approved in 1970, and Corção’s companion in Catholic and political struggles nominated. Since 1966 Corção himself had been a member of the Federal Council of Culture.22 In this scenario, the writer repeated the accusations against certain members of the clergy. In an article dated 23 February 1968, entitled “Message from some bishops from the Third World,” he accused parts of the hierarchy of professing Marxist communism. The ferocity of the criticism resulted in a letter to him from Sobral Pinto23 questioning his campaign:

Just two words about your column ... I find it strange, with cordial sincerity that you are contributing, for love, to capitalism, also atheistic and hypocritical, to demoralize Bishops, who are the direct successors of the Apostles. Writing what you write is not to serve Truth, nor Justice, nor Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is to serve the Gudins and other defenders of social injustice.

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In March 1968 Corção was absent from the newspapers, since he had left Diário de Notícias. Returning in April, now in O Globo, he started to write on Thursdays and Saturdays. His first column in this newspaper, “Holy Thursday,” published on 11 April, talked about the mystery of the crucifixion of Jesus. Corção was thus momentarily removed from the public sphere on the occasion of the death of the secondary school Édson Luís and the events which occurred on the celebration of his seventh day mass at the end of March and beginning of April 1968. Despite this, he did not remain speechless about the events, commenting on them as soon as he returned to the fight in his columns. Refereeing to the repercussion of the facts, Corção emphasized the ‘poly- hedron of errors’ of the event, though remaining silent about the repressive actions of the government. The document produced by the Church on this occasion, however, received the greatest attention and criticism. In the article “A home without education, everyone shouts and no one is right,” published on 13 April 1968, Corção criticized the actions of the Church in the episode, “with the exception of the good pastors who made a prudent intervention at the gates of Candelária.” The reason for the student demonstration was disqualified by Corção. The Church’s efforts to mediate dialogue between the students and the government increased Corção condemnation of the temporal engagement of the Church. Undoubtedly the conflict involved more than the attitude of the Church which had placed itself in favor of the students, but rather from the admission of the hierarchy that “the minority of demonstrators and agitators, remote controlled by a minority of his minority, is representative of this youth.” At the same time, and more fundamental, the text did not make “the smallest reference to the phenomenon of communist infiltration, nor to that there existed in the notorious UNE of the Juscelinica and Goulartian era many precocious thieves.” In short, the tragic event made his fear permanent: the union of the Catholic hierarchy with the demonstrations against the regime. They were not isolated voices, even though he sought to disqualify the authors which this explanation. It was the scenario of the Catholic Church in Brazil supporting the youth against the ‘revolution.’ Also in April there was a bomb explosion which injured an employee in the offices of the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. Immediately attributing responsibility for this ‘terrorist’ act to the left, Corção complained about the Catholic Church’s silence about the event, and called for vigorous action from the government.24 The supposed authors, the students, were now ‘provoca- teurs’ and ‘terrorists.’ All the pejorative load involved in the transmutation was symbolically the path to justify harsher actions against enemies, even if they

June 2012 187 Christiane Jalles de Paula were in the Catholic Church: “we can only beg the civic and religious authorities to be more vigorous and more decisive” (25 April 1968). The events which followed in Prague, Paris, the United States and in Mexico were perceived by Corção as a threat hovering over the country. The student revolts, with many different appeals, advocated the maxim of the revolution of ‘Youth Power’ for the world based on liberty and the questioning of the constituted authorities. In this scenario the Prague Spring was hailed in an article on 25 May as ‘real progress,’ while the student revolts in France expressed “an anarchical explosion marked by a profound disenchantment with a world tired of being human. Or better, tired of being in a differentiated world, hierarchical, ordered, albeit rather imperfectly.” Admonishing, Corção declared that precautions had to be taken so that ‘disobedience in a pure state’ did not reach Brazil. The explosion of student demonstrations, however, indicated the principal problem of the modern world: the crisis of authority. Authority not in the sense of an exterior norm, but as a moral value, polarized in terms of obedience and disobedience – ‘reflections of the Creator,’ as stated in the column of 18 May. These fundamentals were seen in the progressive furor unleashed in various planes, from the religious to the family, through the destruction of the notion of this ‘natural’ authority. However, it was the clergy who frightened him most. The prognosis of the potential force of progressive clergy for the social and political order increased with the release of the notes for the II General Conference of the Latin American Episcopal Council (Celam), held in July in Medellín, Colômbia. Written by the Belgian priest José Comblin, then professor of theology in the Regional Seminary of Recife, the text was provisional and initially restricted to groups of reflection in the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife. However, after being published in its entirety in the press, it caused intense controversy between those who approved it and those who saw it as a declaration of subversion. In an article published on 13 June, Corção, one of the detractors in the press, accused it of being impregnated with the ‘language of Marxist preachers’ and doubted the Christian objective of the ‘incendiary priests’ who wrote it:

the evidence of exterior signs leaps before our eyes. In first place the perversion of spirituality and the Christian mentality which is inclined to a social realization which the Church had repeatedly condemned as intrinsically evil. In second place, there is evidence of the bad result of total socialization everywhere it has been tried.

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Corção’s proposal was for persecution as well as a solution which would be enacted a few years into the future. On 15 June he stated: “there are foreign priests who have become excessive and undesirable on our territory. Fr. Comblin is one of them. And here I say to you my friends what I would do today if I were president: send them away.” On 19 June the student demonstrations gained new wind with the government project to transform universities into foundation, which caused strikes in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) against the government’s intended university reform. I Army entered into rigorous action and arrested various students. On the Praia Vermelha campus students were beaten and humiliated, causing a wave of revolts which transformed the city into a battle- field. On one side the police, on the other the students with sticks and stones, as well as people throwing things at the police from the tops of buildings. The fighting last for three days, and the Church tried to find a conciliatory solution. In the pages of O Globo, Corção advised the authorities to deal with the student question by dividing it into two questions: the specific, covering the problems of teaching infrastructure, propositions that could be met; and the generic, involving the political propositions, which should not be met: “we should do everything to hold back, dissolve and not grant the demands which smell of an appetite for power” (22 June 1968). All means to destroy the threat represented by the demonstrations and marches were valid, because as Corção: “we are not against violence. There is good violence. There is holy violence. God loves the violent and vomits the tepid” (18 July 1968). The political resort to violence was legitimate due to the circumstances. The dispute he waged in the Catholic field led him in August 1968 to found the Catholic cultural association Permanência,25 which was intended to fight against the enemies of the Church and to divulge strict Catholic doctrine. The launch of this had repercussions and it was covered in O Globo, which highlighted in the title the presence of “civilians, religious and military in the auditorium of the Ministry of Education for the launch of Permanência magazine.” In the report Corção’s objective was also highlighted, in other words to fight “the confusions and deformations of the Church in Brazil introduced by the progressive wing of the clergy.”26 In the article of 3 October Corção’s accusations against the student movement suffered a perceptible alteration. The students were no longer simply ‘rioters,’ but now criminals ‘capable of rapes and sexual violence’. The responsibility of ‘adults’ also stopped being a valid rhetorical argument in the mini- mization of complaints against the student movement. Moreover, his demand

June 2012 189 Christiane Jalles de Paula for harsh government measures was implacable: “these youths should be rep- rimanded, they should be mercifully punished, they should be charitably expelled from the universities ... I do not understand the timidity, the paralysis of the leaders.” A few days later Corção’s presence was requested at an act of government repression, the arrest of the student leaders who had organized and participated in the XXX Congress of UNE in Ibiúna (SP). Corção’s commentary on 17 October once again show his efforts to justify violence as a legitimate government resources in Brazilian public opinion: “there were no tumults thanks to the firmness and tranquility with which the police acted.” Also in October the tension between the Catholic hierarchy and the government increased after the declaration by the then Minister of the Interior, General Albuquerque Lima, that elements of the clergy were agents disturbing public order. The response of members of the Catholic Church to Albuquerque Lima’s accusations was strident. Nonetheless, Corção put himself on the side of the general, stating that he had done the Church of his country a service. This affinity is yet one more confirmation of Corção with the ‘hard-line’ approach and also of the friction with the Church. In the article on 26 October he asked the Church to assume its “treason or defection, or even if it wishes the irresponsible omission.” In November in the capital of Minas Gerais the imprisonment of three French Assumptionist priests and a Brazilian deacon produced a mobilization of the clergy and the release of a document against government persecutions of members of the institution.27 On 12 December Corção violently rejected the document, and warned that a crisis was raging in the Catholic Church; he also alerted the existence in Brazil of an “Anti-Church which had adopted the open defense of the enemies of Brazil”; and “profoundly [lamented] the attitude of Catholics who remained silent.” The specter of communism no longer haunt- ed the Church, it was a fact. The conclusions that the Brazilian Catholic world had fractures and through them communism threatened to destroy the Church itself, produced a Gustavo Corção who was even more anti-communist, but attached to the defense of Christian (Catholic) values and even more disbeliev- ing in the path of liberal-representative democracy as a philosophy to organize the political. His position after the publication of A1-5, which led to the hardening of the military regime is no surprise. The pretext for AI-5 was that on 13 December 1968, by a difference of 75 votes, the Chamber of Deputies rejected the request to cancel the mandate and the political rights of Márcio Moreira

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Alves – who had made a speech in the Chamber months before denouncing the violence practiced against the students, holding the army responsible for what had happened and calling on the population not to appear at Independence Day commemorations. On the same day Presidente Costa e Silva enacted AI-5 which, amongst other measures, suspended various constitutional guarantees.28 In his column of 18 December, Corção concluded: “we reached where we did not want to arrive, and to where we were compelled by the wave of anarchy which threatened to submerge Brazil.” Once more, the thesis of the exceptionality of the circumstances, of anarchy, was used to defend exceptional measures.

Final considerations

The thesis of the communist threat, initially located in the political world and afterwards radicalized in Catholicism, constituted a determining factor in the radicalization of the discursive production and also the political positions of Gustavo Corção. It is important to highlight that Corção in presenting his arguments in favor of military regime perceived Catholicism not just as a support base, but the actual reason for the 1964 movement; and that the defense of Christian civilization against the ‘red devil’ justified any government actions. Without a doubt the civilians and military who set up the military regime in Brazil between 1964 and 1968 found in the Catholic Church an important support in 1964, and the criticisms coming from the Catholic field always preoccupied the regime.29 While the hierarchy kept an official silence – through the institution which represented the Brazilian bishops, i.e., the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil – CNBB) –, until the 1970s, there were also isolated pronunciations against the regime, both from members of the hierarchy and the laity.30 Corção was attentive and controlled, sometimes with rudeness and in a harsh manner, the steps of these figures (Alceu, D. Hélder and even Sobral Pinto). He incessantly denounced them, accusing them of being communists or of helping communism. With this he tried to prove that these people provoked the degeneracy of the Catholic Church in Brazil. He also sought to legitimate the military dictatorship and all its actions and exceptional measures, resorting to conservative and reactionary philosophers to provide a foundation for his arguments that a legitimate authoritarian regime was in force in Brazil. He was an unconditional ally of the ‘hard-line’ military governments. An example of this was the publication of AI-14 in 1969, which created the death penalty and life imprison-

June 2012 191 Christiane Jalles de Paula ment for the cases of ‘adverse psychological war’ and ‘revolutionary or subversive war,’ as defined by the Law of National Security which received contrary reactions from the Catholic hierarchy and the approval of Corção. For this he was always supported by the government, as well as the ‘hard-line’ officers. It is thus not inappropriate to state that Corção was one of the military regime’ artifices to try to stem the loss of Catholic support which occurred at a slow rate until 1969, accelerating after this. More than this, for Corção himself, there was no way to return to judicial normality because the history of the Brazilian national confirmed that the ‘worst’ were always chosen. And it was these who defended and demanded civil and political rights, especially after the enactment of AI-5. Thus he lack of belief in a ‘democratic’ outcome which, with its defense of the value of liberty, constituted an argument favorable to the critics of the military regime. Liberty as a result lost value, being substituted as a value-truth in the philosophy of truth which is Catholicism – the reason for the establishment of the 1964 regime. Support for the increasingly violent repression and the casuistry of AI-5 needed nothing other than the sophism of the preservation of ‘democracy;’ the degeneration of the Brazilian Catholic Church justified the maintenance and radicalization of the regime. Between the cross and the sword, Corção had made his choice. In 1968, what he did not understand was that the Catholic hierarchy preferred another path. An incomprehension which increased daily until his death in 1978.

NOTES

1 This paper is a revised version of part of the penultimate chapter of my doctoral thesis Combatendo o bom combate: política e religião nas columns jornalísticas de Gustavo Corção (1953-1976), [Fighting the good fight: politics and religion in the journalistic columns of Gustavo Corção (1953-1976)], presented to IUPERJ in 2007. 2 Gustavo Corção was born in 1896. His father died when he was very young, he was raised by his mother – a teacher and owner of a school – without any major investments in Catholic practices. From a middle class family he studied in Pedro II College and in the Polytechnic School, where he came into contact with Marxist study circles and had connections with communist activists. In 1920 he left the faculty of engineering and worked on topographic studies, also working as an engineer specialized in industrial electricity in cities in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state. In 1925 he returned to the federal capital, at the invitation of Manuel Amoroso Costa, and became an assistant professor of astronomy of the Polytechnic. Later he assumed the chair of electronics in the Army Technical School, now the Military Institute of the Army (Instituto Militar do Exército – IME). In parallel to his teaching activities, he was a technician of radio-telegraphy and telephony in Radiobrás,

192 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’ also having working in the telecommunications sector of Rádio Cinefon Brasileira. In 1936 the death of his first wife threw him into an existential crisis. Three years later, at 43, he converted to Catholicism. Sources: ABREU, A. A. et al. (Org.) Dicionário Histórico- biográfico brasileiro: pós-1930. 5v. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2001. p.1592-1593; VILLAÇA, A. C. O pensamento católico no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1975. p.143-151. 3 AZZI, R. Os intelectuais do Centro Dom Vital. In: ______.; GRIJP, R. M. K. História da Igreja no Brasil: ensaio de interpretação a partir do povo. Tomo II/3-2: terceira época: 1930- 1964. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 2008. p.481-482. (Coleção História Geral da Igreja na América Latina). 4 RosaNvallon, P. Por uma história conceitual do político. In: ______. Por uma história do político. Trad. Christian Edward Cyrill Lynch. São Paulo: Alameda, 2010. p.76. 5 “... the doctrinaire membership questions at the same time the enunciation and the subject who speaks it, and one through the other. It questions the subject who speaks through the enunciation, as proved by exclusion proceedings and the mechanisms of rejection which come into play when a subject who speaks formulates one or various inassimilable enunciations; heresy and orthodoxy do not derive from a fanatic exaggeration of doctrinaire mechanisms, they belong to it fundamentally. However, inversely the doctrine questions enunciations through the subjects who speak, to the extent that the doctrine always has worth as the signal, manifestation and instrument of a previous belonging”. FOUCAULT, M. A ordem do discurso. Aula inaugural no Collège de France, pronunciada em 2 dez. 1970. Trad. Laura Fraga de Almeida Sampaio. São Paulo: Loyola, 1996. p.42. 6 “This involves reconstructing the way that individuals and groups prepare the understanding of their situations; of confronting the rejections and adhesions through which they formulated their objectives; of portraying in some way the manner in which their visions of the world limited and organized the field of their actions” (RosaNvallon, 2010, p.76.). Brought to Brazil, this allows the authoritarian period to be studied from a new perspective. See ROLEMBERG, D.; QUADRAT, S. V. A. (Org.) Apresentação. In: ______.; ______. (Org.) A construção social dos regimes autoritários: legitimidade, con- senso e consentimento no século XX: Brasil e América. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2011. p.11-31. 7 With a final text by Francisco Campos and Carlos Medeiros da Silva, AI-1 establishing the meaning of the regime: it was a revolution and it invested itself with Constituent Power; in addition to establishing in its 11 articles a new balance between the three powers, by expanding the attributions of the Executive, limiting those of the Congress and Judiciary. Among the new functions of the executive, it asserted the authority to impeach mandates, dismiss, suspend and retire public employees for a period of six months, and to suspend political rights for ten years. The following day the first list of those removed was published. AI-1 also regulated the future electoral calendar and electoral rules, which came into force as soon as they were published: it established indirect elections for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the Republic and confirmed the holding of elections in October 1965. However the change which caused immediate impact was the weakening of the

June 2012 193 Christiane Jalles de Paula clause of the 1946 Constitution, which made officers from the Armed Forces ineligible for elected positions, and the determining of the holding of elections for president and vice- president two days after its publication. This alteration allowed the election on 11 April of the consensus candidate of the army and the politicians who supported it: Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco. SKIDMORE, T. Brasil: de Castelo a Tancredo (1964-1985). Trad. Mário Salviano Silva. 8.ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2004. p.49-50. For the full version of AI-1, see: www.maxbusca.com.br/cgi/maxpage.cgi?max=MaX-atoinstitucional-1; Accessed on 20 June 2006. 8 CONY, Carlos H. O ato e o fato (columns políticas). Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1979; ALVIM, T. C. (Org.) O golpe de 64: a imprensa disse não. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1979. 9 The reference to the idea of revolutionary dictatorship is in the entry ‘Dictatorship’ written by Mario Stoppino. In: bobbio, n.; matteucci, n.; pasquino, g. Dicionário de política. Trad. Carmem C. Varriale et al.; coord. trad. João Ferreira; rev. geral João Ferreira e Luís Guerreiro Pinto Cascais. 12.ed. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 2004. 2v. p.368-379. 10 The first time that the idea of ‘revolution’ appeared as a metapolitical concept in political philosophy was in De Maistre, J. Consideraciones sobre Francia. Presentación de Antonio Truyol y Serra. Trad. y notas Joaquín Poch Elío. Madrid: Tecnos, 1990. For the concept of ‘revolution,’ see: KOSELLECK, R. O conceito moderno de revolução. In: ______. Futuro passado: contribuição à semântica dos tempos históricos. Trad. Wilma Patrícia Maas; Carlos Almeida Pereira; rev. trad. César Benjamin. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto; Ed. PUC-Rio, 2006. p.61-78. 11 AI-2 the end of the coexistence of the military regime and the 1946 Constitution, and consequently with democracy and the conquest of citizenship. Political parties were ended, as well as direct elections to the Presidency of the Republic; the processes of cancelling mandates and suspending political rights were restarted. The strengthening of the Executive in relation to the other powers was expanded, with the president being given new powers, such as an exclusive initiative regarding financial laws and ability to convene and dismiss Congress and to govern by decree. It also facilitated federal intervention in states, as well as the decreeing of a state of emergency in the country. Previous conflict with the STF was also resolved in AI-2. The Judicial Power lost to Military Justice jurisdiction to try civilians accused of crimes against national security. The Act also increased from 11 to 16 the number of judges in the Supreme Court (STF), which allowed the government indicate judges who supported its ideas. ABREU et al. (Org.), 2001, p.1222. 12 The distinction between the descriptive and prescriptive meanings of democracy is in the entry ‘Democracy’, written by Norberto Bobbio. In: bobbio; matteucci; pasquino, 2004, p.319-329. 13 REZENDE, M. J. de. Ditadura militar: repressão e pretensão de legitimidade. Londrina: Ed. UEL, 2001. p.86. 14 Corção, G. Arquivo Privado. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, seção manuscritos, s.d. Carta endereçada a Sobral Pinto, 29 jun. 1966.

194 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Gustavo Corção: the guardian of ‘linha-dura’

15 Corção, G. Arquivo Privado. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, seção manuscritos, s.d. Carta recebida de Sobral Pinto, 8 ago. 1966. 16 COSTA, M. T. da. Um itinerário no século: mudança, disciplina e ação em Alceu Amoroso Lima. Doctoral Thesis – Depto. de História, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro, 2002. 17 In its conclusions the encyclical of Paul VI called on all, especially the laity in developing countries, to “assume as their own task the renewal of the temporal order. If the role of the hierarchy consisted in authentically teaching and interpreting the moral principles to be followed in this domain, the laity were responsible at their own initiative and without passively waiting for orders and directives, to fill with a Christian spirit mentality and customs, the laws and the structures of the community in which they lived. Modifications are necessary and profound reforms indispensible: decisive efforts have to be made to breathe into these the spirit of the gospels; To our Catholic children who belong to more favorable countries we ask the contribution of their competence and their active participation in official or private, civil or religious organizations, committed to overcoming the difficulties being experienced by developing countries. It will be, without a doubt, very important to them to be counted among the first of so many who work to establish in the reality of facts, an international morality of justice and equity.” Available at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/ paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_po.html; Accessed on 20 July 2006. For greater details about the reception of the encyclical Populorum Progressio in Brazilian governmental and army spheres, see CENTRO DE PASTORAL VERGUEIRO. As relações Igreja-Estado no Brasil, 1964-1978. São Paulo, 1978 (Série Cadernos de Informação, n.3). 18 In addition to these criticisms, conservative sectors also raised two further questions. The first: by looking at the economic problems of the world the papal encyclical had made considerations about the distribution of wealth and not its production; the second: the Church, with the publication of social encyclicals, wanted to maintain political power, when it should have stuck to the kingdom of ethics. CENTRO DE PASTORAL VERGUEIRO, 1978, p.11-12. 19 A detailed description of the event can be found it COSTA, C. M. L.; PANDOLFI, D. C.; SERBIN, K. O bispo de Volta Redonda: memórias de Dom Waldyr Calheiros. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2001. p.93-102. 20 The Federal Council of Education (Conselho Federal de Educação – CFE) was created in 1962, as one of the requirements of the Fundamental Law of National Education (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional). Formed by a collegiate whose composition varied according to the national context, its function was to advise the Minister of Education. In the democratic period the CFE had greater autonomy. In the military regime, it suffered greater interference from the executive, both administratively and judicially. Exemplary of this was the exoneration of councilors in 1968 (opponents of the regime, such as d. Hélder Câmara) and the alterations in the number of members. Available at: www.bibli.fae.unicamp.br/revbfe/v2n1out2000/artigo2.pdf; Accessed on 26 Oct. 2006.

June 2012 195 Christiane Jalles de Paula

21 CORÇÃO, G. Arquivo Privado. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, seção manuscritos, s.d. Correspondência a Costa e Silva, datada de 20 jan. 1968. 22 Corção’s nomination is available at: www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/ me001573.pdf; Accessed on 25 Oct. 2006. 23 CORÇÃO, G. Arquivo Privado. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, seção manuscritos, s.d. Carta de Sobral Pinto, 24 fev. 1968. 24 Ten years later it would be proved that the bomb in O Estado de S. Paulo came from elements linked to the Armed Forces, as a strategy of hardening the regime. An interview by Luiz Alberto Bittencourt with an army officer who had participated in the action clarified the question: “The operation was planned by the General Staff of II Army – certainly along with a civilian command, although I cannot guarantee this –, which designated an officer to arrange all necessary contacts. This person was a colonel from the Intendência, who was also owner of the factory which supplied the canteens of II Army”. VENTURA, Z. 1968: o ano que não terminou. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1988. p.226. 25 The Permanence Center held weekly conferences on theology, humanist culture, religion, the Greek tradition and Gregorian chant. It published a magazine with the same name edited by Alfredo Lage and counted on the collaboration of supporters of integralist Catholicism. ANTOINE, pe. C. O integrismo brasileiro. Trad. João Guilherme Linke. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1980. p.44. 26 O Globo, Rio de Janeiro,19 ago. 1968. 27 BRUNEAU, T. Catolicismo brasileiro em época de transição. São Paulo: Loyola, 1974. p.358-367. 28 AI-5, amongst other measures, suspended habeas-corpus, cancelled mandates again and suspended political rights for ten years; gave the Executive power to decree a state of emergency without the agreement of Congress, to enact decree-laws and complementary acts. Furthermore, on the same occasion, Complementary Act no. 38 instituted a Congressional recess for an undetermined period. For further information about the institutional acts, see ABREU et al. (Org.), 2001, p.418-422. 29 Mainwaring, S. A Igreja e o regime militar – 1964-1973. In: _____. Igreja católica e política no Brasil (1916-1985). Trad. Heloisa Braz de Oliveira Prieto. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1989. p.102-105. 30 In relation to the meetings of the Bipartite Commission, see SERBIN, K. P. Diálogos na sombra: bispos, militares, tortura e justiça social na ditadura. Trad. Carlos Eduardo Lins e Silva. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001.

Article received on 30 March 2012. Approved on 22 June 2012.

196 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Churches and State Olivier Abel*

Resumo Abstract Este estudo tem por objetivo comparar o The aim of this study is to compare the longo período de turbulência religiosa que long period of religious turbulence which marca o início da modernidade, envol- marked the beginning of modernity, in- vendo a Reforma e a Contrarreforma, volving the Reformation and Counter- com o período atual, em que a relação en- Reformation, with the current period, in tre política e religião vem se redefinindo which the relations between politics and de outra maneira. Vemos que os maiores religion have been redefined in another pensadores da filosofia política moderna, form. It will be shown that the greatest de Maquiavel e Calvino a Hobbes e Mil- thinkers of modern political philosophy, ton, e de Spinoza e Bayle a Rousseau, tive- from Machiavelli and Calvin to Hobbes ram de decidir sobre as relações entre o and Milton, and from Spinoza and Bayle teológico e o político. Examinamos, tam- to Rousseau, had to decide on the rela- bém, os diferentes ‘regimes’ teológico-po- tions between theology and politics. We líticos expostos por Rousseau no final de will also examine the different politico- seu Contrato Social (1762), comparando- theological regimes discussed by Rous- -os com os diferentes regimes que relacio- seau at the end of his Social Contract nam Igreja e Estado formulados pelo teó- (1762), comparing them with the different logo da resistência ao nazismo, Karl Barth, regimes relating Church and State formu- em texto de 1937. lated by the theologian of resistance to Palavras-chave: teologia e política; Nazism, Karl Barth, in a 1937 text. Rousseau; Karl Barth. Keywords: theology and politics; Rous- seau; Karl Barth.

The theological and political question, then

Modernity, both in its theological and political versions, is constructed on the separation between the political and the religious. On the one hand, the Renaissance, prepared by the long work of nominalist reduction, and prolonged until the Enlightenment, expressed how philosophy descended from the heaven of ideas to occupy the positive sciences and the terrestrial powers,

* Faculté de théologie protestante de Paris. 83, boulevard Arago. Paris – France – 75014. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 197-208 - 2012 Olivier Abel as in Machiavelli, Descartes or Copernicus, thereby entering in competition with the Church in the enunciation of what is legitimate – thus the difficulties of Galileo and Giordano Bruno.1 However, on the other hand, – and this is called the Reformation and Counter-Reformation – theology by itself got rid of those dominions which it estimated were not under its jurisdiction to seek a space that was more free, more critical and more autonomous. In this way, Calvin’s protests against the political excesses of the papacy and the ecclesiastical excesses of magistrates are based on the same fundamental lines as Machiavelli. The latter incessantly defends political autonomy in relation to the Church, with religion being at most an ideological apparatus more or less apt to forge a civic morality. Calvin incessantly defends the autonomy of the Church in relation to magistrates: at the utmost the latter represent a judicial apparatus more or less capable of favoring the Church – but they should not interfere in ecclesiastic discipline as such. The Consistory had the right to excommunicate (to refuse communion, the Supper), without the interference of the public authorities. What was essential to Calvin’s fight in Geneva was to defend the prerogatives of the Church in ‘interior’ questions of ecclesiastic discipline. The principal difference is that, starting from the same observation of the fragility of politics, Calvin affirms much more than Machiavelli the necessity of the institution, in other words the need to think about the difference between magistrates and tyranny. It is necessary to think about the magistrates in their own rationality, irreducible to the games of force and to lies under the injunction of human passions. For Calvin the ethical community is in fact the instituting society, and both politics and ecclesiastics are forms of the instituted society. This does not happen in a very subtle manner. Nor is it by chance that the birth of the modern state, like that of the modern ‘subject,’ was accompanied by tumults and the wars of religion. A mutation of the theological system was also necessary – and this mutation was not only the consequence, but at the same time the condition of this emergence.2 The political concussions of the Renaissance and the Reformation formed a whole, as well as this interior separation, this de-sacralization of the political order, and this autonomy of ‘judicial’ laws of human cities in relation to ecclesiastic laws. To understand what is going on today, it is essential to know that secularization and laïcité were not simply imposed, but prepared by a deliberate ‘theological’ choice, which gave rise to modernity. More profoundly, perhaps, there emerges a new relationship with the city

198 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Churches and State and with the Church, as it became possible to depart, to leave one’s country or one’s Church. By creating the possibility of exile, Calvin invents his solution to the dilemma of revolting or submitting to martyrdom. God is not restricted to our human ceremonies and laws, he is beyond this and everywhere. Individuals are freed to contract new alliances, free alliances and Calvin thereby prepares the way for all social pact philosophies: the great conflict of his interpretations when the English Revolution opposed Hobbes – who estimates with the absolutist doctrines that the pact happened once for everybody – and Milton – who considers the dissent and assumes that his pact should be incessantly reiterated. Churches and states cast asides their moorings in the middle of a great multi-secular debate between the centralizing territorial states and democratic and maritime empires, and also in the middle of the debate between institutionalized churches linked to the state and free, congregationalist churches.

The theological-political question, now

Such are the main lines of the modern politico-theological question, and of its knots and its variants. Today this separation is once again profoundly shaken, as if it had been led by both sides to dangerous impasses. On one hand, political secularization was curiously concomitant with its sacralization: the most secular states, the most atheistic (the Third Reich, Stalinist regimes, etc.) are also those which invented a type of civil religion with a fanaticism and totalitarianism which traditional religions had never desired. On the other hand, in favor of the myth of the disappearance of religion (analogous to the Marxist myth of the disappearance of the state), recently there has proliferated a ‘it does not matter what’ religiousness in forms of neo-Protestantism and Neo-Islamism, in rupture with their own traditions, and more generally a return to rites and superstitions, a synthesis which Bergson formerly called ‘closed’ religions.3 We will return to this a little later. In a more profound manner, there also occurred there something similar to what happened during the transition to modernity. For a period that claims to be enduring, we are changing the type of regime in theological, political and subjective aspects at the same time. We are leaving the modern state, the modern subject, the voluntary God of modernity, to move to a regime which will still do not know how to name and which is also simultaneously occurring at the level of the ‘technical’ processes of globalization, and the complexity of ‘ethnic’ processes of Balkanization. This is our common problem. It is a mo-

June 2012 199 Olivier Abel ment that is still more dangerous because it is accompanied by a profound deregulation of the theater of war. We should remember that civil war is never far, a war which shatters us in the name of our ‘gods,’ our absolutes.4 It is not so easy to think of a balance between the theological and the political. The state wants to emancipate itself from religion, but it also desires a religion that will be complacent and docile. In addition, in every state a tendency can be found to provide a homogenous religious base, a type of civil religion, to return to Rousseau’s term, which seeks to found a true patriotism, a social coherence based on the feeling of a common social good, but which is concerned with knowing how to achieve this without falling into nationalist fanaticism. The delimitation of political space assumes an almost religious orientation, which seems only possible if it comes from outside, from a tran- scendence.5 It is important not to underestimate this religions base which belongs to the political, since from ancient Rome to the Soviet Empire there has been no political regime, which despite being secular has not been based on something of the sacred, sometimes much more intransigent when laicized. It can also be said that religion aspires to a state which is agreeable and docile, but also desires freedom of conscience and the freedom to exercise its form of worship. What can also be observed is the tendency, due to the com- plexification of religious, linguistic and cultural cosmography, due to exchanges, immigrations, the multiplication of minorities of all types, to disassociate religion and the state, accelerating secularization and the real and profound pluralism of modern societies. However, how can this be done without resorting to a type of individualist relativism which undermines all forms of belonging? In addition, does doing this not involve the underestimate of the need for the delimitation of each society, the need for immunization which can protect the national community from generalized indifference and lack of civism? My ambition is not to propose here a new equation which can answer the problem, but rather to examine some of the conditions, both political and theological, that we have to take into account to give greater depth to the question. To do this I would like to draw on two authors, one important in political philosophy and for the lay tradition itself, Rousseau, and the other for theology and for what he calls ‘dogmatic ecclesial,’ Karl Barth.

Political figures of religion

It is notable that the greatest thinkers who founded modern political philosophy, from Hobbes to Milton, and from Spinoza6 to Rousseau, had to de-

200 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Churches and State velop opinions on relations between theology and politics, and about the her- meneutic stature of the scriptures. In accordance with the use of texts, we can effectively tend to Caesarian-Papist syntheses or to theocracies; but we can also content ourselves with interior and spiritual isolation in communities withdrawn from the common world. Since Gutenberg regular use of the scriptures has been necessary, and it can be seen that these thinkers did not hesitate to say what they expected from religion. I will use here as a guiding thread the chapter on ‘civil religion’ which ended The Social Contract (Chapter 8 of Book IV).7 Its position as an epilogue, at the same time inside and outside, in which the place of politics is framed by being placed on stage in a meta-political edge or margin is by itself very significant. The paradox of laïcité can be found here: it is at the same time a neutral term, exterior to the problem, and a positive proposition about what religion should be. Kant uses this process in the four observations that finalize each of the parts of Religion within the limits of reason.8 What belongs to the actual religious order appears as a discourse about limits. After looking at the history of different regimes in the politico-theological connection (with an interesting critique of the Hebrew, Roman, and English regimes, but also praising the initial Mohammedan regime), Rousseau prepared a typology of the types of connection between religion and state. The first is the case in which religion is in part the religion of a city-state, a political religion, a religion of the divine protectors of the city. The gods are kings. The resulting benefit is political and religious cohesion and the courage this gives citizens. Fanaticism in relation to other city-states, superstition, and the difficulties to be overcome, since defeat extends to religious confidence, are the inconveniences. The second model is the one in which two powers are irreducible to the other, the temporal power of the prince, the magistrate, and the spiritual power of the pontiff, the bishop. For Rousseau, this regime which dominated the history of Christianity, has no advantages, and places humans in perpetual contradiction with themselves, and only constructs hypocrisy, violence and instability. The final one proposes a religion of pure humanity, which is the Gospel, understood in the inverse sense to all of Christian history. From the religious point of view it is better, but it is so dissociated from the political that it cannot serve as cement for any society, since it “relegates to laws only the force that they get from themselves, without adding any other,” and disarms the citizen

June 2012 201 Olivier Abel in advance, who will not know how to defend his homeland except at the limits which are authorized for him by the love of enemies. Based on this brief general overview, various observations can be made which we can use as maxims, to be kept in mind when we look at these questions. The first of these ‘political conditions’ for thinking about the problem is that no good solution exists. Each has specific inconveniences and it can be noted that Rousseau does not propose any hierarchy among these alternatives. It is as if each one in turn corrects the other two. Even the worst solution, that of the dual regime which characterizes historical Christianity can in certain aspects appear as the least worst, or at least has arguments which valorize it in light of the perverse effects of each of the other two. In relation to this, Rousseau is truly an author of the Enlightenment, who reflects on the plurality of the possible, a critical tradition which has frequently been forgotten in the middle of what can be called the French ideology loyal to laïcité. The second observation is that he does not consider it apt at least in The Social Contract (however a reading of Rousseau’s other texts confirms this, in other registers) to eliminate all relations between politics and religion. He seeks to prove, against Bayle,9 “that no state is formed that is not based on religion.” Rousseau does not base the political pact on justice, on the equitable distribution of goods and positions, or on the mutualization of earnings. Rather, he bases it on a form of feeling of love. At its very foundation the pact is affective. Even justice in its heart involves a compassionate dimension, and the origin of societies is like the origin of languages, something which is more like amo- rous consent than a military or economic pact. This is because politics in its own rationality is inseparable from a base which appears affective and irrational, and which in Rousseau is profoundly religious. Love is this feeling or this force, sometimes terrible, which approximates being and makes them prove their similarities and their profound identity. What would happen if we suppressed this religious base, this piety, this compassion, this affective base of societies? They would turn to utilitarianism and to the mutual instrumentalization of humans, to the selfish coldness in relations of strength – which cannot construct any life in common, no ‘general’ will. This is what is produced: the history of inequality between men is the history of this cooling. A ‘Rousseaunian’ historian, such as Michelet, narrates the Revolution exactly as an irruption of a fundamental lapse. This enthusiastic desire, to which Kant referred in a positive manner, constitutes the mythical nucleus of Jacobin republicanism. It seems to me that this is the difficult point which Régis Debray had sought to rethink in his Critique of

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Political Reason. Ricœur had already observed in his May 1957 article in Esprit on the ‘on the political paradox.’10 No political rationality exists, even the most formal, which does not recognize its part of obscurity, of irrational force. The impoverishment of religion accompanies a type of devaluation of the word, of loss of confidence in the powers of language, a generalized ‘loss of credibility.’ I only believe in the word of another up to the point that I require their credit for my word. The republic cannot count on citizens gifted with civism and frugality, ready to endorse the general interest; democracy cannot count on activists willing to dedicate their time, their strength, and their passions to animate the discussion. However, the vivacity of republican-democratic consensus-dissent requires citizens to speak in the name of engagements worthy of credit. Politics can appear chilled if it loses this heat.

Theological Figures of the Political

The question is, thus, not solely political; the other half of the path is theological, since what is in debate is the complete theological and political equation, and as authors as different as Machivelli, Calvin, Hobbes and Spinoza have understood, the two sides are inseparable: it is necessary first to think of them together before separating the registers. If we do not reflect on the two aspects, if we deny the ‘theological’ part of the political, it is sort of as if we denied the specific irrational of each type of rationality, the registers will soon be confused: historical examples of the sacralization of the political are abundant, as strong as when we refuse to think about the ‘theological’ part of the equation. However, just as political thought should reflect the religious dimension, theological thought should think about the political dimension of theology. In relation to this version of the question, we can start with the notable analysis which the theologian Karl Barth proposed about relations between “church and state yesterday, today and tomorrow.”11 This text, which initially appeared in November 1936 in the journal Evangelische Theologie in Munich and was translated for a Swiss journal (Les cahiers protestants, April 1937), is interesting because of its context, as Karl Barth, expelled from the University of Bonn in 1935 by the National Socialist regime, against whom he had written in 1934 the Confession of Barmen, and since then had taken refuge in Basil, where he had found the network of a confessional church — a church which refused to render obedience to the Fürher. Karl Barth proposed a typology of the “forms which a church could adopt

June 2012 203 Olivier Abel in relation to the state, or which the state, in turn, could grant to the church.” As a theologian, he was not interested in what the church would be for the state, but what the church would be for itself, and what the state would be for the church: an officiating power, to which it is necessary to submit to preserve the world from chaos, though within the invisible and provisional limits which attribute to it the sole authority of Christ. The state can assume this function “with good will, indifference, or perverse purpose,” and it is in this way that “the national, free or confessional, forms of the Church are, in effect, purposes which come from outside and which the Church should examine... none of these forms is, in principle, better suited” than the others. Let us look at this typology. In the first place, there exists the national church, present where the church is official and linked to the state. Nothing prohibits this in the scriptures, but nothing obliges it, and if a church must become a state church it cannot do this except in fidelity to the scriptures, “and not for reasons of order or of tradition.” This church has greater responsibility for openly making pronouncements if the state betrays it – otherwise it is the church itself which betrays to justify the establish order. The second model is that of the free church, entirely unconnected to the state, and this appears to be very similar to the forms of the communities of the New Testament (before Constantine). The risk here is that the church lets itself be reduced to a private society which is not concerned with the religious necessities of its faithful as “the gospel has total pretension and the church is for this reason dangerous for the state.” The third form of church in its relationship with politics is the confessional church. It occurs when “instead of supporting or tolerating the church, the state itself becomes, openly or secretly, a counter-church which combats the true church.” Karl Barth suggested that it was Germany to which he was referring. The church did not know, nor desired, nor refused to become confessional, and if it did this out of fidelity to the gospel, it would be subjected to persecution and the seduction of the lie, it would be abandoned by many, however if it kept itself on the surface it would be because it did not known how to sink. We can note here that it is exactly in this context which Karl Barth writes:

The anti-Christian state is not yet truly anti-Christian, since it limits itself to using methods of oppression which take the church into account. What is most to fear is not open violence or persecution, but to the contrary, the temptation in which the state invites believers to construct alongside the church of Jesus Christ

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a new, better or more beautiful Church – heretical, because it accommodates itself to the world or the nation. It is difficult to withstand the exterior pressure, but it is even more difficult to resist dissimulated interior lies. If the church should become confessional, it will experience long and painful downfalls: it will be abandoned by many believers who expected courageous decisions. Painful splits will occur. When peace reigns there will be no doubt – in national and in free churches – of the strength of attachment at the moment at which it occurs: many of the first will become last, though many of the last will become first.

In relation to this brief summary, we make some comments here which can help us highlight the theological conditions of the political problem. First, it can be noted that Karl Barth, supported by his reading of the Letter to the Romans, took advantage of a time of deviation, a distance, a long respiration, without doubt very useful in the times of anguish that were his: “yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Time is taken advantage of; it is not stated that the only valid church is confessional. It is a question of a historical moment. However, no longer as a free church or a state church, it cannot be stated that there is a single good solution, in other words, a perfect politico-theological equation: the best state is not forcibly the best for the gospel. Politics varies and the politico-theological is placed under the lens of the critical exam and the provisional. Each formula has its forces and its inconveniences — it may be possible to establish some bridges between Rousseau’s trilogy and that of Karl Barth. It is necessary to bear this observation in mind at a time when each church believes it has a ‘good relationship’ with the political. This relationship refers to historic situations which can change, and fidelity is found in these moments. Second observation: it would not be appropriate for Karl Barth (not even the Karl Barth who in 1917-1918 had energetically censured the ‘God with us’ inscribed on the helmets and belts of German soldiers), to eliminate all relations between theology and politics. He is too much of a Calvinist to abandon the need for a state institution distinct from the church in its mandate, which is to preserve order and the equity of laws. What is better, and this is the touchstone of Karl Barth’s theology, is to want to think about the consequences of theology for the political, in other words not to abandon politics to the tech- nocratic or demagogic politicians, but to think about a sovereignty of God which no terrestrial power can limit or take away. This is a discourse of the perpetual de-sacralization of the political, but also of the reinsertion in the political cycle of human consent and dissent. Essentially, it is contrary to the

June 2012 205 Olivier Abel image that remains, it is above all within politics that Christians should work for the autonomy of political rationality (a rationality without absolutes). It is only when all the possibilities of modifying the political from within have been exhausted that one can pass to a vigilant and confessional resistance.

The theological-political paradox

For motives that were both theological and political, we have spent a long time captive of a ruinous alternative: whether to think about the state, the institution in a type of political conservatism, or to think about messianic revolution elsewhere, outside a rotting old world whose destruction better be hur- ried ... For us it is difficult to think at the same time of eschatology, and thus resistance, the guerrilha, and to think about the institution, the ordinary durable installation for various generations. It is however this set that the apostle Paul thought about, from what it seems. This dual movement can be easily observed in the reading of the Letter to the Romans proposed by Karl Barth: it does not affirm the imperial authority of a political theology, under the risk of justifying with religion any political power (1919 reading), however, do not withdraw from politics on the pretext that the world is evil, under the risk of leaving everything to the whims of a power turned mad (1933 reading). Between the risk of the disaffection of politics and a sacralization of power, there is a movement, an ‘inside and outside.’ In May 1957, shortly after the Budapest coup, the philosopher Paul Ricœur wrote in the journal Esprit a text called “The Political Paradox,” which ended as follows: “The central problem of politics is liberty. Whether because the state through its rationality concedes liberty in the interior; or because liberty through its resistance places an exterior limit on the passions of power.” We can extend these observations a little to the current day. What happens when churches withdraw entirely from their political responsibilities? We can return to a historic example. The separation between churches and state in France answered the need to separate radically different spheres, which history had mixed in access. It was necessary to return to Caesar what was Caesar’s and to God what was God’s, desacralize the state and return church to the critical liberty of primitive Christianity. Priests had to stop being public employees and religions had to become a subject of personal choice and come to maintain themselves. At the beginning a mutual liberation was discovered, and the emancipated churches continued with their work, supporting themselves on the sociological strength of the energy acquired, and being free dedicated

206 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Churches and State themselves to all sorts of disinterested actions. It can be said that the evangelical quality of churches improved. However, over time this energy dissipated: selfless believers grew tired of not having alternation, the fabric of intermediate bodies unraveled, and all that was left were the activists, increasingly mobilized, ‘crentes,’ (true believers) wedded to their loyalty, or new converts of their own individual choice. It could be seen that this regime of separation between churches and state, which seemed so conformed to us to democratic modernity and the evangelic message at the same time, favors, despite us, our religions behaving in a more crisp, sectarian and restless manner. This did not happen without a profound crisis of the institution, understood exactly as what remains when everything settles, as this is more durable than our fleeting actions and words. It is as if the pre- sentism which is so generalized in our epoch affects churches, reducing them to a type of charismatic or therapeutic charity, without any other dimension broader dimension of memory or hope. Religion perishes due to nervousness or by the flight to outside the world. It can be seen that this ‘political’ crisis of churches is not disconnected from the discrediting of all democratic ‘passion.’ They are the two sides of the same sinking we are undergoing. And it is precisely from the two sides that it will be necessary to awaken unprecedented resources, indispensible to courage and to collective intelligence.

NOTES

1 SERRES, Michel. Le savoir, la guerre et le sacrifice. Critique, n.367, déc. 1977, p.1070- 1071. 2 ABEL, Olivier. Jean Calvin. Paris: Pygmalion, 2009. 3 BERGSON, Henri. Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion. [1932]. Paris: PUF, 2008. 4 ABEL, Olivier. Le conflit religieux fondateur de l’Europe. In: L’Europe et le fait religieux, actes du colloque de Rome. Préface de R. Rémond. Paris: Parole et Silence, 2004. 5 DEBRAY, Régis. Critique de la raison politique. Paris: Gallimard, 1981. 6 SPINOZA, Baruch. Traité théologico-politique. [1670]. Paris: Garnier Flammarion, 2010. 7 ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. Le contrat social. [1762]. Paris: Garnier Flammarion, 2001. 8 KANT, Emmanuel. La religion dans les limites de la simple raison. [1793]. Paris: Vrin, 1963. 9 BAYLE, Pierre. Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ ‘Contrains les d’entrer’, [1686]

June 2012 207 Olivier Abel

édité sous le nom de De la tolérance. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1992. 10 RICOEOUR, Paul. Le paradoxe politique. Esprit, mai 1957. 11 BARTH, Karl. L’Eglise et l’Etat, hier, aujourd’hui et demain. Les cahiers protestants, avril 1937. Karl Barth continues in his discussion of the theses of SCHMITT, Carl. Théologie politique, 1922. (Paris: Galllimard, 1988).

Article received on 15 April 2012. Approved on 10 May 2012.

208 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The time of sanctity: reflections on a concept Igor Salomão Teixeira*

Resumo Abstract Apresentamos e analisamos o conceito We present and analyze the concept of de ‘tempo da santidade’. Esse conceito foi ‘time of holiness’, which was forged du- forjado durante a pesquisa de doutorado ring the doctoral research conducted que realizamos entre 2008 e 2011 sobre a between 2008-2011 on the canonization canonization de Thomas de Aquino. Na of Thomas Aquinas. In the thesis, we ar- tese defendemos que o principal interes- gued that the person most interested in sado no reconhecimento oficial da santi- the official recognition of the canoniza- dade desse teólogo foi o papa João XXII, tion of Aquinas was Pope John XXII e que se tratou de uma canonization teo- and that it was a theological canoniza- lógica. Para chegar a essa conclusão ela- tion. To reach to this conclusion we de- boramos o conceito de tempo da santida- veloped the concept of time of sanctity. de. Trata-se de uma análise retroativa do This is a retrospective analysis of the período compreendido entre a data da period between the date of the canoni- canonization e a data da morte do santo. Com base nesses dados elaboramos uma zation and the date of the saint’s death. tabela de temporalidade. O conceito per- Using this data we prepared a table of mite análises comparadas. O tempo de temporality, in which the time of Tho- Tomás de Aquino é de 49 anos (1323- mas Aquinas is 49 years (1323-1274). 1274). O conceito permite olhar para a The concept allows for comparative santidade como um fenômeno social analysis and allows us look at sanctity as construído coletivamente. a collectively built social phenomenon. Palavras-chave: tempo da santidade; To- Keywords: time of sanctity; Thomas más de Aquino; canonização teológica. Aquinas; theological canonization.

On 18 July 1323 the canonization process of Thomas Aquinas, which had started in 1319, came to an end. In four years Pope John XXII authorized the

* Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Departamento de História. Av. Bento Gonçalves, 9500, Agronomia. 91501-970 Porto Alegre – RS – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 209-225 - 2012 Igor Salomão Teixeira opening of an inquiry, received the summaries of the investigations carried out in 1319, ordered new proceedings to be carried out in 1321 and in 1323 authorized the cult of the doctor of theology and friar of the Order of Preachers per universas ecclesias.1 1322 and 1323 were decisive for this pope. This was the period between the convocation of a commission of cardinals on the question of ‘Christ’s poverty’ and the publication of the bull Cum inter nonnullos, in which he condemned radical theses about this question and 12 November of the following year when Thomas Aquinas was canonized. Coincidence? We believe not. To reach this conclusion we analyzed the documents related to the 1319 and 1321 inquiries, as well as pontifical letters and bulls. Moreover, we analyzed the hagiographic production of the Order of Preachers and the administrative position of this order regarding the recognition of saints from within its ranks. In this group of documents it was possible to identify three possible group interested in the canonization: the order itself, the court of the kingdom of Sicily, and the curia in Avignon. However, a prior and deep- er question remains: why Thomas Aquinas and not other candidates for sainthood in the same period? Why was this canonization singular in relation to its contemporaries? These questions show that the central theme is the question of the power of the popes and principally, how the pontiffs could use the resource of canonization to affirm their authority over the community of believers. Our investigation is situated by these questions in a specific research context about sanctity in the Middle Ages: the passage from the thirteenth century to the fourteenth. A period in which historians have some consensus about the increasingly more precise and clear institutionalization of the functioning, or better, the papal prerogative of exclusivity for the canonization of saints. Specifically for this period there exists another question: did the new form of apostolic life inaugurated with the Minor Friars (Franciscans) and the Preaching Friars (Dominicans) also imply novelties in the phenomenon of sainthood? These were the questions which led to the historian André Vauchez advocating the idea of ‘recent sanctity.’2 According to him, during the thirteen century there occurred a transformation in the time elapsed between death and the official recognition of sanctity. While for previous periods this average covered what the author called the ‘very old’ saints (more than 100 years be-

210 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The time of sanctity: reflections on a concept tween death and canonization), between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the average fell to 60 years. There was thus a proximity, principally chronological, between the model of sanctity and the faithful. In other words, the life/death of the saint was closer to that of the faithful, which could also signify a greater proximity between the Church and the faithful. We used the category ‘recent sanctity’ until we perceived that if we analyzed only the time elapsed between the death and canonization of saints from the Mendicant Orders – Franciscans, Dominicans, Heremites of St. Augustine – the average of 60 years (which is reached is consider saints with other positions/functions, such as kings, laypeople, etc.) annulled some particularities and masked some possibilities of the problematization and explanation of the phenomenon of sanctity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. To be successful in our proposal, we thus made a selection of processes from the canonization of the first mendicant saint, Francis of Assis in 1226 to the papacy of John XXII, ending with the death of the pope in 1334. We placed this selection in a temporality table (Table 1) calling the time between the year of the death of the saint and their year of canonization the ‘time of sanctity.’ We reached the following panorama: the case of Thomas Aquinas is the third longest (49), after Margaret of Hungary (673) and Nicholas of Tolentino (141). Taking into account that the fourth longest ‘time of sanctity’ in the table is 20 years, the canonization we analyze, i.e., that of Aquinas, is among those which clashes with the others. Furthermore, as a member of a religious order which already possessed two officially recognized saints with ‘times of sanctity’ of 13 and two years, (Domingo de Guzmán and Pietro da Verona, respectively), why the interval of 49 years? And if we consider the ‘time of sanctity’ of Franciscan saints (canonization of Clara de Assisi in 1255 and the death of Francis of Assisi in 1226), we have three saints with 29 years. In the case of the preaching friars, between the canonization of Thomas and the death of Domingo we have a ‘time of sanctity’ of 102 years for three canon- izations.

June 2012 211 Igor Salomão Teixeira

Table 1 – Times of sanctity3

Saints and candidates to sainthood of Religious Orders, 1209-1334 Time of sanctity Saint Death Inquiries Canonization Time Francis of Assisi 1226 1228 1228 2 Anthony of Padua 1231 1231/1232 1232 1 Domingo de Guzmán 1221 1233 1234 13 Benvenuto de Gubbio 1232 1236 ?

Ambrogio da Massa 1240 1240-41/1251-52 ?

John, the Good, of Mantua 1249 1251/1253-54 ?

Simon de Collazzone 1250 1252 1253 3 Pietro da Verona 1252 1252 1253 1 Chiara di Assisi 1253 1253 1255 2 Margaret of Hungary 1270 1271/1276 1943 673 Louis d’Anjou 1297 1308 1317 20 Chiara da Montefalco 1308 1318/1319 ? Thomas Aquinas 1274 1319/1321 1323 49 Nicholas de Tolentino 1305 1325/1357 1446 141

The concept of ‘time of sanctity’

We consider the time of sanctity as the period in which sanctity was constructed. The expression ‘time of sanctity’ can be interpreted as, for example, the time in which Thomas Aquinas was prayed to and/or considered as a saint is only the period between death and canonization. This is not what we argue. Perhaps expressions such as ‘time for sanctity’ or ‘time for canonization’ might be better, however, we have decided to maintain the initial proposal. We discarded the idea of ‘recent sanctity’ proposed by André Vauchez, since he considers saints with an interval of 60 years between death and canonization based on a general average. What we propose can be applied to any saint, irrespective of whether they are ‘recent’ or ‘older,’ as shown in the case of Margaret of Hungary and Nicholas of Tolentino, for example, in Table 1.

212 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The time of sanctity: reflections on a concept

In relation to the expression ‘time for sanctity’ or ‘for canonization,’ we do not use them as we believe ‘time of sanctity’ a more polished form. Another observation is also necessary in relation to this concept. We take the initial date to be the canonization and/or an official recognition of sanctity. This creates the question: can the concept only be used for canonized saints? In principle we think so, however, only monographic research about specific cases can lead to a more detailed response to this question. We can suppose that Thomas Aquinas had not been officially canonized. However, we have the archeological and documentary records of the creation of the first chapel with his name. Can we consider these records as the beginning and/or recognition of a cult? Yes, and we can use the concept of ‘time of sanctity’ for the case of Thomas. Nonetheless, it is important that the reader and/or researcher consider that his concept was created for the analysis of the canonization of Thomas Aquinas, and does not deal with the period in which Thomas was considered a saint. To the contrary, it is the time that elapsed before his official recognition occurred. This proposal is directly related to the inquisitorial process for canonization. It thus has to be asked: is the concept only applicable for saints who were the target of inquisitorial processes in which the inquiries helped in understanding the ‘time of sanctity’? We believe that the use of this concept for saints who fit into this profile is more apt, since the canonization process allows significant access to the forms of ‘construction’ of sanctity as a collective operation. It is thus important to have a clear understanding of how this type of process worked. From the judicial point of view a canonization process is an inquisitio. To us the records have often arrived copied by different notaries and in a summarized form. Basically we have access to information such as: the day and place where the inquiry was held; the name position/function held by the person questioned; explicit statement of the oath and obligation to tell the truth. The object of the investigation is generally initially covered by the fama publica of the sanctity attributed to the man or woman being investigated.

The initial date: canonization and its context (inquiries, bulls, hagiographies)

Based on the analyses we have made of the inquiries about Thomas Aquinas we can conclude that the statements recorded provide some indications for the study of possible interest groups in canonization causes. For ex-

June 2012 213 Igor Salomão Teixeira ample, in the 1319 inquiry 32 people were interrogated, including Dominican friars, Cistercian monks and laypersons nobles. The officials documents contain the following information: they knew him, they saw him, and how they heard of his fama publica in life and after his death. In the 1321 inquiry what was recorded by the notaries suppresses the interest in fama in vita and reveals to us only the miracles attributed to the saint. Among the 112 people interrogated, there were no Dominican friars, few Cistercians, many women and a number of children. Most of the public were lay persons. Certainly this data allows a number of questions to be raised, such as: should fama only be certified by clergy and nobles? Why in the official records were no questions put to women about the fama of Thomas? In relation to this: were they asked? Based on these and other questions we can affirm the potential of canonization processes in the construction of time of sanctity. In addition to the process as a judicial artifact, it is also fundamental to consider its origin: papal power, principally for the period we are analyzing, i.e., the end of the thirteenth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth. Although there were some unrecognized cults, the pope had the authority to decide whether or not to open canonization processes and principally to decide on the result of the investigations. John XXII is significant in this sense in relation to the preaching friars. Thomas Aquinas and Raimundo de Peñafort could have had very close times of sanctity. They died in 1274 and 1275, respectively, and John XXII faced demands for the canonization of both. For the former, as has already been stated, there was a favorable finalization in 1323. However, the latter had to wait 326 years. One of the reasons was that John XXII did not authorize during his papacy the opening of an inquiry into the jurist. Why? Relations were complicated between this pope and the king of Aragon, the claimant/postulator. John XXII’s position during his papacy in relation to canonization is also an element that reveals how the concept of ‘time of sanctity’ is interwoven in the official prerogatives of recognition of sanctity. The antagonistic responses in the two cases mentioned above open space for this question: was the pope open to the canonization of a theologian and not a jurist? It would be simpler to answer in the affirmative based solely on the result. But what was the meaning of the discontent of the pope in relation to the first inquiry into Thomas Aquinas? Why was there an inquiry with a predominance of laypersons and women in 1321 focused basically on miracles? Was the pope looking for a ‘broader’ appeal for the sanctity of Thomas, in other words, not restricted to a masculine and clerical universe?

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It is important to observe how the pope used the result of the inquiries. This is usually exposed in the bull of canonization. The bull of 18 July 1323 on Thomas Aquinas follows the same structure as the inquiries, especially that of 1319. It begins with a report on his life and afterwards the miracles are presented. In the bull we can find information about the humility, chastity and erudition of Thomas. We can also find a brief report about his final moments, after falling sick near to the Cistercian monastery of Fossanova, as his way to the Council of Lyon in 1274. It is important to highlight that John XXII stated that there had been an inquisition and in this a diligent examination had been carried out. Only after these procedures and invested with the authority specific to him does the pontiff order that the name of Thomas be inscribed in the catalogue of saints.4 Based on these elements we consider the official establishment of a cult as an initial date for the retroactive analysis of the construction of sanctity. In other words, recognition is a landmark which establishes a profile for the saint who has to be prayed to. We consider that the concept of ‘time of sanctity’ becomes an important analytical tool in counterpoint to André Vauchez’s concept of ‘recent saint,’ since: 1) it does not work with an average, but rather allows the separate analysis of the temporality involved in each case of the official recognition of sanctity; 2) at the same time that its separates the cases, if constructed in a table of comparative temporality the concept can instrumentalize the analysis of questions such as the intervals for the recognition of Dominican and Franciscan saints, analyses of gender, regions, etc. Until now we have dealt with bulls and judicial artifacts that are inquiries. This documentation was produced over an interval of four years (1319-1323). In addition to this documentary corpus there is another type of record produced in this context directly related to the construction of the time of sanctity of interest to us.

Hagiography as a part of the construction of time of sanctity

In the case we are analyzing, the first hagiography written about Thomas Aquinas was Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino by Guglielmo da Tocco.5 This author, also a Dominican, was among those involved in the process, one of the few who knew Thomas Aquinas. In 1317 he was appointed by the Order of Preachers to carry out research into the life and miracles of the theologian. He also accompanied all the statements given to the inquiries, especially those of 1319, when he was also questioned. In other words, Guglielmo da Tocco was

June 2012 215 Igor Salomão Teixeira what is currently considered the ‘postulator’ of the cause of canonization of Thomas Aquinas, also gave a statement, was a witness, and the author of his first hagiography. In other words, he was one of the principal ‘constructors’ of the sanctity of Thomas Aquinas, and his participation in the process cannot be neglected, nor the specific record he produced, the Ystoria. This hagiography has a significant characteristic in relation to the naming of reports about the lives of saints: it does not begin with passio, vita or legenda. The word Ystoria appears constantly in the 19 complete manuscripts. However, we have found that there was no distinction between Ystoria (or history) and legend which are used as synonyms.6 For Bernard Guenée, however, ‘history’ was different from ‘hagiography’ in the Middle Ages. One of the principal differences was the atemporality in the hagiographic report, in its almost total absence of chronological data. However, Dominique Boutet argues that some hagiographic texts used resources from historiographic texts, such as by the insertion of diplomatic documentation.7 Is Ystoria a text which, in addition to serving as a model for the preparation of sermons, also seeks to legitimate itself through the use of judicial documentation? Alain Boureau states that, for example, Jacopo de Varazze – the Dominican author of the famous medieval hagiographic complication, the Legenda áurea (Golden Legend) – produced a type of ‘hagiographic patina’ in constructing the text about Peter the Martyr.8 This construction is similar to that of Guglielmo da Tocco in relation to Thomas Aquinas: a Dominican writing about the sanctity of a friar from the same order. However, they are episodes with different ‘times of sanctity’: a year in the first case (Peter was mar- tyred in 1252 and canonized in 1253; the date of the production/compilation of the Legenda aurea is attributed to the period 1268-1298) and 49 in the latter. Furthermore, the Ystoria was produced at the moment of canonization and not later. However, the expression forged by Boureau is appropriate. Guglielmo da Tocco uses the records of the canonization process, what he heard during the questionings and discovered in his own research, as well as knowing the person he was investigating. Probably he did this to give au- thenticity to the report, since the official recognition of the sanctity was at that moment being given based on the proof produced in the inquiries. In this case, what we have is not just an official recognition, but a construction recognized as such. Thus, to operate the concept of time of sanctity we consider the hagiographic reports produced in their temporal context as well as the documentation necessary for the analysis of this construction.

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The final date: death as the beginning of the reconstitution of a holy life

No matter how much a saint generally prefigures in life the signals of this sanctity, it is in death that we can perceive the beginning of a reconstitution of the elements which can confirm the exceptionality.9 Saints even manage to predict their death. This is also the maximum symbol of a type of saint, the martyr. Martyrdom is the maximum testament of faith. Among the Dominican saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there is a martyr, Peter of Verona, however, Thomas Aquinas does not fit into this category – he died after falling asleep during a trip. Why was his death important in the cause of canonization? Certainly because of his life. A paradox? Thomas Aquinas was a controversial intellectual, and this is an aspect that is widely recognized and well studied. What is of interest to us is the operation carried out by the Order of Preachers for the reconstitution and/or rehabilitation of Aquinas’ name. Rehabilitation which only achieved wide-ranging proportions after his death in 1274. The exception made by Martin Morard, in considering that Thomas Aquinas was also a man of flesh and bone, is extremely legitimate.10 This Dominican theologian, by being treated as one of the pillars of the Catholic Church (principally after his death and during the religious Reformation), is often studied apart from his condition of a human being. The title of saint, given to him in 1323, corroborates this type of positioning If we consider the lament of the council of the Faculty of Arts of Paris expressed in a letter sent to the Preachers through the General Chapter of the Order in 1274, the death of Thomas is an event as important as his canonization for understanding how his sanctity was constructed.11 While in Paris in 1274 there were efforts undertaken for copies of Thomas’ works to be made, as request in the above letter, in 1277 the situation would be fundamentally changed. The condemnations of Étienne Tempier published on the third anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’ death compose one of the most important items for the understanding of the ‘time of sanctity’ which interests us.12 The condemnations of 7 March 1277 were motivated, according to Étienne Tempier’s letter, by a report prepared by ‘eminent and serious persons’ who had denounced some professors for going beyond the limits of their own faculty, exposing and discussing in schools some execrabiles errores and falsi- ties about the Catholic faith.13 We cannot state that this document is aimed at and only deals with theses related to Thomas Aquinas. However, the coincidence with the date of the third anniversary of the death of the theologian

June 2012 217 Igor Salomão Teixeira cannot be totally ignored. Furthermore, for the same reason, we believe that through the context of these condemnations, any attempt to construct the sanctity of Thomas Aquinas must past through a rehabilitation process of his theological preeminence. In relation to the text of the condemnations, it is important to consider the existence of a long debate that has gone on for years. We perceive a crucial difference between positions adopted in relation to the content of the condemnations. Some researchers argue that the articles were listed in a random fashion, while others state that a certain internal coherence can be identified.14 Authors such as David Piché, Sylvain Piron, Kent Emery Junior and Andreas Speer have carried out comprehension exercises on the text of the 219 relevant theses.15 Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the minimum necessity to understand the relationship of the events in the 1270s with the process inaugurated in 1318, and with the opening of the canonization process for the rehabilitation of the figure and ideas of Thomas Aquinas. Jacques Paul offers this synthesis:

This list of errors condemns the most diverse theses; some are dangerous for the Christian faith, others reveal themselves to be compatible with the strictest orthodoxy, while others finally are philosophical statements whose impacts on faith seem very distant. The condemnation hits the Averroists hard. A determined number of theses characteristic of the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas are part of this list.16

A varied text which serves as an instrument of censure. Sylvain Piron considers that Étienne Tempier actually did have a specific plan which can be identified in some of the theses, most especially nos. 25-183. According to the author, a coherence can be identified divided in this manner:

1. De Deo (de prima causa): art. 25-68; 2. De angelis (de substantiis separatis, sive de intelligentiis): art. 69-86; 3. De mundo (de celo): art. 87-102; 4. De anima (de forma hominis): art. 103-116; 5. De intellectu: art. 117-127; 6. De voluntate: art. 128-143; 7. De scientia (de philosophia): art. 144-157; 8. De voluntate (bis): art. 158-165; 9. De fide et moribus: art. 166-183. (Piron, 1999)

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Specifically in the case of Thomas Aquinas, the historiography highlights that questions related to the unity of the intellect and the eternity of the world were the principal targets. Of the 219 theses we cannot state that they were being questioned or debated in the conflicts with which Pope John XXII was involved. Nevertheless, the relationship between these condemnations and the ‘time of sanctity’ studied here is the proximity with the final date, in other words, the death of Thomas Aquinas. The 1270s are important because they are the moment of the first clashes that were both favorable and unfavorable to Thomas. Concluding in relation to the ‘bishop’s plan,’ we can also consider the hypothesis raised by Robert Wielockx about the existence of a process against the memory of Thomas Aquinas undertaken by Étienne Tempier. According to Wielockx, in addition to the condemnations of 1277, Tempier made a second convocation in which two articles literally extracted from the first part of Thomas Aquinas’ Suma Teologica and Quodlibet III were analyzed by the masters of Paris.17 Wielockx argues that in 1277 the bishop of Paris undertook three censure procedures: that of 7 March, that related to Gilles of Roma published on 28 of the same month, and a third one, which is the one specifically against the memory of Thomas Aquinas and which is considered based on some indications, such as declarations by Jean Pecham. According to Wielockx, the process began between March and May 1277, though it was interrupted between 20 May and 25 November of that year, the period between the death of John XXI and the election of the new pope. Pope Martin IV and his successor Honorius IV took no responsibility for the debate, considered by Jean Pecham a priority assumption for Rome. Honorius IV, between 1285 and 1286, considered that it was an affaire concerning the University of Paris and not the papal curia. Analyzing letters and decrees from the period, Wielockx concluded that there had been a specific process against Thomas Aquinas. However, this did not make much progress between of the relationships of the Savelo family (Honorius III and Honorius IV) with the Order of Preachers and because of the actions of this order between 1277 and 1286 (Wielockx, 1988, p.418-422). In relation to the first aspect, it is important to note that Honorius III was the pontiff who recognized the Order of Preachers and who established the Dominican convent (Santa Sabina), contiguous to the Savelo family palace, his base of government, the same place as the residence of Honorius IV. The relationship between these two names and Thomas Aquinas is even more evident when we comes across the name of Pandulfo de Savelo as apostolic nunciary

June 2012 219 Igor Salomão Teixeira and commissionaire of Pope John XXII in the canonization process of Thomas Aquinas between 1319-1321.18 In relation to the second aspect, it is valid to return to the General Chapters in the years following the death of Thomas, specifically after the 1277 condemnations. For this year we can find no references to the name of Thomas Aquinas. In 1278, in the Milan Chapter, two friars were sent to England to investigate friars involved in scandals about Thomas Aquinas (MOPH, v.1, p.199). In 1279 the order adopted this position:

Cum venerabilis vir memorie fr. Thome de Aquino, sua conversacione laud- abili et scriptis suis multum honoraverit ordinem Nec sit aliquatenus toleran- dum quod de ipso vel scriptis eius aliqui irreverenter et indecenter loquantur eciam aliter sencientes iniungimus prioribus provincialibus et conventualibus et eorum vicariis ac visitatoribus universis quod si quos invenerint excedentes in predictis punire acriter non postponant.19

In relation to these three chapters in the 1270s, Robert Wielockx concludes that in 1277 the silence of the order was prudent, and that those of 1278 and 1279 were carried out after the suspension of the process against the memory of Thomas, when there was no reason for the silence (Wielockx, 1988, p.428). Wielockx attributed this change in posture to the General Master of the order between 1264 and 1283. It was Jean de Verceil who sent Thomas Aquinas as master regent to the University of Paris around 1268, and who became an influent cardinal with Pope John XXI. In addition, the presence of Jean de Verceil in Paris in 1277 was decisive. In the 1279 General Chapter there is a ‘broad and general’ position, not specifying polemics or Questions of Thomas to be defended, differently from the 1286 chapter. This meeting, as Andrea Robiglio states, is the moment of the ‘turning of the tide’ in terms of how the order resolved to position itself in relation to Thomas Aquinas, and now defended him.20 We thus agree with Robert Wielockx’s thesis. In short, he believes that the condemnations of March 1277 were the first step taken by Étienne Tempier towards a specific process against the memory of Thomas Aquinas. This was interrupted because of the death of the pope and not returned to because of the decisive actions of the Order of Preachers. The following table lists only some of the situations in which we believe that the arguments favorable and contrary to Thomas Aquinas were important in the construction of the fama of the theologian in the first years after his death:

220 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The time of sanctity: reflections on a concept

Table 2 – Pro and Contra Thomas Aquinas in the first 10 years following his death

Pro Contra

1274 1277 Letter of the Masters of the Faculty of a) Some of the 219 theses are Arts of the University of Paris lamenting condemned by Étienne Tempier; his death and requesting a copy of the b) A second process is opened against writings of Thomas Aquinas. the memory of Thomas Aquinas.

1278 General Chapter of the Order of 1279 Preachers in which friars are sent to Correctoria of Guglielmo de la Mare. England to investigate criticisms made of Thomas Aquinas.

1279 1282 General Chapter of the Order of Chapter of the Order of the Lesser Preachers in which the Order stipulates Friars prohibiting the use of Thomas that criticisms of and offenses to Friar Aquinas’ texts. Thomas shall not be tolerated.

This table summarizes what we have listed as the initial elements which define, amongst other things, the need for the (re)construction of the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, who was passing through the ‘sieve’ of canonization. We can also make a specific reading of the pro-Thomas column. We present the moments in which the Order of Preachers adopted formal positions in the General Chapters, about the need to defend the theologian from the criticisms in question. Criticisms that were also made inside the order, as the decision of the 1278 Chapter shows. We can read into this that the criticisms were not only external, as in the case of the 1279 Correctoria and the Franciscan decision in 1282. What is the importance of this for the concept of ‘time of sanctity’? In summary, Thomas Aquinas accumulated criticisms and enemies during his life and his theses were attacked after this death. These attacks also emerged within the Order of Preachers. Based on this information and the lack of participation of preachers in the canonization process (as people who were questioned) we can infer that the principal interest in the canonization of Thomas

June 2012 221 Igor Salomão Teixeira

Aquinas did not originate in the order. This conclusion is supported by the documentation produced by the Order immediately after Thomas’ death. Although it was not the principal interested party, it was at the same time pushing the process along and produced the Ystoria. The Order of Preachers, thus, cannot be forgotten in this analysis. For this reason the official documents from the General Chapters were important in preparing the concept.

Final considerations

In this paper we have looked at three vastly studied topics: Thomas Aquinas, John XXII and sanctity in the Middle Ages. It is difficult to extract from the junction of these elements something innovative or even unsaid. Nevertheless, the results were shown to be satisfactory, since they allow the proposal of relating the canonization processes to a more social writing of history to be put into practice. After all sanctity is mostly studied as an object of cultural history and historical anthropology. Unlike this, we have presented here a reading of the possible disputes of power and revealed specific interest groups. The analysis is stimulated by the need to find more appropriate heu- ristic tools and concepts, the reason for which we created the concept of ‘time of sanctity.’ It is worth stressing once again that this concept covers the analysis of the documentation produced about a candidate for sainthood in the period between his death and the finalization of the inquisitorial process for the verification/investigation of suspicions of sanctity. This is a retroactive mathematical operation. In other words, it begins with the end of the canonization process and ends, at the very least, at the date of the death of the candidate for sainthood. At the minimum? We have analyzed and applied the concept to the postmortem trajectory of Thomas Aquinas, the pro and contra arguments which disputed his ideas and the legitimation of his fama publica. This does not mean that the concept cannot cover periods that include the time when the candidate to sainthood was alive. To prepare the concept and analyze the question we have proposed, we looked at the different types of documentation available and produced in the period we are interested in (1323-1274): inquisitorial processes, hagiographic reports, decrees, bulls and letters. A collection of documents which require a theoretical and methodological assumption, namely to approach sanctity as a socially and collectively constructed phenomenon. This phenomenon aims at proposing a biographical profile of righteousness and a profile of exceptional-

222 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The time of sanctity: reflections on a concept ity and intervention. It is important to bear in mind that a saint is an intermediary between men and God, and his actions are marked/characterized by acts not realized by all, in other words miracles. The documentation also revealed that important, though discrete, actions were taken by the Order of Preachers, and at the same time, the pontiff John XXII took decisive and direct action to canonize Thomas Aquinas. It was a period in which the papal power strengthened its authority in relation to kings, religious orders, men and women; marked by the actions of the mendicant friars in pastoral, liturgical and intellectual life.

NOTES

1 The documentation about the canonization of Thomas Aquinas is basically all published. Here we will use as references: DE SANCTI THOMA AQVINATE: Doctore Angelico Ordinis Praedicatorum. In: Acta Sanctorum. Martii. Tomus I. A Ioanne Bolland S.I. colligi felicit cœpta A Godefrido Henschenio et Danielle Paperbrocchio eiusdem societatis Iessu aucta digesta & illustrata. Antuperpiæ, apud Iacobum Meursium. Anno MDCLXVIII. p.655-747 (hereafter cited as AASS) and LAURENT, M. H. (Ed.), Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis notis historicis et criticis illustrati, 4: Liber de inquisitione super vita et conversa- tione et miraculis fratris Thomae de Aquino. Apud: Revue Thomiste, Saint Maximin [Var], 1931. O Inquérito de 1321, in: Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis notis historicis et criticis illustrati, 5: IIe procès de canonisation: Abbaye de Fossa-Nova, 10-20 Novembre 1321. Récits de la canonization de S. Thomas d’Aquin: Avignon, 14 (ou 16)-21 Juillet 1323. Apud: Revue Thomiste, Saint Maximin [Var], 1931. p.409-532. 2 VAUCHEZ, A. La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age: d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques. 2.ed. Rome: École Française de Rome; Palais Farnèse, 1988. 3 Data obtained in VAUCHEZ, 1988, p.295-300. 4 IOANNES EPISCOPVS. Canonizatio S. Thomae de Aquino Civitate provinciae Campaniae, professoris Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum S. Dominici, ejusque relatio in nu- merum Sanctorum Confessorum, com institutione suae festivitatis pro die 7 Martii. Apud: BULLARIVM ROMANVM: B. Leone Magno, vsq; ad S. D. N. Clamentem X. Opus absolu- tissimum, Laertii Cherubini Praestantissimi I. C. Romani et ad D. Angelo Maria Cherubino Monaco Cassinensi e aliis illustratum e auctum. Editio novissima. Quinque tomis distribu- ta, vitis & Iconibus aeneis omnium Pontificum exornata. Lugduni: Sumpt Petri Borde Ioannis & Petri Arnaud, MDCLXXXXII, p.228. 5 GUILLAUME DE TOCCO. Ystoria Sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco (1323). Toronto: Pims, 1996. 6 Until the present, the most systematic study about the manuscript tradition of Guglielmo

June 2012 223 Igor Salomão Teixeira da Tocco’s text is: LE BRUN-GOUANVIC, C. La tradition du texte. In: GUILLAUME DE TOCCO, 1996, p.61-67. Ms F22, dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, is entitled: “Prohemium in ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino et de necessitate institutionis ord. Predicatorum et eius commendatione”. Ms L23, from the end of the fourteenth century, has the title: “Prohemium de hystoria beati Thome de Aquino ordinis fratrum predicatorum. Et primo de necessitate institucionis eiusdem ordinis et eius commendatio”, with the subscrip- tion: “Explicit legenda sancti Thome de Aquino”. In addition, there is also Ms V24, also from the end of the fourteenth century, which possesses the inscription: “Prohemium in ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino. De necessitate institutionis ordinis predicatorum et eius commendatione. Primum Capitulum”. Among those of the fifteenth century, one example Ms. B25 has the title: “Incipt prohemium in Legendam sancti Thome de Aquino. Et primo necessitate institutionis ordinis predicatorum et eius commendacione sic incipit feliciter”. 7 BOUTET, D. Hagiographie et historiographie: la Vie de saint Thomas Becket de Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence et la Vie de saint Louis de Joinville. Le Moyen Age – Revue d’Histoire et de Philologie, Tome CVI, n.2, 2000. p.277-293. 8 BOUREAU, A. La patine hagiographique. Saint Pirerr Martyr dans la Légende Dorée. In: RENARD, E.; TRIGALET, M.; HERMAND, X.; BERTRAND, P. (Éd.) Scribere Sanctorum gesta: Recueil d’études d’hagiographie medieval offert à Guy Phillipart. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. p.359-366. 9 We agree here with Aviad Kleinberg. He considers the saint to be an exception capable of deeds not achievable by all human beings, in other words miracles. KLEINBERG, A. Histoire des Saints: Leur rôle dans la formation de l’Occident. Trad. Moshé Méron. Paris: Gallimard, 2005. p.14. 10 MORARD, M. Saint Thomas d’Aquin: un home de chair et d’os…aussi. Sedes Sapientiae, n.30, p.37-54, 1989. 11 MONUMENTA ORDINIS FRATRUM PRAEDICATORUM HISTORICA, v.5, p.104- 106. Carta XXVIII (hereafter cited as MOPH, with the corresponding volume). 12 PICHÉ, D. La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277. Paris: J. Vrin, 1999. 13 EPISTOLA SCRIPTA A STEPHANO EPISCOPO PARISIENSI ANNO 1277. Apud: PICHÉ, 1999, p.72-79. 14 Cf., for example: PIRON, S. Le plan de l’évêque: Pour une critique interne de la condamnation du 7 mars 1277. In: ______. Recherches de philosophie et théologie médiévales (no prelo); LIBERA, A. Pensar na Idade Média. São Paulo: Ed. 34, 1999; in addition to the studies of David Piché in the edition of the 219 condemned articles: PICHÉ, 1999. 15 In addition to the studies of Piché and Piron cited above, cf.: AERSTEN, J. A. Nach der Verurteilung Von 1277: Philosophie und Theologiae an der Universität Von Paris im letzten Viertel dês 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Text. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. Specifically these texts: EMERY JR., Kent; SPEER, Andreas. After the Condemnation of 1277: new evidence, new perspectives, and grounds for new interpretations. p.4-19;

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MAHONEY, Edward P. Reverberations of the Condemnation of 1277 in Later Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. p.902-930. 16 PAUL, J. Historia intelectual del Occidente Medieval. Madrid: Cátedra, 2003. p.402. 17 WIELOCKX, R. Autour du procès de Thomas d’Aquin. In: ZIMMERMANN, A. (Ed.) Thomas von Aquin: Werk und Wirkung im Licht neuerer Forschungen. Berlin, 1988. p.413- 438 (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 19). 18 AASS, Marti I, p.686-688. The existence of the first sanctuary in homage of Thomas Aquinas is attributed to Pandulfo de Savelo, namely St. Thomas Chapel on Mount Savelo. In 1322 the notary received authorization to build a college of theology. In relation to this, cf. KOUDELKA, V. J. La capella di S. Tommaso d’Aquino in Monte Savello a Roma. AFP, n.32, p.126-144, 1962. 19 MOPH, v.1, p.204. Trans. With the assistance of Cassiano Malacarne: “Since the man of the venerable memory, Brother Thomas Aquinas, having much honored the Order with his praiseworthy conduct and his writings, it shall not be tolerated in any manner that anyone shall speak about him or his writings without respect or inconveniently, or also those who judge differently. We shall oblige the priors of the provinces and convents, and their vicars, and all visitors, who may have met anyone who showed excess in the things mentioned, not to hesitate in imposing severe punishment.” 20 ROBIGLIO, A. La sopravivencia e la gloria: Appunti sulla formazione della prima scuola tomista (sec. XIV). Bologna: ESD, 2008. p.37-38.

Article received on 22 January 2012. Approved on 30 March 2012.

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The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher: Vincent of Beauvais and the concept of Christian kingship in the 13th century André Luis Pereira Miatello*

Resumo Abstract O presente artigo discute, com base no In this article I am concerned with the De morali principis institutione, de Vi- Vincent of Beauvais’s De morali prin- cente de Beauvais, os critérios, a insti- cipis institutione. The aim is to analyze tuição e a função social da realeza cristã his political ideas about the criteria, the no século XIII. Tal propósito nos levou institution and the social function of a perscrutar a imagem antiga do pasto- Christian kingship in the 13th century. rado régio por oposição à ideia de razão In order to understand Vincent of Beau- de Estado. Escrevendo para o rei cape- vais’s political thought, I counterpoise tíngio, Luís IX, Vicente de Beauvais the ancient figure of royal pastorate (the pastoral power of the king) and the rea- contrapõe a situação ordinária em que o son of state. Vincent of Beauvais wrote governo político se apresenta, no plano his treatise for the Capetian King Louis histórico, ao modelo social visível em IX in which he contrasted the ordinary uma realidade sobrenatural, chamada situation of political and historical gov- ecclesia. Se, por um lado, a ecclesia per- ernment with the social model called ec- manece sempre uma referência idealiza- clesia, a supernatural reality. For Vin- da e mística, por outro lado, a cristanda- cent Ecclesia always remains an idealized de, regida por reis-pastores, pode and mystic reference while Christianity, oferecer a antecipação histórica da con- governed by the shepherd king, may be a dição escatológica e pós-histórica que é historical anticipation of the scatological o destino final dos homens. and post-historical condition that is the Palavras-chave: política; realeza; pasto- final destiny of the mankind. rado régio. Keywords: politics; kingship; royal pastorate.

* Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Departamento de História. Av. Antônio Carlos, 6627, Pampulha. 31270-901 Belo Horizonte – MG – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 227-248 - 2012 André Luis Pereira Miatello

In this article, I intend to revise a theme considered classical in medieval political historiography: royalty and consequently the royal institution and its social function. It can be considered classical, as it has been widely talked about, researched, discussed, but not in the sense of having found the definitive scope for its ethos. I will not present here an overview of the principal works which have collaborated in recent centuries to the celebrated and discussable association of monarchy and the sacred, or to those who, criticizing the hegemony of this type of interpretation, engendered undoubtedly instigating debates, but which were nonetheless questionable.1 The discussion I propose, starting with the political thought of Vincent of Beauvais in the thirteen century, is concerned with circumscribing a field of analysis of public power in light of the criteria mobilized by thinkers of the period, identifying the key- points of the definition of what the exercise of government is and its social functionality for Latin Christianity. These objectives required prior clarifications: the expression ‘social function’ comes of course from Durkheimian vocabulary, according to which social institutions, comparable to the live organisms of a biological body, exercise specific functions for maintaining the life of the ‘body’ of which it is part. However, specific meaning of ‘function,’ and consequently the organicist understanding of society related to it substantially predate contemporary sociological schools. St. Paul described the Christian ecclesia as a body formed by many members (or organs), with Christ as the head (1 Cor. 12), subsequent doctors of the Church (in the East and West), loyal to Pauline authority, explored this analogy in various meanings even establishing a functional hierarchy, according to which the members of the body, understood as ecclesia or Christianity, are ordered (or staggered) according to their greater or lesser importance for the survival of the entire ecclesiastic ‘organism.’ In a more specific manner, Bishop John of Salisbury (c.1120-c.1180), in a political and moral treatise entitled Policraticus, applied the Pauline metaphor to describe the kingdom of England, whose head was the king, in his theomi- metic ‘function’ (cf. Book IV, 1-6). After the publication of this work, which enjoyed considerable good fortune, the organicist reference of the Church and society came to be used by many other scholars in medieval Western European, principally by Vincent of Beauvais, always applied to what over time came to be conceived as societas christiana, in other words social reality interpreted as the mystic junction of the kingdom and the Church. It is in this biblical and patriarchal sense that I adapt the expression ‘social function’ to my analysis of the work of Vincent of Beauvais.

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The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher

The choice of this erudite Dominican is not fortuitous; in fact, it allows the proposed review to return to a somewhat ‘classic’ meaning, as mentioned. Vincent of Beauvais, author of one of the greatest works of history composed in the thirteenth century (Speculum historiale), was also the compiler of a wide- ranging theological and philosophical tract (Speculum doctrinale) which discusses themes related to power, the government, the royal ministry, its natural and supernatural functions, the constitution of a political community and the need for this. In addition to theorizing about politics, Vincent also sought to educate rulers, in the sense of teaching the art of governing: two of the principal works of the thirteen century about this question are his, one of which will be our starting point (De morali principis institutione).2 Notwithstanding the extreme finesse with which he analyzes questions of a political nature, we can consider it representative of a socially majoritarian manner of thinking, because, despite his particular concerns, which will be discussed below, Vincent always intended to be and was a great compiler of the ideas then in vogue. At the moment when modern historiography questions the emergence in the Middle Ages of a mode of government which we can call laicized, opposed to the dogmatic precepts of religion, or also those which projected during this period the effects of the autonomy of the political and/religious in relation to the social whole, Vincent of Beauvais’ texts can help to clarify the discrepancies between lay and dogmatist analyses of medieval politics. Beforehand, it is useful to look at the context of this discussion.

Political power and the common good

In the introduction to the book Da política à razão de Estado: a ciência do governo entre os séculos XIII e XVII, Maurizio Viroli states that in the fourteenth century there occurred a ‘revolution’ in political language of such magnitude that it caused what can be understood as political science to change meaning completely; since then politics has no longer been seen as a noble art and came to be considered as an “ignoble, depraved and sordid: no longer the weapon with which to fight corruption, but the art of adapting to it.”3 Using the expression ‘reason of state,’ which entered into the vocabulary of political science at the end of the Middle Ages, Viroli observes that this revolution signified the loss of the strictly moral orientation which constituted a large part of the understanding of politics before the sixteenth century. After this conceptual turn, the expression ‘reason of state’ was used to indicate the efforts of maintaining and expanding the dominion or the power of a deter-

June 2012 229 André Luis Pereira Miatello mined person or social group over public institutions. Its purpose was understood as the act of maintaining the state, legitimate or illegitimate, just or unjust, with effective means, not being concerned with whether they were legitimate. Obviously, Viroli developed the explanation of this conceptual revolution with great skill. It happens that from the point of view of the conception before the emergence of the reason of state, the fact that the political act had become a ignoble and corrupt thing had more profound and complex causes than the pure and simple loss of moral reference. Before entering into the discussion of the political assumptions of Vincent of Beauvais, it is useful to problematize the limits of this transformation of the modes of conceiving politics. We can take the case of Brunetto Latini, in his work Li Livres dou Trésor,4 and Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, in Collationes in Hexaemeron (Coll. V),5 both thirteenth century authors. The former, linked to the lay circles of Italian communal power, the latter related to the Parisian university ambient, more willing to talk about mysticism than politics. It is true that these two scholars represented different social places and that the diversity of places provoked differences of perspective. Nonetheless, in relation to the point being discussed here, both these litterati shared a specific comprehension of the political that was openly opposed to the concept of reason of state; for this reason any theoretical discrepancies between these authors and Vincent of Beauvais does not diminish the epistemological scope of the explanations given by them to the nature of political action. In fact these authors can be seen in light of the important epistemological inflection that occurred in the thirteenth century: the time of the development of a certain philosophical, scientific and political rationality.6 However, it is better not to exaggerate the significance of this inflection, which was far from a rupture with the intricacies of previous scholarship, as I hope to show in this text. To the contrary of certain contemporary explanations, this epoch cannot be solely conceived as a harbinger of teleologically understood ‘modern’ times, as we can find in authors such as Quentin Skinner.7 In fact, Brunetto Latini is the first example of ‘laicized’ political thought, but this adjective simply indicates that he was not a cleric, but a public notary. For him politics is the art of governing with justice and reasons, the aim of which is to preserve the respublica understood as the community of men who live together under the shelter of justice and the government of law and for this reason the means of sustenance of this art should be legitimate:

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[Politics is] the highest science and the most noble craft there is among men, since it teaches us to govern the foreign peoples of a kingdom and a city, a people and a commune in times of war and peace, with reason and with justice.8

This definition of Latini’s in itself does not entirely contradict the assumptions of reason of state as defined by Viroli, since the thirteenth century rhet- orician argues that his work, Li Trésor (The Treasure), was written to teach rulers how “to increase their power and to safeguard their states in war and peace” (Li Trésor I.1.1). The difference in my opinion resides in the complement of the citation in which Latini notes that politics is the greatest of all arts because it depends on rhetoric: “the science of speaking well and governing people is more noble that all the arts of the world” (Li Trésor I. 1.4). The reference to rhetoric here allows us to understand political activity as the exercise of an art which is learned through the imitation/emulation of the authorities (auctoritates), the basics of which refers to the learning of that traditio which is part of the doctrine or science of governing well. In this case the moral orientation of politics continues to maintain all its significance. Brunetto explicitly announces that his proposal of studying politics is based on the ‘the uses of Italians,’ in other words on that modality of parliamentary government (through an assembly) which constitutes the first communal experience in the proper sense; within this modality, the spoken word has an unlimited importance, since it becomes the principal prerogative of power. In Italy at the end of the twelfth century, and throughout the thirteenth, a new political culture of urban government was built in which the confluence of politics and language became evident and imperious, even resulting in the emergence of a new category of governor, the itinerant potentate (podestà); the latter was not only a ‘representative of the interests of the commune,’ but was beforehand a professional exempt from the interests within it, capable of favoring a balance between the factions (or parties), allowing peace and cooperation. The potentate, through the use of the public word (or politics), presented himself as an antidote to the evils which afflicted cities, and it was based on this highly rhetorical professional configuration that the Italian communes affirmed their status quo.9 Brunetto Latini’s considerations and before him those of Orfino de Lodi (De regimine et sapientia potestatis, 1245) and John de Viterbo (Liber de regimine civitatum, 1260) lead us to perceive that ‘civil science’ (civilis scientia), understood in the terms of the epoch, demands another category for the political, absent from the sixteenth century onwards, as Viroli highlights, which

June 2012 231 André Luis Pereira Miatello we can call the moral education of the ruler; because rhetorical learning was not just an exercise in the declamation of discourses in the assembly, but a pedagogical process (individual and collective) in which the men involved in politics seek to acquire the sapientia which, according to the Romans, such as Cicero, constituted the public man par excellence. Enrico Artifoni said that “word, moral, society and politics are conjugated in the same treatise, which gives space to some models of discourse ... but excludes the normative about the technical construction of concione.”10 We can find similar considerations outside the communal environment of Italian cities in the thought of men such as Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, who wrote his Collationes in Hexaemeron (Sermons about the six days of creation) in the Parisian court (1273). In these sermons, aimed at the university community of Paris, the Minorite theologian lists the principal theses related to his mysticism and his scatology. We can also find some references in them about the actual political sphere. I would like to highlight some: in first place, Bonaventura states that the good of the republic (respublica) should come before any other human interest, even the private friendships that men come to have. Second, the ignorance of good and, as a result, the practice of evil result from the fact that men no long love the public good and come to love the private good (bonum privatum): the root of the political ills is the loss of the sense of collectivity and in the lack of consideration of the primacy of the common good. Bonaventura verifies that this loss or lack of consideration is much more noxious when done by governments: “the prince should not seek his own utility, but that of the republic,” and in this point, agreeing with Aristotle, with whom he dialogues, the theologian sees the difference between the prince and the tyrant: the latter puts the private interest before that of the collective, acts like Herod who, fearing that he would lose his kingdom, order all the innocent children in Bethlehem killed; the prince to the contrary makes great efforts to privilege the common utility (communem utilitatem). It appears certain that Bonaventura did not forget the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, according to which it is impossible for men to practice good fully. In this case the prince, even when he desires to act according to his status, slips into error and behaves like a tyrant. Not for nothing Bonaventura provides for princes and governors (rectores) to learn the art of governing (artem gubernandi), in other words they act like the captain of a ship who does not adventure onto the high seas without dominating the techniques of piloting. The theme of learning the art of governing was not recent;11 medieval

232 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher thinkers do justice to the love they nourished for the auctoritates of the ancient world, Greco-Roman and biblical. However, Bonaventura, in enunciating the principle of governability through expertise, contradicts another long established assumption, the heredity of princes. For him, in the wake of John of Salisbury, heredity right could compromise the stability of the royal house if the successor was not capable of conducting it with political mastery and principally the moral of his antecessor:

Thus, when they preside they govern the republic badly. David saintly; Solomon, although inconstant, was wise; Rehoboam foolish because he divided the kingdom. The Romans, instigated by the devil, chose Diocletian. They had to chose the one eating at an iron table and finding him eating over ploughshare chose him, and he committed much evil. From this it results that the Romans when they elected their rulers chose very wise men and for this reason the republic was well governed; nevertheless, when the succession was introduced, everything was destroyed.12

The rapid reference to Brunetto Latini and Bonaventura da Bagnoregio allows us to verify the weight of the tradition of a type of political thought which beginning with Pythagoras, Plato or Aristotle, passing through Cicero, Seneca, reaching Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Magnus and John of Salisbury, made politics an experience of looking for the Good, if not absolute Good, at least that good which can be found in life. For all these thinkers, the search for Good, philosophically or theologically talking, covers the political field with a content that is moral and, in the Christian case, scatological, since the Good, absolute or sovereign, allows men and human society to enjoy the fruition of felicity,13 in this and in the other world. It is precisely here where can be found the knot of the question discussed by Michel Foucault in his 1981 talk Omnes et singulatim,14 which to me seems to expand Maurizio Viroli’s discussion. For the philosopher the modern concept of reason of state starts with the assumption of what constitutes an art, in other words, a technique based on rational rules. The reason of state, as the name indicates, demands that a political community be conceived based on criteria of rationality and other ra- tionalizable criteria of the state. The question was totally ignored or rejected before the sixteenth century: according to Foucault this was because previous thinkers conceived the political community as something to be submitted to the three distinct, though interdependent, legislative references: human law, natural law and divine law. In the last two cases, in other words in natural law

June 2012 233 André Luis Pereira Miatello and in divine law, there can be glimpsed the weight of the Christian conception of the providence of God which governs history and which in this case reduced the autonomy of human reason. The notion of justice and of good, for example, is presented as being linked to a certain conformity with the three bodies of the laws: the political community and consequently their rulers, did not have a purpose in themselves; they needed to conform to a purpose which went beyond them – in the same way that the body needed to be ruled by the soul, the universe had to be ruled by God: “Man needs someone capable of opening the way to celestial felicity by shaping here on earth what is honestum” (ibidem, p.375). Thus, in both Brunetto Latini and in Bonaventura, two very distinct examples of thirteenth century erudite thought, the theme of the education moral of the ruler, or the art of ruling, was presented as a sine qua non condition of the actual possibility of acting politically: celestial felicity inevitably depended on the honesty of earthly life which could only be learned through faith and asceticism.

Vincent of Beauvais, educator of princes

The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais was one of the most prolific and influential preceptors of princes and authors of treatises on royal education. Notwithstanding the eminent political role he acquired when he was nominated lector of the royal abbey of Royaumont by Louis IX in 1246, nothing is known about his birth, which perhaps occurred in the final decade of the twelfth century, about his initial studies, or even the date of his death, which appears to have occurred around 1264. After being admitted to the convent of Saint-Jacques in Paris, between 1215 and 1220 Vincent participated in the intense academic and university verve which involved the preaching friars in the first years of the new foundation. Approximately 20 years later, around 1244, Vincent was no longer just an unknown friar among the many Dominicans who frequented the studium generale in Paris looking for philosophical and above all theological learning: his Speculum maius raised him into a superior category in the world of studies. It was one of the most exquisite compendia of erudite knowledge compiled in the Western medieval world, a work which took ten years of study and research. This immense ‘encyclopedic’ work intended to present a summary of natural, doctrinal and historical knowledge; a large part of the work dealt with questions and content we can call political, such as the section in which Vincent discussed universal history,

234 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher specifying the historical place of kingdoms and kings according to divine providence. The reputation which he gained from the success of Speculum maius gave Vincent a leading place among the Dominicans who had made themselves renowned through their intellectual efforts, which most have facilitated his entrance into the court of King Louis. As a preacher and confessor of the royal family, Vincent of Beauvais also became a member of the royal entou- rage, involving himself with the monarchical policy of Louis IX, especially with the practical questions of French government which employed numerous Dominicans and Franciscans as part of the administrative apparatus of the kingdom. During the thirteenth century, these orders applied themselves to constructing a project of royal policy with the aim of implementing this inside and outside the kingdom of France. We should not be shocked to see friars from the mendicant orders at the service of important kings or kingdoms, such as the Francia of Louis IX, or the Anglia of Henry III: whether beside kings or dukes, or alongside common governors, such as the Dominican Iacopo de Varazze, in Genoa, the mendicant orders expected to act in a forceful way in the political space, implementing in centers of power their specific penitential ethnics. Therefore, despite the hierarchical and social differences between a monarchy and a commune, the friars leveled their practices to a differentiated perspective of political action which, according to Paolo Evangelisti,15 contributed effectively to the ‘construction of a state’ to the extent that the spiritual elements proposed by the friars corresponded to the interests of the respective centers of power. Evangelisti, in fact, notes that in the kingdom of Aragon, especially after Pedro III (1276-1285), the Mendicants developed a political discourse which managed to equal the theological understanding of caritas (sic) to the political understanding – monarchical and communal – of utilitas publica; the Mendicants commenced with the concept of passio Christi, politically mobilized, to explain the com- munio formed by the citizens of a kingdom (or commune) which was nothing other than a social body, divided into many members, but united by caritas Christi. Here there returns the organicist metaphor discussed at the beginning of the text and which served to define the functions of each member within this mystic body. From old times in the company of the Capetian kings, Vincent was instigated by Louis IX, his queen Margarida and by Theobald, Count of Champagne and King of Navarra, to write works that would serve for the instruction of princes and of courtiers; this request corresponded to what was the intellec-

June 2012 235 André Luis Pereira Miatello tual forte of the friar and his mission as the preacher of the royal house. The work would not be so difficult as Vincent already had at hand most of the bibliographic references necessary to fulfill the request of the royal family. Vincent wrote three books of a politico-didactic nature: the treatise “About the education of the sons of nobles” [De eruditione filiorum nobilium], composed around 1246-1247, “Letter of consolation for the death of a friend” [Epistola consolatoria ad Ludovicum regem de morte amici], written in 1260 and finally the treatise “About the moral instruction of the prince” [Tractatus de morali principis institutione], written in stages and completed around 1263. All the works were written at the request of the king himself, which leads us to think that Vincent, in his greater function of a preacher, was responding to a preeminent political demand which placed practical application ahead of philosophical theorization; and it is about this practical side to his political thought that I want to discuss.

The Dominicans and politics

Contemporary historians, such as Jean-Philippe Genet16 and Jacques Le Goff,17 have highlighted how Louis IX built around his court a ‘political academy’ with the friars from the Order of Preachers (or Dominicans) at the front. That the project was assumed by the Dominican order itself is evident in the convocation of the master general, Humberto de Romans, who designed the convent of Saint-Jacques in the heart of Paris, to be the base of this political academy linked to the Capetian court. According to the critics, Vincent of Beauvais composed the manual About the education of the sons of nobles with this perspective of collective work. The first ambition of the king’s ideologue friars was to produce a collection of works which would contain a summary of all biblical and patristic knowledge related to the nature and purpose of monarchical power which could provide kings with more authoritative advice on how to govern. In the language of Vincent of Beauvais, this knowledge constituted political science (scientia civilis) capable of establishing and solidifying the actual kingdom. Based on a reading of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, the Dominican friars, including Vincent and afterwards the Franciscans, such as Gilberto de Tournai, threw themselves into the great venture of composing mirrors for princes, in other words moral treatises whose purpose was to instruct kings to govern their own lives according to virtue and to govern the kingdom according to justice; it was not by chance that we can count dozens of works entitled

236 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher specula principum composed in the thirteenth century and whose authors were precisely the Mendicant friars.

Vincent of Beauvais and the question of power

In the following pages I intend to present in a summarized manner the fundamentals of Vincent of Beauvais’s thought. It is not my intention to present a Vicentine discourse analysis, a method which I do not have mastery of, but rather to circumscribe a theoretical ambit in which the friar moved and through which he composed his work. I am not in search of something new or original, I only want to elucidate, loyal to the concept circumscribed by him, the limits of his political projection which certainly should have made complete sense in the court in which he had lived for many years. For this I will concentrate on his explanation of the origin of royal power and about the functionality of the office of king, which corresponds to chapters I-IV of De morali principis institutione.

1. De Regis institutione

To explain the origin of the monarchy and the notion of power exercised by men, Vincent of Beauvais starts with the biblical premise of the Book of Genesis, in which human history is divided into two stages. First, the creation of the first couple, and the second after Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s law and the later punishment they received. In making an exegesis of the first chapters of Genesis, Vincent showed that before Adam and Eve’s sin (preter- natural time), there had been no kings among men, because they were all equal by nature. Vincent called this idyllic period of the history of humanity princípio da natureza bem instituída, i.e., the epoch when everything was in its due place:

The word ‘prince’ signifies the first head or the one who occupies first place or the primacy. This position did not exist among men at the beginning of properly ordered nature, but had its origin when malice grew due to the ambition of the infidels. Since they were all equal by nature, Nemroth, from the family of Caim, was the first to usurp the kingdom over men by winning for himself their support.18

Vincent of Beauvais noted that monarchy originated in the craving for power (amor dominandi/appetitus dominandi) which signified the breaking

June 2012 237 André Luis Pereira Miatello of the perfect order (natura bene instituta) of creation before sin. The concept of sin is here fundamentally a cosmological and political category: the error of the first man broke the balance of creation, since humanity was placed on top of the world. Sin caused a rupture between God and the men and prevented them from having access to the bliss of divine familiarity. As a result the people born from the descendents of Cain are infidels, moved by malice (malitia) and by ambition (ambitio), men created an inequality so pernicious that it could have led to the destruction of the human race (seen in the fratricide of Cain) if divine providence had not prepared the means for countering the malice of men. After showing that the defectiveness in the human condition generated inequality and the vice of prepotency (amor dominandi), Vincent discusses the development of infidel (born from disobedience) kingdoms (res publica) and empires, pointing out the particular acts of each great general or prince (from Nemroth to Julius Caesar) who moved by the vice conquered power for themselves. It is interesting to note that Vincent, before presenting the model of the perfect Christian prince, visible in Louis IX, spends various pages of his treatise to show princes inflamed by amor dominandi: beginning with Nemroth, Vincent discussed the Egyptian pharaohs and Greek kings, Aeneas, Brutus, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, all corrupted by the ambition to have power for themselves. As the power of kings began with an usurper such as Nemroth and in the sin of Cain, kingdoms could only begin among the infidels, despisers of the law of God, traitors of his love. In the ideal plane, i.e., in the time before the Fall, there was no royalty; in the same way, in the time of the primitive Church, i.e., before the conversion of Constantine, the community of believers did not know the monarch. This is because the ecclesia, in the opinion of Vincent, restored by the sacrament to the ideal order broken by sin, in the same way that before the Fall Adam and Eve only dominated the animals as their pastors, likewise the Church the ministers are called pastors and not kings. Faced with this addicted and corrupted political scenario, Vincent opposed ecclesia and regnum. Drawing on the cited authority of Gregory the Great he stated that in the Church the pastors were not “kings of men, but shepherds of sheep” (Regula Pastoralis II, 6), in a clear demonstration that the first founders of ecclesia were not stained by amor dominandi. In this ideal of the primitive Church, the inequality between man is not substantial, since all are shepherded sheep, neither dominated nor subjugated. Vincent invokes the name of Noah to express that men are only superior to

238 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher animals and not among themselves. For this reason the faithful people (the Israel of the Old Testament) did not have a king until the times of Samuel, which shows that monarchy is not a divine institution (ex voluntate dei), but rather human, since in the case of ancient Israel, the royalty was decided by the general will of the people.19 In reference to the amor dominandi which founded the kingdom, there can be read surreptitiously the authority of St. Augustine (De civitate Dei, XIX, 15) who speaks of a libido dominandi which imposes inequality among men. According to the Augustinian reading of the report of creation, man by nature was created superior to fish, birds, reptiles, animals. It is licit according to nature to dominate them, thus it can be read: “the first just men were created more as shepherds of cattle than kings of men” (primi iusti pastores pecorum magis quam reges hominum constituti sunt). Creation is hierarchically ordered, defining that the rational will dominate the irrational, as it should be among superior beings. In the same way, in man, his rational part (the soul) should command the irrational part (the body); however, when man falls into sin, distorting his natural condition, disorder takes over and he who was once free becomes subject to his vices. The term ‘subject’ has a strong meaning in Augustine, who appeals to the authority of Paul. The sinner is the slave of sin. In the paradisiacal state there was no subjec- tion between men, and for this reason there were no kings; the emergence of royalty is due to sin which makes men slaves (servus, a term whose significance St. Augustine explains): inequality among men, which provokes the existence of a king, is due to sin, although divine justice accompanies human government aiming for an eternal good. The theme seems to have had wide repercussions in Christian thought: Ambrosius of Milan also uses a similar expression when he speaks of ambitio potestatis (Hexaemeron, V, 15, 52). In Ambrosius it can be read that power, considered in itself, is good, because it has an origin in God. However, the unregulated or depraved use of this positive potency damages the ideal ordered inscribed in natural law and in revealed law (defended by the bishop of Milan). Ambrosius restricts the use of this potency to a single aspect: when its aim is the good. In this case power is good, but ambition is bad, because it wants more than the just average: there is thus a just way and an unjust way of using the power that God inscribed in the world.20 Vincent of Beauvais explicitly cites St. Augustine in his work Quaestionum in Heptateucum (Livro V, 26) to fortify his point of view; in this work, the Bishop of Hippo interprets chapter 17 of the biblical book of Deuteronomy

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(versus 14-15), in which Moses declared that if the people of Israel, when they entered the promised land wanted to chose for themselves like the other nations, they should elect who God chose, and this person should be a member of the Israelite people and not a foreigner. The biblical problem which St. Augustine tried to explain was this: how could the same scriptures indicate the choice of king for Israel was not the will of God, and if it shows that God permitted the choice of king and establishes its criteria? St. Augustine resolves the question stating that the institution of royalty was not secundum voluntatem Dei, but divine permission to those who wanted it (sed desiderantibus permisit); the aspect of divine permission is perhaps the only criteria which justifies the presence of kings in the history of salvation. The question was serious: Scripture showed that God used kings according to his intentions for salvation and that the power of kings came from God. Vincent could not contradict the authority of the Bible, so he stated: “for this reason the condition of kings is never reproachable before God since for him kings reign and princes order, as can be read in the book of Proverbs, Chapter 8.”21 The example of Saul was also symptomatic of this trajectory: he was a king chosen and anointed with divine instruction, and his kingdom was only un- done because like Adam, Eve and Cain, he offended God with pride (per su- perbiam Deum offendisset). David, to the contrary of Saul, because he was loyal to God, not only did not lose the kingdom, but left it to his inheriting sons; there was, thus, a way for royalty to please God and to answer his task of salvation.

2. Why do kings exist?

In the dynamics explained above, the opposition between the time of grace and the time of sin was fundamental; the original equality between men and the inequality resulting from pride. The biblical logic continues to be important in the explanation which Vincent of Beauvais formulates about the purpose of royalty. The history of perdition described in the first pages of the Scriptures supposes the history of salvation described in all the other pages and which constitutes the work of God par excellence. The misery of Adam is talked about to exalt the mercy of God. There comes into play the theological principle of divine providence in which God knows how to get the best even from evil: in this case, the origin of royalty can be the usurpation of Nemroth, in the same way that the origin of

240 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher the first city was the fratricide of Cain. However, God, who did not abandon history, used kings and cities to prove the life of men. The disorder of peace is followed by the order of merit. Based on the criteria of virtue, in opposition to vice, Vincent of Beauvais justifies the existence of social hierarchy in the post- fall world: if there is already no equality, then inequality will be perceived in the hierarchy of merits– the best presiding the worst. The existence of kings thus meets the need to control human vices, to count passions in order to prevent one from killing another. Since selfishness, which always loves the private good, is responsible for the individual actions of men, the king becomes the one responsible for assuring and defending the public good, acting at the root of political depravation,22 with even physical coercion being allowed. The government and the laws constitute the way that the king exercises his social attributes. In this way the king proposed by Vincent is the same as that of Paul and Peter the apostles. He is the one who punishes errors and rewards the correct, he is the just king; in other words, he tries to lead the men submitted to him to that state which sin lost, but which is restored by grace in the foundation of the ecclesia. The understanding of this last reasoning requires us to understand, first, the opposition which Vincent of Beauvais establishes, based on references to St. Augustine and to Gregory the Great, between regnum and ecclesia: the former, marked by libido dominandi; the latter by amor Dei. Kingdom and Church are here metaphors of those two primitive state separated by the disobedience of Adam. In this case, the king contemplated and proposed by Vincent can only exist in the conceptual field of ecclesia who projects the prince on a mission of salvation. It is necessary to emphasize that by opposing regnum and ecclesia, Friar Vincent did not seem to be referring to a actual kingdom or Church, in other words he is not discussing the relations of the kingdom of France or the Holy Roman-German empire with the Roman Church, as might be thought based on a superficial reading.23 Both concepts, maintained in their original Latin here, function as references to an ideal state which should exist, but which was lost: a world ruled by grace or by divine love (charitas Dei) and a world dominated by sin or by lack of human control (libido dominandi); like St. Augustine of Hippo and his mystical cities, ecclesia and regnum mystically expressed immaterial realities. It is thus necessary to be cautious when stating that Vincent of Beauvais defended a ‘theocratic conception of the political,’ as Javier Vergara did24 in the analysis of the same first four chapters of De morali principis institutione, linking the Vicentine argument with the theory of ‘political agnosti-

June 2012 241 André Luis Pereira Miatello cism,’ coined by Henri-Xavier Arquillière in the context of the Neo-Thomism of the twentieth century and the conciliatory ecclesiology of Leo XIII.25 There are no major problems if by theocracy we mean a system of government based on values and laws referring to a supernatural life; the Dominican thinkers, like all other Christians, theorized based on the unquestionable assumption of divine regency. However, in Vincent of Beauvais the question is not reduced to the otherworld or to the spirit dimension: by proposing the predominance of charitas or amor Dei over libido/ambitio dominandi, Vincent does not think only in spiritual or theological terms and does not simply want to impose divine law over positive law, nor impose clerical power over lay power; so much so that in both John of Salisbury and Helinando de Froidmont (1160/1170-1229), he wants to indentify the conditions that make possible social coexistence despite original sin, whose root is pride. These authors are concerned with a better life here! In this question there is no way not to note the influence of a certain reading of Ciceronian work, particularly De inven- tione and De officiis, read and glossed from long since by Christian authors (Nederman, 1988, p.11). For this reason it is not enough to say that Vincent of Beauvais defends a theocracy; it is necessary to prove it in light of the references that he himself mobilizes. The ecclesia, as it is marked by amor Dei, prevents the Christian king from being moved by libido dominandi; to the contrary, the love of God means that he, in the words of Gregory the Great, cited by Vincent, is concerned with being a useful being, and not in dominating. This association of ideas confers with the opposition between the figure of the shepherd before the Fall and the dominator after the Fall. Nor does the shepherd let himself be moved by thirst for power, but by the simple desire to preserve the life of his sheep and to lead them to abundant pastures. The fact is that Vincent wrote for a visible kingdom, in other words one subject to the imperfections of the post-fall world. The king he had before him was a Capetian, devote, but nonetheless a sinner. The Vicentine attempt to educate the king, the princes and all the court was based on a desire to form a society based on the laws of charity which constituted the ecclesia. From this results that the king proposed by Vincent of Beauvais and that of many of thinkers, such as John of Salisbury, is the shepherd king. In Vicentine works there is an opposition, already discussed by Michel Senellart,26 between the verb regere, in which St. Augustine and Isidore of Seville saw the origin of the name king, and the verb dominare, which immediately refers to the relations of power in the private space that is the domus, whose leader re-

242 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher ceives the name of dominus (despot in Greek). The royal discourse formulated by the Mendicant friars proposes that the king is not a dominator, i.e., treats his subject like a lord treats his slaves, but is a shepherd, that is he leads his subject to the best pasture in this life and to the pasture of eternal life. In this sense the king rules his conduct by divine precepts and corrects the conduct of his subject aiming at the condition of ideal life; in this case the king does not dominate but shepherds. The figure of the shepherd king, which can be found in Homeric narratives or in Pythagorean and Platonic references dating long back, (Sassier, 2002, p.20) is here resignified based on biblical references; thence it can be said that the monarchy is only a beneficial state for Vincent, when backed by the unity of faith which constitutes the ecclesia and with faithful kings, since these are the only ones who enjoy the legitimacy of governing. If political domination is the fruit of sin, then its remedy can only be found in the medicinal source of grace, the ecclesia, and Christian kings are the shepherds most apt to correct the men of vices, according to the authority of Paul in Letter to the Romans, chapter 13. In this case the primary action of a king is to defend and ensure justice which means recognizing the place of God (and his law) and the place of man in the sphere of history. It is up to the king to revert the disorder of Adam and in this case fight with humilitas the noxious effects of superbia. Christian kings (who are the objects of consideration of Vincent) have a more soteriological mission than political, and their horizon is scatology, in other words the consumption of history in the kingdom without sin. In relation to this, Vincent follows on from Gregory the Great: to rule is to lead men to salvation. In addition since men are body and soul, the king must correct the bodies and the bishop the soul. In a world that has developed following the drives of vices, Vicentine thought, like that of any medieval Christian, is concerned with the world of perfections, the kingdom of grace. This proposal should correspond, if not to the feelings of Louis IX, renowned for his tireless devotion, at least to the image he tried to construct for himself27 and which after his death was widely publicized by his Dominican biographers/hagiographers, such as Geoffroy de Beaulieu, in Vita et sancta conversatio piae memoriae Ludovici quondam Regis francorum (1272), in which Chapter 15 registers a complete synthesis of the teachings which King Louis drafted and left as a legacy to his heir. This spiritual testament coincides with the principal lines of argument of treatises on Christian royalty, such as the chapters collated under the name of De constituendo Regis, present in

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Helinando de Froidmont Chronicon, a work which survives thanks to the compilation made by Vincent in his Speculum maius (Vergara, 2010, p.70-71). It is the Speculum historiale, a part of Speculum maius, that we can find complementary references to the theoretical discussion of De morali principis institutione. Referring to the Roman Empire at the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, the Dominican sees it as profoundly marked by libido dominandi, a property of the pagan kingdoms (of infidels, according to the common no- menclature). Nonetheless, this is the same Vincent who, upon dividing the stages of universal history, chose to mark them by the empires and emperors, reserving for the life of Christ a more theological role than historical.28 In the same way, even arising out of the desire for domination, empires can become legitimate due to two factors: the general consensus of citizens or divine choice. In the Roman case, the two things happened, because according to Vincent, the peoples dominated by Rome had already consented to obey its laws and in addition it was within the empire that the son of God was born. The empire, it was understood, foreshadowed and prepared the kingdom of Christ on earth. In other words, Christ chose to be born during the ‘peace of Augustus’ because the empire offered the conditions for the coming of the messiah and for the birth of the ecclesia. It was when the limited human work collaborated with the divine will founding a human institution, but one with a divine vocation, having to conciliate the dimensions of regnum and ecclesia. This profane or divine legitimacy, in accordance with the will of peoples or of God, conferred on the political community a positivistly valued constitution. As has already been observed by Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, Vincent of Beauvais did not make the Roman Empire and previous empires equal. Only one is the empire which prepared and sustained the coming of Christ, and for this reason it is superior to the others. It is the metaphor of that divine-human reality called ecclesia, which St. Augustine had difficulty in defining as the church of his time. In the wake of Jerome (Chronicon, fourth century) and Bede the Venerable (Historia ecclesiastica, eight century), Vincent conceived the Roman Empire as legitimate, universal and providential because it allowed the Christ and his ecclesia which exercises on earth these three saving prerogatives. The secular army of the Church or the earthly expression of ecclesia, the Roman Empire, dressed as the Carolingian Empire, and afterwards Saxon, manifests the oscillation between spiritual and temporal, which is from the time of Vincent and from which he cannot escape. The fact remains that according to his own providentialist reading, the political community, represented by the reality of the Roman Empire, allows space to conceive of

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Christianity molded around the ‘peace of Augustus’ which has become the ‘peace of the Church.’ In this way we cannot fall into the illusion of defining Vincent as an advocate of papalist theses to the detriment of imperialist, or vice-versa, but only as giving voice to the omnipresent Christian belief that grace supposes nature. The fact is that Louis IX benefitted considerably from the political theory of Vincent of Beauvais and of the Dominicans as a whole, principally because any reduction of the imperial prestige of the Hohenstaufen could signify an increase in the prestige of the king of Francia in the body of Christianity. We cannot forget that it is Christianity, as a concept and a mystic-temporal reality, which excited Louis and the Dominicans to seek to justify political action, even culminating in the military and religious movement known as the cru- sades. Vincent of Beauvais’ political theory has little to do with the criteria of governing the modern state, present in the concept of reason of state. As we can observe in the discussion of Michel Foucault, the ideas of the royal pastorate fortified and increased the power of the king within a community which wanted to have a supernatural life. The subsistence of the community did not reside in the king, but in what he represented; to the contrary, reason of state implies precisely the strengthening of the state and not the prince, and it is the state which needs to last indefinitely. The royal pastorate supposes that the king is not an autocrat which dominates a territory, but the image of God who leads the boat of men to the port of salvation. This theological and moral criteria constitutes an important limit for the libido of power of any monarch, even St. Louis IX, and also a limit for the development of a political idea which advocates the overcoming of dogmas and the religious truth synthesized in the sovereignty of God.

NOTES

1 We can find an important questioning of the old and new approaches to political history in an article by BOUREAU, Alain. Des politiques tirées de l’Écriture. Byzance et l’Occident. Annales – Histoire, Sciences Sociales, année 55, n.4, p.879-887, 2000. In relation to studies about royalty in the Middle Ages, I suggest to the reader the important introduction of SILVA, Marcelo Cândido da. A realeza cristã na Alta Idade Média: os fundamentos da auto- ridade pública no período merovíngio (séc. V-VIII). São Paulo: Alameda, 2008. p.17-40. 2 I use as a reference the critical edition edited by Robert J. Schneideer. VINCENTII BELVACENSIS. De morali principis institutione. Turnholt: Brepols, 1995.

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3 VIROLI, Maurizio. Dalla politica alla ragion di stato: la scienza del governo tra XIII e XVII secolo. Roma: Donzelli, 1994. p.VII. 4 BRUNETTO LATINI. Li Livres dou Trésor. Ed. Francis J. CARMODY. Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1998. 5 BOAVENTURA DE BAGNORÉGIO. Collationes in Hexaemeron. In: ______. Obras de San Buenaventura. Ed. bilingue. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1947. Tomo III. 6 Cf. Rodríguez de la Peña, drawing on B. Wilkinson (“The Political Revolution of the Thirteenth and Fourtheenth Century in England”, Speculum, v.24, 1949), who even says that a ‘political revolution’ occurred in the thirteenth century, resulting from other revolutions in the various fields of erudite knowledge; Cf. RODRÍGUEZ DE LA PEÑA, Manuel Alejandro. Imago Sapientiae: los Orígenes del ideal sapiencial medieval. Medievalismo, Revista de la Sociedad Española de Estudios Medievales, v.7, p.11-39, 1997. p.17. 7 SKINNER, Quentin. As fundações do pensamento politico moderno. Trad. Renato Janine Ribeiro. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996. 8 BRUNETTO LATINI, 1998, I, 4.5: “c’est la plus haute science et dou plus noble mestier ki soit entre les homes, car ele nos ensegne governer les estranges gens d’un regne et d’une vile, un peuple et une comune en tens de pés et de guerre, selonc raison et selonc justice”. 9 Cf. ARTIFONI, Enrico. I podestà professionali e la fondazione retorica della politica comunale. Quaderni Storici, v.63, ano XXI, fasc. 3, p.687-719, 1986. 10 With the Italianized term concione, the author refers to the discourse of the assembly (in thirteenth century Latin concio), much practiced in Italian communes. Cf. ARTIFONE, Enrico. Gli uomini dell’assemblea. L’oratoria civile, i concionatori e i predicatori nella soci- età comunale. In: CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE, XXII. Assisi, 1994. La predicazione dei frati dalla metà del ‘200 alla fine del ‘300. Atti... Spoleto: Cisam, 1995. p.141-188. p.147. 11 A good discussion about the antiquity of the Mirror for Princes genre can be found in the article by artigo de BORN, Lester K. The specula principis of the Carolingian Renaissance. Révue belge de philosophie et d’histoire, Tomo 12, fasc. 3, p.583-612, 1933. 12 BOAVENTURA DE BAGNORÉGIO, 1947, p.286: “Unde quando per successionem prae- sunt, male regitur respublica. David fuit sanctissimus; Salomon, etsi lubricissimus, tamen sapiens; Roboam stultus, quia divisit regnum. Romani per artem diaboli elegerunt Diocletianum. Debebant eligere comedentem super mensam ferream et invenerunt comedentem illum super vomerem; qui postmodum multa mala fecit. Unde quandiu Romani illos qui praeessent, elegerunt, sapientissimos elegerunt; et tunc bene gubernata est respublica; sed postquam ad successionem venerunt, totum fuit destructum”. 13 Cf. CAILLÉ; LAZZERI; SENELLART (Org.) Histoire raisonnée de la philosophie morale et politique. Tome I – De l’Antiquité aux Lumières. Paris: Champs; Flammarion, 2001. 14 FOUCAULT, Michel. Omnes et singulatim: uma crítica da Razão Política. In: ______. Michel Foucault estratégia, poder-saber. Org. e sel. Manoel Barros da Motta; trad. Vera Lúcia Avellar Ribeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2003. p.355-385. p.374.

246 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The King and the Kingdom seen by the preacher

15 EVANGELISTI, Paolo. I francescani e la costruzione di uno stato: linguaggi politici, valori identitari, progetti di governo in area catalano-aragonese. Pádua: EFR – Editrici Francescane, 2005. 16 Saint Louis: le roi politique. Médiévales, v.34, p.25-34, 1998. p.29. 17 Portrait du roi idéal. L’Histoire, v.81, p.71-76, 1985. 18 VINCENTII BELVACENSIS, 1995, p.11: “Princeps dicitur quasi primum caput uel primum capiens siue primatum. Qui utique locum non habuit in hominibus a principio nature bene institute, sed inscrescente malitia ortum habuit ab infidelium ambitione. Cum enim omnes natura essent pares, Nemroth de stirpe Cham primus regnum super homines usurpauit, dum ad hoc ipsum sibi suorum ânimos conciliauit” (cap. II). 19 Ibidem, p.15: “the Lord did not send a man to be made king among his people, however, if it were the will of the people who wanted this, that he be elected in this manner, and as it is said, it is how he behaves” (“non precepit dominus ut homo rex in populo suo constituer- etur, sed ut, si propter voluntatem populi oporteret eum constitui, sic eligeretur et taliter, ut ibi dictum est, conversaretur” – cap. II). 20 Cf. SASSIER, Yves. Royauté et idéologie au Moyen Âge. Paris: Armand Colin, 2002. p.42-43. 21 VICENTII BELVACENSIS, 1995, p.16: “Sed numquam ideo status regum reprobabilis est apud deum; absit quin potius per ipsum ‘reges regnant et principes imperant’, ut legitur Proverbiorum VIII” (8, 15-16). 22 Cf. NEDERMAN, Cary J. Nature, sin and the origins of society: the Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought. Journal of the History of Ideas, v.49, n.1, p.3-26, 1988. p.16. 23 Perhaps it is necessary to directly compare Speculum historiale and De morali principis institutione to see if Vincent incarnates the concepts of regnum and ecclesia in the kingdom of France and in the Roman Church; even if this were found to be true, it would still be the case that in De morali principis the author is concerned with ‘what should be done’ and not ‘what actually happened.’ 24 VERGARA, Javier. La educación política en la Edad Media: el Tractatus de morali principis institutione de Vicente de Beauvais (1262/63). Una apuesta prehumanista de la políti- ca. Pamplona: Ed. Universidad de Navarra, 2010. p.95. 25 HERNANDEZ, Alfonso. Los límites de los conceptos ‘agustinismo político’ y ‘gelasianis- mo’ para El estúdio de las ideas acerca del poder y la sociedad em la Alta Edad Media. Signum, v.11, n.1, p.26-48, 2010. 26 SENELLART, Michel. As artes de governar: do regimen medieval ao conceito de governo. Trad. Paulo Neves. São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2006. p.20. 27 For information about the construction of the image and memory of Luís IX, the great reference is the work of LE GOFF, Jacques. São Luís: biografia. Trad. Marcos de Castro. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2010. 28 This means that Vincent inserted the narrative of the birth of Christ in the section in which he discusses the Roman Empire, placed after the narration of other previous em-

June 2012 247 André Luis Pereira Miatello pires, such as that of Alexander the Great; in this case the narrative centrality falls on empire and among them on the Roman Empire. Cf. SCHMIDT-CHAZAN, Mireille. L’idée d’Empire dans le Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais. In: PAULMIER-FOUCART, Monique; LUSIGNAN, Serge; NADEAU, Alain (Org.) Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et receptions d’une oevre encyclopédique au Moyen Âge. Paris: Vrin, 1990. p.253-282.

Article received on 28 February 2012. Approved on 21 May 2012.

248 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63

The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos*

Resumo Abstract O artigo explora a experiência intercul- The article explores the intercultural ex- tural entre Portugal e o Brasil, entre perience between Portugal and Brazil in 1807 e 1823, de duas famílias oriundas the years 1807-1823, focusing on two da pequena nobreza rural do Norte de families from the landed gentry of Portugal, com especial atenção ao per- northern Portugal, especially the inter- curso intercultural feminino. A Corres- cultural journey of the women involved. pondência é uma representação polifóni- ca de um movimento de transculturação The correspondence is a polyphonic pessoal, familiar, social e grupal, ao lon- representation of a movement of per- go de quase duas décadas, e funciona sonal, family, social, and group transcul- como uma tradução por vezes consecu- turation over nearly two decades, and tiva, outras vezes simultânea, dos even- acts as a consecutive and sometimes si- tos históricos testemunhados. O concei- multaneous translation of the historical to de tradução intercultural aqui events witnessed. The concept of inter- utilizado baseia-se no pensamento de cultural translation used here is based Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2006; on the work of Boaventura de Sousa 2008). Esta análise da Correspondência Santos (2006; 2008). This analysis of the articula os contextos concretos e situa- Correspondence links concrete and situ- dos do seu objecto de estudo, com o pro- pósito de construir o conhecimento de ated contexts of what is being studied in diferentes momentos históricos, racio- order to understand different historical nalidades e mundividências. moments, rationalities and worldviews. Palavras-chave: Brasil; Portugal; tradu- Keywords: Brazil; Portugal; intercultural ção intercultural. translation.

This article follows the life histories in Portugal and Brazil of the Pinto da França and Garcez families, paying special attention to the intercultural trajec-

* Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto (Iscap). Centro de Estudos Interculturais. Gabinete 333. Rua Jaime Lopes Amorim. 4465-004 S. Mamede Infesta. Portugal. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 251-281 - 2012 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos tory of Maria Bárbara Garcez Pinto de Madureira, born in Penafiel in 1779 and married to an officer of Bahian origin, Luís Paulino Pinto da França. During the French invasions she left for Brazil, living with the court in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, from where she would never return. Widowed in 1824, the responsibility for running Aramaré sugar mill fell on her, which she administered until her death in 1851. This intercultural transit is documented in letters exchanged between various members of the families in question, especially the numerous letters written by Maria Bárbara, whose style is surprising due to its culture and the originality of expression of a woman coming from the rural Portuguese gentry of the second half of the eighteenth century. Maria Bárbara composes a participant vision, lucid and aware of the dramatic events which surrounded the independence of Brazil, often opposed to the versions propagated by the conflicting factions, not hesitating to clarify and admonish her husband and his peers in the Cortes in Portugal about the realities of the territory. Attentive of political, military and administrative matters, the family became little by little just a residual note, referred to only when affected by historical circumstances. Maria Bárbara began her journey between cultures as a simple spectator-reader, progressively becoming a commentator-actor-protagonist-author in society, in politics and in history. This case study illustrates a particular trajectory of intercultural identity transition of a provincial Portuguese lady into an owner of a sugar mill in the Recôncavo Baiano, translated in an epistolary narrative that is almost always simultaneous, or immediately consecutive, to this journey. The process of intercultural translation as narrated, both in the first and in the third person, allows the negotiation of a new identity to be accompanied, as hybrid as asser- tive. The concept of intercultural translation used here is based on the ideas of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, who argues that the existence of differences –epistemological and in the common sense and the practices, values and experiences of daily life (in other words cultural differences) – means that comparison has to be made using procedures to look for proportion and correspondence which, taken as a whole, constitute the work of translation. These procedures allow always precarious approximations of the known to the unknown, of the strange through the familiar, of the alien through the familiar. The reiterated exercise of translation reveals that the procedures developed to get discover other forms of knowledge end up being the same as those with which each type of knowledge understand the experience of the world in general.1 Admitting the diversity of narratives and expressions of knowledge situated, obvious in

252 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit the Correspondência Luso-Brasileira, the intended analysis of this paper is not immobilized in strict positivist objectivity, but rather is connected with the concrete and situated contexts of its object of study, with the purpose of constructing the knowledge of different rationalities and worldviews. Because “the work of translation is the procedure left to us to give sense to the world after it has lost the automatic direction and sense that western modernity intended to give it by planning history, society, and nature.”2

Correspondência Luso-Brasileira: history and protagonists

The 127 letters which form the compilation Correspondência Luso- Brasileira3 cover a chronological period from 1807 to 1823 and are written by various members of the Pinto da França and Garcez families, belonging to the small rural nobility from the North of Portugal, most of whom had emigrated to Brazil a long time previously, or were linked to this territory by the emigra- tion of close family members. The first volume, entitled “From The French Invasion to the Court in Rio de Janeiro,” contains the 68 letters written between 1807 and 1821, mostly between Luís Paulino de Oliveira Pinto da França and his father-in-law and brothers-in-law from the Garcez family. Luís Paulino, an army officer, was born in Cachoeira, near Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil, on 30 June 1771, dying in the same country on 8 January 1824 with the rank of general. Returning to Portugal at a few months of age he was raised in Porto, studied law in the University of Coimbra and played a very active part in the patriotic movement that expelled the French invaders from Porto. In 1812 he sailed to Rio de Janeiro, where he took command of a cavalry regiment as coronel. Promoted to general, Bahia elected him as a general to the Constituent Cortes of 1821 in Lisbon. In 1823 he was sent by D. João VI to Bahia to make an armistice with the Brazilian revolutionaries. The Portuguese forces, however, had already abandoned Bahia and he had to return to Rio de Janeiro, where he was supposed to meet the other negotiators. D. Pedro refused to negotiate with the Portuguese commission, who decided to return to Lisbon. Pinto da França had to stay behind in Rio de Janeiro, as he had fallen ill. He tried to return in December 1823 on the brig Glória, but tragically died at sea before reaching Portugal. He cultivated poetry, and published some compositions in Jornal de Coimbra, Parnaso Brasileiro and Miscelânea Poética from Rio de Janeiro. He

June 2012 253 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos was a fidalgo-cavaleiro (noble and knight) from the royal household, field marshal, knight of the orders of Christ, Nossa Senhora da Conceição (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception) and Torre e Espada (Tower and Sword), and was awarded the gold medal of the Peninsular War. His biography divided between two countries can be summarized in the phrase “Yes, I have two Patrias: Bahia and Porto. The one that saw me born and the one that looked after my early years and enchanted them with its delicacies,” with which he opens a letter sent to Bahia in August 1820 (vol. I, p.196). We can follow the biographical and geographical journey of Luís Paulino through those to whom he sent letters, as well as those he received them from. In this first volume covering 1807-1813, the letters are still sent from Chaves to Bragança and Penafiel, fruit of the participation of the male members of both families in the fight against the French invaders. From 1813 to 1819, with the return of the by-then Coronel Luís Paulino ao Brasil, letters began to be sent from the court in Rio de Janeiro to parents-in-law in Penafiel and Porto, as well as to brothers-in-law who had emigrated to Bahia. During the next three years letters were exchanged between Bahia, to where Luís Paulino had moved in 1819, after a torturous sea voyage, and the same recipients in Rio de Janeiro, Porto and in Bahia itself. The recurrent themes in this first set of missives are resistance to the French invasions when they were in Portuguese territory and, after the move to Brazil in 1813, life in the court in Rio de Janeiro, with its sumptuous palace festivities, political intrigues and games of influence, as well as the first signs of change and the winds of independence with the 1817 Pernambuco Revolt, in the suppression of which Luís Paulino played a leading role, winning himself great honors and promotion in his military career. The letters from Bahia, where Luís Paulino was living during the 1820 liberal revolution in Porto, are dominated by the political transformations in which the whole family found themselves involved. In general, Luís Paulino’s letters are peppered with rev- erential allusions to the Portuguese sovereign and loquacious testimonies of his own fidelity as a loyal servant of the crown, possible strategies of self- protection in the very probable event of the letter going astray. In effect all the correspondence alludes to the insecurity of the postal system, ships and bearers, for which reason many names are encrypted and various narratives are truncated or full of allusions and implied meanings, which only a recipient who was very close to the sender could decode. The second volume, entitled “Bahian Letters: Liberalism and the Independence of Brazil”, includes 59 letters sent during the crucial period of

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1821-1823. Most were sent to Luís Paulino, now residing in Lisbon as a deputy of the first liberal cortes, by his wife, Maria Bárbara Garcez Pinto de Madureira, his children and in-laws, who remained in Brazil. However, all the letters sent in reply by Luís Paulino from Lisbon have been lost. The geographic origin of the letters is Salvador in Bahia and the sugar mills of Aramaré and Caboto, which are between Santo Amaro and Cachoeira, in the so-called Recôncavo Baiano, near the Paraguaçu River. All were sent to Lisbon. In 1823 reflecting the tragic return of Luís Paulino to Brazil and the unsuccessful negotiations with the independentistas, dramatic letters were sent to and fro between Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, where the recipient got sick and from where he would embark on his final journey. This second set of letters is dominated by the narration of the conflict which preceded Bahia’s joining the cause of independence, with a deep participant knowledge of the ongoing historic events, as well as questions inherent to running the family sugar mill. Once Brazilian independence had been achieved, there emerges in the letters the family dilemma of the option between two motherlands: Portugal or Brazil? On 13 April 1822, Maria Bárbara wrote in a very significant form: “I love Portugal, I like Brazil and wish it well” (vol. II, p.88). It is also in the second volume of letters that the exceptional female figure of Maria Bárbara Garcez Pinto de Madureira starts to play a leading role. She was the owner of a sugar mill and had a particular trajectory of intercultural translation and transit. Maria Bárbara Garcez was born in Penafiel in 1779, and at 14 married Luís Paulino, the friend and classmate of her older brother, José Garcez. They would have two sons (Bento and Luís Paulino Filho) and two daughters (Sabina and Maria Francisca). During the French invasions her husband sent her to safety in Salvador in Bahia, Brazil, his native land. In 1813 she would join her husband in Rio de Janeiro. There she would be part of court life until 1819, at which time she moved back to Bahia, from where she would never return to Portugal, despite her protestations of homesickness which she so lamented in her letters. Widowed in 1824, on her fell the responsibility for running the Aramaré sugar mill, which she administered with great energy until her death in 1851. The style of her numerous letters is surprising due to its culture, lucidity and the originality of expression for a women born in a northern province of Portugal in the second half of the eighteenth century to a family from the rural nobility, a social group in which ignorance was very common, especially among the women. However, it was from this class of provincial nobility, between the robe and the sword, that the ‘progressives’

June 2012 255 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos were recruited, permeated with pre-revolutionary ideas, and which formed the contingents of the liberal leadership. In her letters Maria Bárbara cites Camões, reproduces Latin maxims and constantly mentions the new romantic concepts of patria, nation, independence and constitutional power. She did not shy away from expressing an intense affection for her husband and the most violent feelings against his enemies. Maria Bárbara’s correspondence allows us, above all, to follow ‘live’ the trajectory of intercultural transition of a provincial Portuguese lady who was transformed into a senhora literally lady, but meaning owner) of a sugar mill in the Recôncavo Baiano in the middle of the war of independence, narrating in the first person the process of negotiating a new identity. The socio-cultural origin of Maria Bárbara was situated in the so-called ‘provincial nobility,’ a vast heterogeneous and scarcely documented universe. In general, this petite nobility lived in situation of constant economic precariousness, limited to local preponderance. Their sons were invariable sent to military service, to be magistrates, or for ecclesiastical careers, in order to maintain the family house and the mirage of social ascension. All they could do for the daughters was to ‘find them husbands’ with possessions (“At least when they have money, everything is covered, as they are, as those from here [Bahia] say, white people”, Letter from 1807, vol. I, p.50) or send them coercively and without any vocation to a convent, such as the “convents of Vila do Conde and Arouca, which were good and cost little” (vol. I, p.50). In effect, and citing the preface of António d’Oliveira Pinto da França to the first volume,

solutions of resorting to the robe, the army and the Church, were exhaustively chosen through sinecures meant to indiscriminately ‘store’ human beings who did not produce, lived on the state and progressively aggravated the national ruin. The letters reflect well the phenomenon of dependency on an impover- ished state, authorities and an elite who lived promiscuously, the former in granting largesse and the former in intriguing to obtain this. (p.16)

For the Garcez and Pinto da França families, whose houses survived with great difficulties, through the appointment of administrative judges who could postpone foreclosures, Brazil represented a great opportunity for economic recovery, to which was added the presence of Luís Paulino in the court and privileged access to the monarch, which allowed successive graces to be obtained. Thus, thanks to the sponsorship of an uncle who was an appeals court judge long since settled in Brazil, and the influence of Luís Paulino, all the

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Garcez brothers (António, Antão, Feliciano, Manuel and Henrique), with the exception of José, came to be based in Brazil in the years preceding the 1820 Revolution. For these reasons progression in careers and the obtaining of positions and largesse took up a considerable part of this Transatlantic correspondence, together with requests of all sorts which poured out of Porto and Penafiel, presented by relatives, friends and neighbors, wanting a word with royal ministers which could satisfy their pretentions. To the contrary of his in-laws living in Brazil, and the cause of the sever- est criticisms, Luís Paulino did not spare himself the expenses inherent to anyone who intend to ‘represent’ in a court where life was extremely expensive and the luxury extraordinary. The public exhibition of status – Pierre Bourdieu`s symbolic capital4 – was responsible for most of the expenses, which the return to Bahia in 1819, where Luís Paulino would be “the most important figure after the governor” (vol. I, p.154), as inspector-general of the cavalry led to its ague. While Luís Paulino narrates with pride the largesse which his wife received from the ‘Grandees of the Kingdom’ through his intermediation (vol. I, p.177), Maria Bárbara’s brothers saw him as a megalomaniac, vain and a wastrel, about to ruin himself and drag down with him the family, as the shipwreck the couple and their two daughters suffered on the voyage between Rio de Janeiro and Bahia seemed to show, such was the haste to take up the position granted by D. João VI or, in the words of Antão Garcez, “running in search of honor and money” (vol. I, p.172):

And look at the good news I also received this month! [Luís Paulino] left here on 19 August for Bahia, with all his family, on the occasion of the good winds, with which he could reach there in a journey or 5 or 6 days. However, luck wanted something else. He took an English brig, in order to avoid any insult from corsairs. He freighted it at his own cost, such is his genius, and left with Mana (our sister) very sick. His misfortune was such that at the end of 17 days, on the false bar of Bahia, they ran aground at five in the morning with little light. I cannot tell you what our sister told me, since I would not dare. However, think of two poor ladies, with death in sight, in the state they were in, even when they were left in the middle of the sand on an island with people almost like, or worse than, corsairs. Thus, you cannot imagine such affliction until the moment they were taken away. Her letter caused consternation. Her thirst was so great, what they were able to save was destroyed, almost entirely. Look at our poor sister and her family and what they suffered and what for, my brother? This is just what we see. Each day I find myself less inclined to our brother-in-law. Everything is

June 2012 257 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos

abundant, everything are honors, and thus, it does not matter to me, but he is married with our sister, whom I love. He is increasingly unbearable. God gave him a moment in which he could have died and left his wife and children of his own genius … I know him and I know me. Now it is done and I know he is a child of Bahia… (vol. I, p.172-173)

To the eyes of common sense expressed by his brother-in-law, Luís Paulino was, culturally and individually, a ‘son of Bahia’, despite being in public life a fierce defender of union and an agent of the Portuguese crown. This cultural affiliation, this intercultural miscegenation, justified his ambitious and impetuous genius, as well as his reckless attraction for the endless wealth and opportunities of Brazil. In turn, Luís Paulino was aware of the danger to which he had exposed his family, but preferred to highlight his own heroism and capacity for leadership in the his narration of the shipwreck, presenting it as one of the many reversals of fortune he had successfully overcome.5 In his demand for wealth Luís Paulino expressed numerous times his deep fascina- tion for the pomp of Brazil. In 1814, shortly after his arrival in Rio de Janeiro, he wrote to his father-in-law: “This country is beautiful, large and rich, but for this reason someone here who has 200,000 cruzados cannot be any figure and can even say he is poor, to live among us” (vol. I, p.92). He also states:

It is a very rich land with an extraordinary luxury due to its natural grandeur and wealth. I have already told you something about the expenses and luxury of this country, which may seem extraordinary, but persuade yourself that, I have only described for you but a shadow of what it is. At this moment there is no court in the world as expensive as this one. It seems that money is of no importance. No rich rattlebox appears, but is sold quickly; things of the strangest taste come here because, on the other hand, no one else would pay for them. A few days ago some rare porcelain and china arrived here. Cups and saucers were sold for 30,000 réis each. This is a lot. However, there were some ladies who dis- dained them and said that cups for 30,000 réis could not be good for a tea set. Maria Bárbara has witnessed this with astonishment and gets angry with such luxury... this land is good. However, it is for whoever has lucrative employment, because those who live from their own goods have great expenses and what is worth is that the income of landowners is also great … [the Aramaré sugar mill] does not produce sugar, it has produced and continues to produce lots of gold. These are the best properties in the world, but this land in fact only gives little money. (vol. I, p.92-93)

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During the nineteenth century in Brazil the significance of ostentatious wealth was reinforced, coming to increasingly mean the visible quality of this wealth and its use in social life. In 1819 Luís Paulino wrote to his brother-in- law José, the only one who remained in Portugal, “Do not doubt to see me reach a great position, even to achieve a title” (vol. I, p.155) and the following year, “My relatives here are surrounded by the purest and best nobility, they live in abundance and splendor and thus, having nothing to be ashamed of or to afflict me, I cannot be better. I have travelled in a great steam boat, crossing this spacious Bahia at top speed to attend various functions and invites from the large properties of the Recôncavo” (vol. I, p.185). He also stated “Anyone who does not deal with and not spend does not maintain the dignity of their representation, nor preserve their friendships and I have many and good ones in the Court” (vol. I, p.179). However, through the reading of the correspondence exchanged by the couple between 1821 and 1823, it can be seen that all this ostentation was based on constant indebtment, and that the obtaining of letters of credit and favors of money lenders sustained the social representation of the family. For those involved in this correspondence Brazil is much more (or much less…) than a ‘new world.’ Brazil is a means through which it is intended to quickly and easily build fortunes, or to recover that which centuries of indi- gence and maladministration have dilapidated. Fortunes that were real or still utopian, acquired through trade, traffic, ‘mercies,’ the political game, the production of sugar, or matrimonial strategies: all these possibilities are referred to and weighed in letters with the most declared and cruel pragmatism.

The men speak: (brief) words about women

The first volume of the Correspondência Luso-Brasileira is undeniably dominated by male characters. Of the 68 letters complied, 60 are handwritten by men and focus on questions of politics, money and games of interests. Symptomatic of this is a missive sent in 1818 between the two Garcez brothers in Rio de Janeiro and Penafiel: after many long pages concerned with request, favors, family intrigues, strategic alliances, questions of money and inheritances – questions which seem to dominate all life, whether in Portugal or in Brazil – the letter concludes with the simple and reductive phrase: “In relation to the women, my friend, it is always the same thing” (vol. I, p.109). In all the letters the courteous imperative to write to women, whether they are spouses, mothers, or sisters, is not forgotten, but it never is more than an

June 2012 259 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos always postponed intention, declaredly neglected due to a lack of time (and of value, it can be assumed), restricted to mere notes of courtesy at the end of the text. In the discourse of the subjects of all the action and all the writing – which the men appear to be – what representation do women then deserve, mere objects of their decisions and sparse attention? In effect women are represented as objects who should be passively placed in the few acceptable spaces society reserves for then, with it cautiously never being forgotten that “daughters in Brazil at the age of 12 are already women” (vol. I, p.46). In relation to unmarried nieces, sustenance had to be provided through the ‘turns’ of the sugar mill to those who escaped from primogeniture. The married nieces who contested in vain the discrimination resulting from primogeniture are called ‘torments’ (vol. I, p.51). If, despite the best efforts, negotiations for a useful marriage failed, it was possible to send the single woman to an accessible convent. In general women commended themselves on the moderation resulting from Portuguese education, in opposition to the taste for luxury and indolence, which were said to be characteristics of Brazilian acculturation. In the placidity of the Portuguese province, news from distant Brazil was received with great pleasure, whose luxury and exoticism were difficult to understand, due to the lack of common references in their description. For example: “I have already told you something about the expenses and luxury of this country, which may seem extraordinary, but persuade yourself that, I have described for you only a shadow of what it is” (vol. I, p.93). For this reason many letters contain detailed listings of the presents which accompanied them on the journey from Brazil to Portugal, with rigorous instructions about their recipients and what hierarchy was to be followed at the moment of choice. For the women of the family, fans, earrings, necklaces, scarves, belts, bundles of sugarcane, wood, passion fruit sweets, coffee, “hats from Costa da Mina made by blacks”, flowers, and pearls were sent, amongst many other ‘exotic’ objects. The Transatlantic narratives written by the women who subsist in the first volume of this collection are the eight brief notes which Maria Bárbara sent to her parents and brothers in Portugal. In the short missive written in Bahia in 1812, sent to her father in Penafiel, Maria Bárbara, then aged 33, reiterates her homesickness and constant remembering of her family; expresses profound happiness at shortly being able to receive her husband who was returning to Brazil; she proudly refers to the military achievements of her oldest son, Bento, in the resistance to the Napoleonic invasions; laments the undefined illnesses and melancholia from which she suffers and ends with some notes about her two youngest children, Luís Paulino Filho and Sabina. Together with this is a

260 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit very short ‘annexed letter for her mother,’ with a few short lines about ‘missing her.’ Two years later a new letter can be found, from Bahia to Penafiel, in which Maria Bárbara narrates to her parents the miscarriage she had just suffered, as well as her eternal illnesses and her homesickness; she alludes to the fall of Napoleon and the life of the royal family in Brazil; refers to some religious and palace festivities; dedicates long lines to family intrigues and games of influence in court; and laments the ‘poverty’ in which she lives and the misadven- tures she has suffered due to the lack of ambition and excessive rectitude of her husband (vol. I, p.86). Curiously these observations are the complete opposite of what Luís Paulino wrote to this father-in-law just a week later: “Yes, I am a victim of great desires and enterprises and I do not have the ability for everything that is proposed to me” (vol. I, p.91). In the Correspondência Luso-Brasileira there emerges, albeit briefly and almost always indirectly, other feminine characters, such as, by way of example, Maria Libória Máxima Guilhermina, mother of Maria Bárbara, two of whose letters are reproduced, actually small exercises in writing in the baroque style, befitting a lady born in a humble family who had recently made a fortune in Brazil. These texts contain nothing other than formulae of amiability, laments about health and the inevitable asking of favors for the bearer. In relation to the two daughters of Maria Bárbara and Luís Paulino – Sabina and Francisca – the letters complement what the biography proves. Maria Sabina, docile and vulnerable lived subject to devotion to a brutal husband and would see her only daughter die, soon afterwards substituted by mixed race bastards who would dissipate the inheritance. In the sole brief letter that exists from Sabina to her father, about a recent sickness of her mother, the young woman includes some extemporaneous notes about the conjugal happiness in which she lives, with a husband “who seems to love me each day more” (vol. II, p.67). Lie or illusion, the truth is that in an almost simultaneous letter Maria Bárbara reiterates that Sabina is unhappy, sick, virtuous and lives isolated on her husband’s sugar mill, this ‘viper’ whom she blindly loves. By her side, Maria Francisca is the last daughter, born in Brazil and who would die unmarried at 48, 13 years after her mother. She would leave to her nephew Salvador, a distant Portuguese, her sobrado in the city of Bahia, which was promptly sold. Due to her age, the letters contain only the comments her parents make about her, always praising her and aware that she is a daughter of Brazil: “she has united to the gentle European beauty Brazilian grace and vivaciousness” (vol. I, p.185). From the reading of the letters collected in the first volume, it could be

June 2012 261 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos understood that the activities of women such as Maria Bárbara and the other women among her companions were restricted to complete leisure, consisting of going to have a bath in the sea on Botafogo beach, visits with the reading and commentary on letters and much satire of the habits of rural provincial Portugal. In 1814 the recently-arrived Luís Paulino wrote: “The painting of the fair, the clogs and long heavy coats, and the rustic gentry, who even make even any mulatto slave from this land laugh, as they are more polished and sugary and more rhetorical that the wise Friar Bártolo in his sermons” (vol. I, p.99). It certainly would have been humiliating for the author of the letter, the brother-in-law José Garcez in Penafiel, to discover that his description of Portuguese habits was the target of public scorn by “Viscountess Vila Nova and other of her lady friends who were with her [Maria Bárbara] when the letter arrived” (vol. I, p.99). In a single paragraph, Luís Paulino declared his breaking with provincial Portuguese and exalts the social circle which brightened the daily life of his family, aware that the community of origin would immediately become aware of this. The idleness of Maria Bárbara is revealed in the various arguments she evokes in order not to write more often to her family in Portugal, in contrast with the extraordinary volume of correspondence she addressed to her husband, after his departure for Lisbon. From the daughter “who has given her so much to do with the frights which befell with the growing of her teeth” (vol. I, p.143), to the sand that the wind blew on the letter paper, as well as long months taking ‘baths and airs’ in São Cristovão (vol. I, p.113), these are all pretexts to delay writing. In a short letter in 1818 to her brother in Porto, Maria Bárbara, then in Rio de Janeiro, excuses herself for not writing frequently and maintains the same themes as six years previously: the permanent lament about ‘tears,’ ‘wrinkles,’ ‘sadness,’ longing, the family, the time that passes, the undefined illnesses (vol. I, p.120-1). In addition to the evident idle daily life, the natural characteristics of an individual identity can be inferred from here, as well as the dynamics of such a large and geographically dispersed family circle. Nonetheless, much of the apathy and unhappiness expressed in Maria Bárbara’s letters arises out of the need to comply with social conventions and the expectations of recipients’ common sense. In other words, Maria Bárbara wrote what was expected of someone with her social role as a military wife, modest and devote and obedi- ent daughter, just removed from her family by her conjugal duties. In reality it can be quickly understood in a reading of the (few) letters written Maria Bárbara and by the (few) references she deserves from her husband and broth-

262 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit ers, that she played a very active part in family conflicts and intrigues, not re- straining herself from taking sides and forging alliances. It is Luís Paulino who provides the first clue about the ‘lady of the sugar mill’ who would dominate all this correspondence from 1821 onwards, when delayed in the court, he wrote that he did not have time for the administration of the mill, a task he had delegated to his wife... or that she had taken for herself, much before becoming a widow (vol. I, p.140). In the male correspondence the woman only assumes a leading role in the context of matrimonial alliances, in which marriage is exclusively connoted with obtaining property and/or social ascension. Here, women are simple transacted objects, necessarily lucrative for the families involved, in a reality that can be summarized by the phrase with which Luís Paulino alludes to the intention of a brother-in-law to contract matrimony: “He has always wanted to marry, as we know, to get money” (vol. I, p.93). In effect the matrimonial trajectory of the brothers Henrique Garcez (a man of court, brigadier in the Brazilian army and commodore of the Order of Christ) and António Garcez (appeals court judge in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro), the most present in this correspondence, is very illustrative. Henrique Garcez married (‘took possession of’) a rich widow, ‘old and ugly’ and with many children, with whom there were no children: “Henrique could... if the lady who is not a young girl died, bring 100,000 cruzados to the kingdom... They tell me that the boy ‘siphoned off’ a few thousand cruzados. God help him!” (vol. I, p.93, 97-98). The first woman António Garcez wanted to married, chose another, since “the heart won and not the law, because modernism and everything has arrived” (vol. I, p.83). At 40, however, he married a 16 year old girl, “from a good, non-noble, family ... not beautiful, but gallant ... who will help me in old age ” (vol. I, p.101 e 163). In a letter to his brother José in Portugal, António Garcez describes with great calculation and coldness the circumstances that ruled the wedding, as well as the relations he had in another form with the opposite sex:

I will come to possess the best part of 60,000 cruzados upon the death of the father, who is old, and the mother, as soon as he goes, it will given to my discre- tion, and of this amount I will receive in goods twenty. So, it is not very much, though there are no others, and if there are girls of that age, they want boys, which I am not. From now on the courting will end, even so because I will only be able to fuck with the price of money or by theft, but by theft there comes a pox which makes life much shorter... I assure you I am not in love, I hold the young girl in high esteem and passions last until the 30s… I have already told

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you that my Teresinha brings in properties the value of 50,000 cruzados and promises me for the house as soon as we receive it, what comes to 22. To that they are bound. On the same day before tying the knot, this agreement will be satisfied. It comes to 70 and a bit, and upon the death of the old ones, it will be 30 – 40. (vol. I, p.144 and 163)

He also states that he has been dealing with this `business` for two years, with ‘experience and security,’ and that he was satisfied with the prospect that the bride to be would not demand luxuries as “she has been treated by the European system, because her mother is from Lisbon. Her father is a son of the islands. This is a dowry in Brazil, where it is rare for a family not to have ‘goats,’” (vol. I, p.163). It can be understood that the value of the bride increased in an inverse proportion to the acculturation and miscegenation of the family. Once the alliance had been made concrete, he describes with the same crudity in the same paragraph the most petty wedding gifts and resumes the consummation of the marriage as “at first the tears started, for the enjoyments to follow afterwards” (vol. I, p.166). However, Luís Paulino and Maria Bárbara vehemently rejected this alliance, which they described as ‘embarrassing’ (vol. I, p.186), since the pecuniary value of the bride was not accompanied by an aristocratic title, a condition which seemed sine qua non for the couple’s aspirations, which the defamed groom described as ‘ridiculous labels’ (vol. I, p.193). This assumption was proven by the marriages of their oldest son and daughter, Bento and Sabina. For the first born child Luís Paulino had ambitious matrimonial objectives: he chose as her bride the daughter of Baron Santo Amaro, a marriage that would project the family into the heights of the local nobility, with “a financial interest of the greatest splendor of nobility ... whose dowry, apart from what would come afterwards as inheritance, was above half a million” (vol. I, p.197). However, Bento decided to marry the daughter of a coronel, with identical social status to his family, which unleashed the unrestrained fury of his father, who broke with him, calling him in his letters, amongst many other dysphor- ic expressions, ‘the man who was my son,’ ‘a monster of ungratefulness,’ ‘monster and worthless … lacking balance and feelings,’ ‘a soul stripped of the love of glory and good representation,’ ‘anyone lacking the highest feelings is not my son,’ ‘vile scum of my issue,’ who married ‘like a black, in the hidden away’ (vol. I, p.197-198). Nonetheless, this case illustrated the growing affirmation of affective individualism, which sometimes led to personal destinies prevailing in relation to the interests of the family.

264 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit

To compensate this setback to his strategy of social ascension, Luís Paulino explicitly conferred even more luster on the marriage of his daughter Sabina to Rodrigo António Brandão Pereira Falcão, future Baron Belém, a wealthy man who, with all the goods he would receive in inheritance, could become one of the richest vassals in the kingdom: “My grief, far from making me falter in terms of magnificence and dignity, will encourage me to see more in this alliance that is so agreeable to me” (vol. I, p.192). The qualifications of this union, described like the actual commercial contract which it was, are very eloquent: ‘illustrious distinction,’ ‘lavish and valiant,’ ‘born with 300 slaves to serve him,’ ‘better than him in terms of birth, no one,’, ‘an advantageous contract,’ ‘dignity,’ ‘my choice and contentment,’ ‘glory and decency,’ ‘apparatus,’ ‘magnificent,’ ‘great state,’ ‘pomp,’ ‘brilliance,’ ‘servants richly dressed in new uniforms,’ ‘magnificence and delicacy at dinner,’ ‘brilliant ball with full splendor,’ ‘in accordance with all the formalities of weddings of the nobility and people of quality,’ (vol. I, p.197-201). The ostentation of luxury– characteristic of the life in Brazil with which Luís Paulino was visibly fascinated from his first letters – explodes in the detailed descriptions of the formalities and pomp at the marriage of Sabina, in a letter to his brother-in-law José Garcez, with instructions that this be read to his wife’s family in Penafiel. Luís Paulino proves and publicizes his success in the demand common to everyone in the intercultural Portugal-Brazil transit: the obtaining of a fortune and social ascension.6 Almost simultaneously, Maria Bárbara wrote about the same subject to her brother, in a much more laconic tone, referring only to the ‘rules and pomp’ of her daughter’s wedding (vol. I, p.202-203). She expresses some concern about the future of Sabina (which her brothers in Brazil shared among themselves without subterfuge, since it was already public knowledge that the groom had various illegitimate mixed race children) and about her husband’s anger with their son Bento. However, she is inexorable in supporting her husband’s disdain for the ‘inferior in nobility and age’ women who the ‘men of the family’ (Bento and his brother António) had married. Without a doubt, Maria Bárbara shared the ambitions and prejudices active in the common sense of this petit nobility without titles, transferred by circumstances to a ‘new world’ in which, if truth be told, little or nothing changed. As a cause and consequence of the dominant socio-material ambition, nineteenth century Bahian society was strongly hierarchical. At the top of Recôncavo society was a rural aristocracy who aspired to the conditions of nobility in the form seen in Portugal. Kátia Mattoso reiterates that in Brazil a noble could be recognized by his lineage or by the placing of his goods and

June 2012 265 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos education at the service of the patria. Even if an individual was not a noble by lineage, he could be thanked by the Emperor in accordance with his willingness to serve the Empire.7 Anna Ribeiro de Araújo de Góes, owner of a sugar mill in the second half of the nineteenth century, left an elucidating reference in this respect:

The Araújo Góes from Catu, who there occupy a vast area of territory, always enjoyed the reputation of upright men, who always fulfilled their contracts, never denying the type of aristocracy formed from the much considered class of sugar mill owners, who were the second nobility of this country, as the magistrates in France. Having enjoyed great privileges in colonial times, they had even more guarantees under the Empire, as I saw in my youth.8

Kátia Mattoso highlights that, despite the aspiration to the status of nobility, the Recôncavo mill owners essentially constituted an aristocracy of wealth and power, which performed and assumed many of the roles of the Portuguese nobility. It was this aristocracy which gave Bahia certain tones of its opulence. Mattoso also argues that endogamous marriage was one of the principal tactics used by these clans to expand their possessions and reinforce social and political ties among the local aristocracy.9 However, all these concerns of the Pinto da França and Garcez families were quickly left behind, with the explosion in Porto of the do 1820 Pronunciamento Liberal (Liberal Revolt), which led to the cortes being summoned and the return of the king to Portugal, and the subsequent developments which would lead to the independence of Brazil under the aegis of D. Pedro. In this troubled moment of history there would also emerge in the micro-cosmos of Correspondência Luso-Brasileira, a renowned female character, as independent as the new nation.

The woman writes: Maria Bárbara, Senhora and mill owner

The second volume of Correspondência Luso-Brasileira (1821-1823) is dominated by the assumption of Maria Bárbara Garcez Pinto de Madureira, now 43 years old and plenipotentiary administrator of Aramaré sugar mill, acquired by her father-in-law in the middle of the previous century. Due to the strong links she had built up with Brazil and feeling indispensible in the running of the mill, she did not go with her husband to Portugal, when he was

266 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit elected a deputy to the 1821 constituent cortes. These circumstances are at the origin of her 25 letters complied here, part of the vast volume of correspondence between the couple before Luís Paulino’s death in January 1824. Maria Bárbara’s letters were now distinguished by her vivaciousness and descriptive rigor, very distant from the idle notes of courtesy and lament previously sent to her brothers and family in Portugal. They also function as a key to compre- hending many of the implicit understandings that are sewn throughout the correspondence of the male figures, by unveiling both the true reference of many of their veiled allusions, and the true state of the family finances, in contrast with the descriptions of pomp and circumstance which Luís Paulino repeatedly sent to his in-laws. In her texts Maria Bárbara attacks and accuses with a singular fervor the political enemies of her absent husband and states that she almost took the initiative of having compromising documents against the conspirators published. She stated that she was capable of killing, inciting Luís Paulino to vengeance and action, complaining of the general laxity of customs and of justice: ‘I want to see those infamous scoundrels punished,’ ‘If I could I would tear out their tongues ... and drink their blood,’ ‘I, I have the courage to tear out that heart,’ ‘Defend yourself or I will take your life, I am capable of this, do not doubt it,’ (vol. II, p.57-61). As a mill owner Maria Bárbara lived constantly in transit between Bahia and Aramaré, where she would remain alone for long periods, against the will of her children and relatives, since the interior of the state and the Bahian Recôncavo were already in the power of the forces fighting for independence. The journey between Salvador and the Aramaré mill, deep in the heart of the Recôncavo, was not exempt from difficulties and was done by boat until Santo Amaro and afterwards by horse or by carriage pulled by oxen or horses for around 20 kilometers. One of the risks of isolation was revealed when Maria Bárbara fell sick from ‘fever’ and no doctor from Salvador would accept to travel to treat her under the ‘deluge’ which was falling incessantly. With great difficulty and expense, an army doctor and her daughter Sabina managed to mind her there for some weeks (vol. II, p.65). Incidents such as this and the previous episode of the shipwreck remind us that Brazil was still to a great extent a hostile territory that was difficult to domesticate for the white colonial elite. The letters exchanged with both her husband and her sons, Bento and Luís Paulino Filho, constitute a real ‘commercial correspondence,’ in which Maria Bárbara mentions precise figures and amounts of harvests, announces the acquisition of cattle, decides income and whether or not to withhold the

June 2012 267 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos part of the children and narrates the severity with which she rules and disciplines the servants:

I will be happy if we reach Christmas with 1200 loafs of bread. I find the cattle very thin and everything has to be done. A of neighbor of ours has already gone bankrupt and I will look after another for Bento, but he does not get any income or moiety; for what I give to Luís I will only forgive the income. If I did not come here we would soon have nothing to mill, not even our farmers from Xangô [the children], as you call them. I have purchased 34 cattle. I am now waiting for the foals, to buy at least 36; but the expenditure is horrendous, the family has bent me double, and how so! God remember me... the still is going bad, since Peregrino, Mocinho and Onofre, such a great thief… The lack of assistance now for the mill is not doing me harm, since I know how to regulate myself. Ah, poor, poor Aramaré, you have been a victim of the great thief Coelho. I am finding things! If we leave together, I assure you that Aramaré will end. This was what was decided… Yes, my Luís, I am alone, alone. You tell me that if you are delayed you will have me collected. I would love to hug you, but believe that if I had not stayed, the Aramaré mill would be in a short time the field where Troy used to be! (vol. II, p.63, 89 and 105)

Through the representation which Maria Bárbara makes of herself in the letters, it can be concluded that her sons had to rigorously account for everything and that their incompetence made her indispensible for the survival of the mill. She justified in this way her choice to remain in Brazil and let her husband leave, exacerbating her concern with the growing family, with the slaves to sustain and the need to create savings and assurance for the future: “And I will finish by saying that by 1824 I want to find myself in Portugal. I want to finish my days in my homeland, kiss again the dear hand of my mother and embrace the brothers left to me. But I do not want to leave mine without bread and to assure this many sacrifices” (vol. II, p.132). The ‘sacrifice’ of remaining in Brazil acquired an added value in moments of despondency and danger, such as those which followed the departure of Luís Paulino for Portugal (when Maria Bárbara wrote: “Infamous people. I hate it. I will go, I will go as soon as luck allows. I want to leave a country where science and virtue are unknown,” vol. II, p.58), or which would arise out of the chaos created by the war of independence: “Of Mother I can tell you nothing, because for four months I have heard nothing of her, as there are no communications whatso- ever … I am not exaggerating: the wages are not being paid, here everything

268 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit is expensive, we eat nothing except pastries … all the ports are forbidden to send any food to the city whatever … I hope to God that nothing has happened to my Mother, because she is a lady of great respect and judgment; therefore she has to be respected. And also her staying out there [in the mill] means that the goods will not be confiscated” (vol. II, p.138-139), Bento wrote in March 1823. Her first born kept this negative view for a long time, saying that Brazil “is not inhabited by people who know the rest of the world and who have lived in it. Here you do not live, you vegetate,” written in an 1818 letter, sent to an uncle in Portugal (vol. I, p.146). This pessimistic vision of Bento contrasts with everything which his father simultaneously praises to the same recipient, de- scribing to him the opulence. Assuming the role of the courageous mother, leader in the absence of her husband, Maria Bárbara’s discourse never shows doubts or asks for authorization. She narrates without wavering the administrative decisions taken, in the context of an evolution/liberation of identity, which the political and historic circumstances provided. However, in order to moderate her assertiveness, without breaking with her emancipation and always remaining within the canons of the expected, Maria Bárbara structures her writings with laments and affirmations on longing and that she is sick, but working incessantly for the good of the country and the love of her husband, now without time to go to the ‘baths’ which would allow her recover her health. It was relatively common for the wives of the large plantation owners to assume, when widowed, entire authority and control over their property, including slaves. Charles Boxer is categorical when he states that “there can be no doubt that a widow, rich or poor, could lead a free life, less confined and demure than a married woman and her daughters.”10 In their História da vida rural no Brasil, Mary del Priore and Renato Venâncio stated that in 1759 there were already six female mill owners in Santo Amaro and 37 male. In the 1818 Goiás census various female mill owners can be found, such as Dona Marina Pereira, who had bought the property and had 11 slaves working on the plantation.11 In daily life the female element was the center of all family routines and their activities in this sphere had great social significance compared to the labor activities in the public space reserved for men. Ladies of the time were responsible for a whole range of services and work in the home: dealing with teams of cooks, nurses for children, porters, ganhadores (slaves who earned money for their masters), spinners, seamstresses, washer-women, women who did ironing, painters, laborers and barbers. The female mill owner played a prominent function in the harmony of the daily life of a patriarchal family

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(Mattoso, 1997, p.157). Anna Ribeiro de Araújo de Góes, mentioned above, argues that women had to be prepared to take the place of man, if the situation required this, which is clear in the plots of their novels and moralistic serials. In Letícia (1908), for example, the leading character assumes the role of her father after his death, ordering slaves, negotiating with middlemen and selling the production. Maria Bárbara, however, assumed these functions during the life of her husband, when neither the tragic end of Luís Paulino, nor the danger of expropriations during the phase of independence could be predicted. She counted on his complete consent and support, even having two adult sons, who reported and justified everything to their mother, desiring approval, as can be seen in the letter Luís Paulino Filho sent her in February 1822: “The mill is going at full speed and I feel it licit to say that it has not done this in years and I have done it in days” (vol. II, p.66). Ironically, almost simultaneously Maria Bárbara reported to her husband the incompetence of their sons as administrators, which made her vital for the survival of family resources. The protagonists altered depending on the author of the letter, but it is undeniable that in addition to the traditional functions of a women, Maria Bárbara had determinedly added the functions of administration and decision in the exterior space of the mill, a masculine territory par excellence, which only shows the character of exception of this person and the family and historic circumstances that surrounded her. In general, the men and women who commanded the sugarcane plantations were followed by a diversified group of specialized workers and sharecroppers, who orbited on the margins, providing the landowner with their services. These included sugar-masters, purgers, box makers, caulkers, boiler- makers, carpenters, laborers and boatmen, amongst others. To these were added other groups with animated the economic and social life of coastal areas. Merchants, planters, artisans, subsistence workers, and sugarcane laborers, and even unemployed composed the population who gravitated around small and large landholders. The number of slaves which these last two sectors held (from one to many dozens) allows an enormous diversity of social origins and situations to be inferred. Most of the mills were nestled in the forest, which is explained by the greater fertility of the lands covered with a green cloak and the abundance of firewood, necessary for furnaces, fed in a task which lasted at times day and night, eight or nine months. Along with the mills it was common to set up stills, as happened in Aramaré. The mills could not move far from the coastline, under the threat of not being able to compete with the other plantations whose products did not have transport expenses, since there

270 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit was a single price for export goods. For this reason most mills were located along rivers such as Paraguaçu, Jaguaribe and Sergipe in Bahia (Priore; Venâncio, 2006, p.42 e p.36-37). Without a doubt the adversities faced by any mill owner in a Brazil in a time of convulsion were immense, irrespective of their gender. In all the family letters from this time there are constant allusions to debt, credit requests, lack of money, repayment of favors, and the desperate resort to the wage of the first born, to moneylenders and to the improvised sale of boxes of sugar. Maria Bárbara stated that despite being provident and parsimonious, she had even greater difficulty in obtaining credit after the departure of her husband:

In relation to the assistant Almeida, I have already told you that I, even making the greatest sacrifices, in the coming harvest, I want nothing of him, because since you have left here, I am not obliged to him in anything. I have even lately reduced the allowance, since he said he could not and that he made sacrifices. It is I who cannot put up with him. Recently, needing his signature on the two due letters, he refused this without payment. … What a thieving world! … I pay clothing for the blacks, ninety mantles, carts, everything, everything, and the still is no use for anything, since aguardente is very cheap, as well as sugar. So you know if I like to save or not, since I very much like to take care of me. The worst is that we are without horses and many of the cattle are dying. God give me patience. (vol. II, p.93-94)

To all of this were added the constant political intrigues, family rivalries, generalized enmities, refusals to ‘sign letters,’ violent weather, illness, death of animals, etc., in a list of setbacks always unmitigated by the courageous forecast of good harvests and fortune in an undefined future, this ‘afterwards,’ when Maria Bárbara could handover administration of the mill to her son and leave to meet her husband, would never happen. Taking the letters as a whole, it is possible to infer a recurrent rhetorical pattern in Maria Bárbara’s discourse: long paragraphs of lamentation for various motives, (health, money, work, the climate, family, politics, betrayal, intrigue, age) all invariably end in a brief declaration of hope that, according to her, would be exclusively motivated by the desire to meet the concerns and expectations of her husband. Fully integrated in the structures of thought then in force in Brazilian society, Maria Bárbara is assumedly a slaveholding sugar mill owner, essentialist in her animalization of the ‘black’ collective group, scandalized by the mere hypothesis of emancipation.12 She expresses the fear that blacks and mulattoes,

June 2012 271 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos freed or slaves, would revolt under cover of conflict among the white elite, but she understands that in this area there occur political manipulations and alarmist strategies: “The damned goats and blacks are our sins, who if they attacked misfortunate families would die horribly at their hands” (vol. II, p.74); “It would not happen, as they say it happened now in Pernambuco, that the blacks and coloreds (a gang of the devil) stoned and beat up the storeowner” (vol. II, p.90); “I do not deny that the mulattoes are notorious. They are, and they are proud, but we have good laws, we gave them people to listen to them and punish them. Did you know that the creoles from Cachoeira had petitioned to be free. They are fools, but the whip will settle this. I warn you, in the name of the captives here, that there are those here who are sending petitions to the Cortes” (vol. II, p.87). In effect the numerical weight of the slaves in Bahia and the recent revolts that occurred there could not but frighten mill owners, fearful of a rebellion similar to that of São Domingos, which led to the black republic of Haiti. The idea that only European troops could contain slaves, due to the weaknesses of local forces, was much invoked by defenders the union, and certainly with the intention of capturing the support of mill owners, various voices exaggerated the risk, giving as imminent a formidable slave rebellion. However, not everyone let themselves be convinced, as can be seen in this quote from Maria Bárbara: “Everyday they pretend that the blacks are to be feared so that the troops stay here. Arm the provincial regiments and have no fear. I am in Brazil for 12 years and the dangers that could arise because of slavery in the province Bahia have been talked about so much, but during this time what deaths have there been? Nothing, nothing, only good laws and sweetness. Everything else is lies” (vol. II, p.118). The use of the word ‘sweetness’ to describe the laws and customs which governed slavery in Bahia has to be seen as curious. Attentive of political, social, economic and military matters, which now dominated almost all the letters, family daily life became a residual note in Maria Bárbara’s correspondence, referred to only when affected by historic circumstances. Her children, her husband, she herself, became social actors in the full meaning of the word, living their daily life on the stage of history, a life with became confused with the construction of history itself. The epistolary narrative is strewn with violent scenes, such as the flight of Maria Bárbara to a Dutch ship in April 1822, during the bloody episodes in Bahia, resulting from opposition to the provincial governor of arms taking up[ his position. For all the events a commented participant vision is offered, and if necessary contrary to the versions propagated by the factions in conflict, such as “I saw, I saw in

272 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit a newspaper an official letter... I saw, I saw, I am a true witness” (vol. II, p.87). Without advocating independence, rather demanding just and equal treatment for Brazil, Maria Bárbara did not restrain herself from admonishing politicians and criticizing the excesses of all those involved in that historic moment, without distinction. As a privileged participant spectator she vehemently clarifies and exhorts her husband and his peers in the cortes in Portugal about what she believes is the reality of the situation and the real aspirations of Bahia, as can be seen in these excerpts from May, June, July and August 1822, on the eve of ‘Ipiranga,’ the Independence:

You cannot have an idea of the rivalry between Europeans and Brazilians, and the damned praístas [from the “Partido da Praia”] made this irreparable harm. Do not deceive yourself: nothing can be done with the Brazilians by force. Swee- tness and more sweetness, equality and more equality. (vol. II, p.106)

The continuous disorders have put this beautiful Province into pure misery. Its poor inhabitants, who have suffered much. And they are still scolded and still insulted. What else do you want of them? Give them iron? That is all that was lacking. (vol. II, p.113)

I do not understand politics, but in my opinion, with what little I have thought of such a fastidious object as this Brazil. Brazilians are infinitely hurt with some of the things that have been said about this fertile kingdom. And in truth the Deputies who have said that Brazil is some den of blacks, where, forgive me, for long they have been wrong, but the worse is that we pay what is done there. (vol. II, p.125) I cannot remain silent for much more time. I despair to see in this court that there only appear lies and the truth is hidden, so that poor Bahia is not helped with its calamities. No, no, here they do not want independence. Here they only want to enjoy the privileges that have enjoyed. Brazilians are not stepchildren, they are sons. (vol. II, p.127)

Little by little the appellative discourse is increasingly based on dichoto- mies between the ‘here,’ and ‘there,’ between ‘this court’ and this ‘fertile kingdom,’ reflecting the distancing and the progressive secession between Portugal and Brazil which being so omnipresent in daily life that it had already invaded thought and individual expressions. Despite the fervor with which she defends her country of adoption, Maria Bárbara does not make an apology of independence, nor does she hesitate in expressing profound horror by the cutting down of trees and the occupation of Igreja dos Aflitos by the rebel troops sup-

June 2012 273 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos porting D. Pedro (vol. II, p.128), in a curious proto-ecological note. From a wider perspective, she did not perceive how close independence was nor how generalized and violent the aspiration for it was. Curiously, in a letter to his father, the firstborn son states that Maria Bárbara is “a lady who does not get involved in politics” (vol. II, p.136). In the male correspondence between the two sons and Luís Paulino, Maria Bárbara is relegated to a mere family role, ignored or reduced to a brief note about her health and her obstinacy in refusing to abandon Aramaré. This alternation between omission and condescendence resulted from the sons’ incapacity to evaluate Maria Bárbara’s real qualities (an incapacity very much dictated by prejudice) and also lack of knowledge of her life of complicity with her husband. This can be associated with the difficulty in accepting to their paternal figure that she is actually the owner of the mill, due to the incompetence that the ‘Xangô workers’ have shown (vol. II, p.63). In reality, the letters which Maria Bárbara wrote to her husband – always confidential and sent with great care, by trusted bearers – did not differ from those of her sons in relation to themes and events narrated, she differentiated herself from them only in the intensity of the lamentations and the expressions of hate and affection. At the end of this epistolary narrative, which the Pinto da França and Garcez families created in an involuntarily manner, the independence of Brazil and the death of Luís Paulino dispered its members. Maria Bárbara assumed herself to be an adept of the Brazilian cause and remained in Brazil until her death, as did her younger son. Bento, the oldest, remained loyal to Portugal, but Sabina would follow her husband, a fierce supporter of independence. In a happy epilogue, there remains the radiant description which Bertand Filipe Alberto Patroni made of Maria Bárbara, in A viagem de Patroni pelas Províncias Brasileiras de Ceará, Rio de São Francisco, Bahia, Minas Gerais e Rio de Janeiro nos anos de 1829 e 1830. Six years after the death of Luís Paulino, in a widow- hood which would last 28 years, the senhora of the Aramaré sugar mill still shined in Bahian society, gathered in the Brito de Iguape mill, between Cachoeira and Santo Amaro:

Illustrious and most beautiful widow of marshal Luís Paulino Pinto da França ... The company was chosen: all the rich farmers of Iguape appeared there; abundance and joy reigned everywhere; and the goddess to whom so many offerings were dedicated made the soul of that congress respectable. I heard it sing a brief aria, the sweetness of its vice enchanted my feelings and gave me the same impression that Venus had on the father of the gods, when her lactating breasts

274 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit

trembled in the celestial council, congregating to decide the luck of the Lusitanaians on the seas of India.13

Transits, translations and intercultural narratives: theories and conclusions

The Correspondência Luso-Brasileira traces the itinerary of a constant movement between cultures, narrating in various voices a process that is not always successful of intercultural transit and adaptation. The need to translate into words the practices, values and realities of a new culture, – in other words to carry out an intercultural translation – is most evident in the letters sent from both sides of the Atlantic and in the commentaries on life in Brazil, in comparison with Portugal. This polyphonic representation of a movement of personal, family, social and group transculturation over almost two decades, functions as a translation that is sometimes consecutive, other times simultaneous, to the events lived and witnessed. This ‘consecutive and simultaneous translation’ has a profound documentary value as it is not subject to the filters of memory, something which always interferes in the process of representations, since remembering is not seeing, but rather reconstructing the experiences of the past, with images, ideas, judgments and values of the present. Together the autobiographies, the letters, and the diaries compose a sub- genre which call be called ‘literature of the intimate.’ The personal letters, as they are manifestations par excellence of the private sphere, have their writing associated with women, especially at the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth. Although the anonymous and daily missivist practice prevailed – a characteristic which does not make it less important, taking into account the new spaces of sociability which the letters constitute –, the correspondence of many women has become a recognized source of study, especially when dealing with influent characters with their vast webs of relations. Women in general were reserved the task of keeping distant relatives informed about daily family life and making more recent news circulate. A type of female specialization thereby emerges acting as a secretary, simultaneously maintaining the ties of family life. In the case of Maria Bárbara, whose domestic daily life included not just family life, but also the supervision of property and the administration of the mill and its slaves, this occurred in a context very distinct from the middle classes in ascension in Europe.14 Since the letters have the structure of informal communication, this per-

June 2012 275 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos mits their content to occur not just in the narrative of emergencies, but also the narrative of absences, adapting here the concepts developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2008, p.11-43; 2006, p.87-125). In this case, in Correspondência there occurs a narrative of emergence and through this can be heard the subordinate, but rising, voice of women, the colony, and the bourgeoisie, epito- mized in the figure of Maria Bárbara. What also can be found here is a narrative of absences, since in addition to the emerging voices, or through (and because of) these same voices, the narrative can still be accessed – in another silenced manner– of private life, of the personal, the intimate, conjugal dialogue, the daily life of the emancipated woman within the current and acceptable social structures. This ‘report of norms,’ this ‘history of private life’ in such an abnormal historical period, and one so full of public events, constitutes a great source of vial information that can complement official histories, information that is usually absent from the canon of great narratives. It allows us understand the infinite diversity of the human experience and the risk that is incurred of, with the limits of knowledge and by the exclusions imposed by each type of knowledge, wasting experience, in other words of taking as non- existent or impossible cultural experiences that are actually available (‘absences’) or possible (‘emerging’) (Santos, 2008, p.33). The diversity of practices, knowledge and actors resulting from this narrative of absences and emergences could, without a careful critical interpretation, lead to a plurality of narratives and identities closed in on themselves, which are found and lost, without resulting in any constructive interaction. The translation work is, for this reason, the capacity to relate, to communicate, to create reciprocal intelligibility between the experiences of the world, and to find points of convergence, as well as points of divergence. In the letters analyzed here, starting with a Eurocentric vision, new elements are introduced in the daily framework and a move is made towards intercultural translation. Concepts and worldviews are shared, expressing them in the most compre- hensible form possible for the reader distant in space and time. However, there exist elements which cannot be translated, for which reason the political incomprehension between the metropole and Brazil is alluded to, the dichotomy between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ the satire expressed by ‘Brazilianized’ ladies toward rural Portugal, among so many other examples of incommunicability. However, this hiatus in communication is also a fundamental part of intercultural translation. Translation allows reciprocal intelligibilities to be created between various experiences in the world, both the available and the possible, revealed by nar-

276 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit ratives of absences and narratives of emergences. In the case of Correspondência, due to the multiplicity of voices registered in it, the process of intercultural translation that occurs does not attribute to any set of experiences, either the status of exclusive totality or of a homogenous part. Experiences of the world are seen in different moments of the work of translation as totalities or parts, since they are realities which are not exhausted either as a whole or in part. They also allow us see the subordinate both inside and outside the relationship of subordination, as in the case of the paradigmatic figure of Maria Bárbara, who is both hetero-represented as mother of a family almost deprived of autonomous discourses, and self-represents herself as owner of a slaveholding mill, both eloquent and autonomous. Her knowledge and the other narratives of absence and emergence increase extraordinarily the number and diversity of experiences available and possible, since the work of translation creates intelligibility, coherence and articulation in a world enriched by this multiplicity and diversity (Santos, 2006, p.114 and 119). Maria Bárbara Garcez started her trajectory between cultures as a simple spectator and passive reader of her social role. As time passed – always moving within the strict limits permitted by the norms – she progressively became a clarified commentator, an autonomous actor, a protagonist of a character, and finally the author of her own role, in society, in politics, and in history. A role she always carried out with resourcefulness, despite (or perhaps because of) being a new role and almost unknown to her and to society in general. Belonging to the dominated group of a seigniorial society, Maria Bárbara knew how to move within the paternalist logic, achieving her objectives, without clashing with the dominant ideology and frequently using the discourse of the dominant. Maria Bárbara evolved within the limitations imposed by the dominant canon and took advantage of her privileged social position to build her own trajectory. For all those involved in this correspondence, the narrative of personal experience helped to confer sense and coherence on the frequently random and chaotic references that constituted their experience of the real. For this reason, they classify the experience by placing it within a narrative structure, because telling or writing history always involves interpretations, since, among all the experiences lived, the events and personalities to emphasize have to be selected, and this is in itself an act of interpretation. Personal narratives are never simple reflexes of the reality lived, above all they are meditated by the need to represent the individual as possessing a certain sense of identity and control, of themselves and of others. Each territory provides different means

June 2012 277 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos of ideologically mediating the experiences, characters and events. However, when the temporal-spatial territory – like the colonial territory or the space- time of the revolution and independence – is still almost unknown, when it is an unstable space, with various mobilities, without well defined cultural frontiers, when there are no previous ideological mediators, everything has to be reorganized, represented, and translated into an intelligible code. Pre- and post-colonial Brazil functioned like a zone of contact, using once again Boaventura Sousa Santos’ terminology, a frontier zone, where the pe- ripheries and margins of knowledge and practice are the first to emerge. Only the deepening of the translation work allows the aspects which each form of knowledge or practice consider most relevant or central to be brought to the contact zone (Santos, 2006, p.121). Physical space, identity and discourse mu- tually intersect and influence each other, and the different spaces and territories frequented or represented in images and narratives are experimented and understood in various manners. For Michel de Certeau, the space is activated by the rhetorical practices of those who frequent it, and the semiotic and enun- ciative options of the traveler privilege, transform and omit spatial elements in order to make them signify something or, to the contrary, nothing at all.15 In the intercultural contact zones, each cultural practice has to decide which aspect are to be selected for translation. In each culture there are aspects considered too central to be put at risk by the confrontation with the contact zone can represent, or aspects which are considered to be inherently untrans- latable to another culture. An example of this, and central to this study of Correspondência Luso-Brasileira, is the liberation of the woman from her state of oppression – a basic premise for the maintenance of patriarchal society –, a aspect which could be afforded by the extraordinary historical circumstances occurring in the contact zone of Brazil, though the dominant culture would never put this at risk. The question of what is or is not translatable is not limited to the criteria of selectivity which each practice or knowledge decides to adopt n the contact zone. More than the active selectivity, there is what we can call passive selectivity. This consists of what in each culture becomes unpro- nounceable due to the extreme oppression of which it was victim for long periods. Deep absences are involved, vacuums without possibility of being filled, emptinesses which give form to the unfathomable identity of the knowledge and practices in question (Santos, 2006, p.121). In the Correspondência, the question of slavery is dealt with without any doubts about the question of slavery. The main absence, the main silence is that which, nonetheless, sustains the entire structure of the mill, the economy and society: the slave.

278 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit

In the case of the Correspondência, there is a clear dominion of the themes linked to political and family intrigue, money, and social ascension, as if the practices and values of the Portuguese province had been transported un- harmed to the new Brazilian territory. Brazil, an immense space, so different and exotic, emerges in descriptions of the mill, the vegetation, climate, the luxury, the indolence, but transformed into a simple supporter or opponent in the omnipresent narrative of enrichment and social promotion. The contact zones created are never truly hybrid. Everything which does not fit in this great underlying narrative, the guide of all transit between Portugal and Brazil, is simply omitted, since it does not have any significance for the actors in scene. All the processes of silence and production of non-existence which occur in these letters – such as the silencing of women in male correspondence; the silencing of slaves in all correspondence; cultural processes without words which recognize them or nominate them – contribute to the construction and strengthening of asymmetries in the relationship between cultures, individuals, societies and genders, of both colonialism and patriarchy. Because, citing again Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “cultures are only monolithic when seen from outside or far away. When seen from within or from close up, it is easy to see that they are constituted of various and at times conflicting versions of the same culture” (Santos, 2006, p.121). At the moment of writing the letter what was in play was not only the preservation of family memories, but also the individual and social identity of its author. Memories are constructed by social groups because, although it is individuals who ‘remember’ in the literal meaning of the word, it is the social groups who determine what is or is not ‘memorable’ and also the manner in which something is recorded.16 It can thus be stated that memory is a constituent element of the feeling of identity, both individual and collective, to the extent that it is also a basilar factor in the feeling of continuity, coherence and the self- (re)construction of an individual or group. The greatest contribution of these letters is not so much in their credibility as a document, in the positivist sense, but as Sidney Chalhoub said about literary fiction, it “seeks reality, interprets and states truths about society, without it having to be transparent or the mirror of the social ‘question’ which it represents and with which it interferes.”17 The interpretation made here of Correspondência Luso-Brasileira seeks more complex meanings by critically analyzing the discourse which rules the logic of the intercultural narrative and the practices which move the representations of the real.

June 2012 279 Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos

NOTES

1 See: SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa. A filosofia à venda, a douta ignorância e a aposta de Pascal. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, n.80, p.29-30, mar. 2008. 2 SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa. A gramática do tempo: para uma nova cultura política. Porto: Afrontamento, 2006. p.124. 3 CARDOSO, António Manuel Monteiro; PINTO DA FRANÇA, António d’Oliveira (Ed.) Correspondência Luso-Brasileira. 2v. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional/Casa da Moeda, 2008. All the references will be to this edition and to the respective pages stated in the text in brackets. 4 See: BOURDIEU, Pierre. Razões práticas sobre a teoria da acção. Trad. Miguel Serras Pereira. Oeiras: Celta, 1997 [1994]. 5 “Your Sister and Sabina, who jumped out of bed in their nightshirts, ran around like mad women, almost without sense, from one part to another. Maria Francisca, naked, whom they had dragged along, screamed and seemed to understand the danger. Consider how I was. It was between four and five in the morning. I ran to encourage them and to tell them to calm down, I ran from one side to the other, shouting at people not to lose their minds. Some understood me, others did not (because the ship was English, as well as all it crew) and others did not obey me and everyone looked after themselves. So, in the middle of those horrors, using promises, and then threats, I managed to launch the lifeboat to save the ladies, and this being in the sea, I jumped into it. Under one arm I had Maria Francisca and under the other the papers and warrants belonging to His Majesty, the only thing I saved along with my family. So I rowed towards a coast we did not know, without knowing if on reaching the beach the boat would be torn apart on rocks or if it would capsize. Let me leave the details of the narration and conclude that having been saved, it was a touching scene to see the ladies naked and with their hair loose, kissing the sand and raising their hands and eyes to the heavens! The work I had to save the rest would make a long story … However, my loss was great, since I had freighted the said ship at my own cost and freighted in it, as it is said, my house in money. To save anything I had to spend two days and nights on the beach, making promises and spending a fortune, and continually going to sea, surrounded by bands and bands of barbarian thieves, in such a way that those who escaped the waves only with great difficulty escaped them” (vol. I, p.179-180). 6 Ironically the marriage of Bento would be happy and produce heirs. Bento would be enno- bled (1st Earl of Fonte Nova, peer of the kingdom, general, a knight of Torre e Espada) and both he and his wife and children– already ‘pardoned’, but always with great resistance on the part of Luís Paulino and Maria Bárbara – would constitute the mainstay of the family during the war of independence. For her part, as has already been mentioned, Sabina would die neglected at the age of 56, two years after her mother and year before her husband, without any surviving children. The fortune would be dilapidated by the illegitimate descendents of Rodrigo Falcão, who died in 1855 during a cholera epidemic. Falcão revealed himself to be fervently in favor of independence and promptly abandoned all and any contact with his in-

280 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 The Luso-Brazilian Correspondence: a narrative of an intercultural transit laws, showing great hostility towards Luís Paulino while he was alive, born in Bahia, but a representative of D. João VI in the armistice with the revolutionaries. 7 MATTOSO, Kátia M. de Queirós. A opulência na província da Bahia. In: ALENCASTRO, Luiz Felipe de (Ed.) História privada do Brasil. v.II. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997. p.154. 8 See: BITTENCOURT, Maria Clara Mariani (Org.) Obras de Anna Ribeiro de Araújo de Góes: longos serões do campo. v.2. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1992. p.1. 9 MATTOSO, 1997, p.154ss. In relation to the matrimonial strategies of the families of the nineteenth century Bahian elite, see: MATTOSO, Kátia. Família e sociedade na Bahia do século XIX. São Paulo: Corrupio, 1988. p.136-159. 10 BOXER, Charles. A mulher na expansão ultramarina ibérica. Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1977. p.75. 11 See: PRIORE, Mary del; VENÂNCIO, Renato. Uma história da vida rural no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 2006. p.29-46 e 101-122. 12 In Goiás in the nineteenth century there are witnesses that white women, in addition to being mothers, were landowners and cruel to employees and slaves. The history of the submission of women is loaded down with the myth of fragility which historically justified the paternalist of women by men. Nevertheless, in the history of Brazil, and specifically in the region of Goiás, violence by white women, owners of sugar mills, against black women and slaves dates from the middle of the nineteenth century, with there being many stories of slaves who had eyes, teeth, nails or ears torn off at the orders of their female owners. See: GODINHO, Tereza Martins. Traços da violência praticada por mulheres brancas contra mulheres negras no período escravocrata, em fazendas no estado de Goiás. SEMINÁRIO INTERNACIONAL FAZENDO GÊNERO, 7. Anais... Florianópolis: ago. 2006; SILVA, M. J. Quilombo do Brasil Central: violência e resistência escrava 1719-1888. Goiânia: Kelps, 2003. 13 See: PATRONI, Bertand Filipe Alberto. A viagem de Patroni pelas Províncias Brasileiras de Ceará, Rio de São Francisco, Bahia, Minas Gerais e Rio de Janeiro nos anos de 1829 e 1830. Lisboa: 1851. 14 See: GONÇALVES, Andréa Lisly. História & gênero. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2006. p.99ss. 15 CERTEAU, Michel de. The practice of everyday life. Trad. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 [1984]. p.196-198. 16 BURKE, Peter. Variedades de história cultural. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2000. p.70. 17 CHALHOUB, Sidney. Machado de Assis historiador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003. p.92.

Article received on 19 September 2011. Approved on 6 March 2012.

June 2012 281

Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy Eduardo Munhoz Svartman*

Resumo Abstract O artigo aborda a primeira etapa do This article analyses the education of processo de formação profissional de the Brazilian Army officers in the oficiais do Exército Brasileiro que ini- 1920s. Focusing on Realengo Military ciaram suas carreiras no decorrer da dé- Academy, it argues that the intentions cada de 1920. Abordando fundamental- of the military authorities to provide mente a Escola Militar do Realengo, apolitical training for Brazilian officers instituição que pretendia formar oficiais were not successful. The sources, testi- ‘apolíticos’, investiga-se, a partir de de- monies and autobiographies drawn on poimentos e relatos biográficos, aspec- show the Realengo Military Academy tos organizacionais e experiências que to be a place of political socialization teriam marcado mais profundamente as where students shared dispositions for primeiras articulações entre a formação political action on behalf of a ‘tradition’ profissional e as inclinações para agir inherited from the Praia Vermelha politicamente dessa geração. Constata- Military Academy and a mission of na- -se que Escola constituía um espaço po- tional regeneration. litizado no qual os alunos cultivavam Keywords: military education; military disposições para ação política em nome and politics; political ideas. de uma ‘tradição’ oriunda da Escola Mi- litar da Praia Vermelha e de uma missão regeneradora do país. Palavras-chave: ensino militar; militares e política; ideias políticas.

This article analyzes the first stage in the professional education of a generation of Brazilian army officers who started their careers in the 1920s. The focus of the investigation is essentially Realengo Military Academy (Escola Militar do Realengo), an institution which in this period became exclusive for

*Department of Political Science, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Campus do Vale, IFCH – Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas. Av. Bento Gonçalves, 9500, Agronomia. 91501- 970 Porto Alegre – RS – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 283-301 - 2012 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman the training of future army officers. Its establishment in 1911, in a then distant suburb of Rio de Janeiro, aimed to meet the demands expressed in successive reforms of military teaching which intended to train new officers who were not politically engaged like their predecessors. These had been trained in Praia Vermelha Military Academy and had had an intense participation in the advent of the Republic and in the Vaccine Revolt. Despite this the generation of officers trained in Realengo Military Academy, which functioned until 1944, did not show themselves to be less inclined to political action. Many of the so-called tenentes of 1922 and 1924 started their military lives there, as well as the younger men who were engaged in the 1930 Revolution or the 1935 insurrection. Some of these officers had long political careers parallel to their military careers, so to the contrary of the expectations of the education reformers, a highly politicized generation of officers was produced in Realengo. The focus of this article is the aspects which, based on the sources mapped out, most deeply marked the training of these individuals as army officers and identifies in them the first connections established between the professional training of this generation and their inclination to think and act in relation to political questions. The primary sources used include ministerial reports from the period which directly refer to the Realengo Military Academy, and memoirs or statements made by officers of this generation. Memoirs and statements are considered to be evocations and reworkings produced spontaneously or by the stimulus of mediators/interviewers and talk about both what is being narrated and the narrator himself. As a result, these sources are used to take into account their condition as rationalizations which intend to unify trajectories and legitimate actions and positions which are not anonymous, but are from soldiers with well-known political careers. The reading of these texts, generally produced with temporal distancing and intentions convenient for their protagonists, allow us understand precisely which experiences were considered most relevant by the agents. These preparations by soldiers with different trajectories and political positions allow the filtering of what was really striking for soldiers of their generation. This filtering can be done based on the convergence of texts about the relevance and intensity of experiences in Realengo Military Academy. The research on which this article is based seeks to follow the studies of military education which, in addition to the organizational dimension, seem to understand the particularities of the actors in focus.1 It is sought here to link the study of institutional aspects (reforms, regulations, curricula) with related experiences, in order to compose a more precise framework of the connections

284 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy between the professional and political education of this generation which showed such a strong disposition for political activity. It is thus argued that the Military Academy reverberated part of the crises and political effervescence of the period, however, rather than simply reproducing what was going on outside its walls, the academy constituted a space in which the cadets cultivated dispositions to act in the political sphere as members of the profession of arms. While they learned military knowledge and built up a professional identity perceived to be distinct from previous generations (neither ‘doutores’, nor ‘tarimbeiros’), the documents researched allowed the understanding that a vision was built up there of how the cadets and future army officers should implement a transformative mission of the country.

Reforms in military education

The period defined here – which runs from the closing of Praia Vermelha Military Academy, after the 1904 Revolt, includes the functioning of the Porto Alegre School of War (1906-1910), and extends throughout the effective functioning of the Realengo Academy between 1911 and 1944 – covers five reforms of army teaching regulations. Although very different provisions were stipulated about the number and location of establishments for training officers and about the predominance of ‘theoretical’ or ‘practical’ disciplines in curricula, all the reforms pointed in the same direction. This involved expanding the troops available, guaranteeing recruitment through obligatory military service, modernizing the organization and armaments and giving future army officers a more professional character. It was the end of the ‘bacharéis fardados’ (uni- formed graduates) who rivaled those who graduated from law schools and liked to be called doutores (doctors). The perception that the new weapons and means of transport would affect how bellic conflicts would be waged and the fear of new military uprisings such as that of 1904 meant that the 1905 regulations no longer trained these ‘bachelors of science’ in favor of an amplification of ‘practical teaching.’ Jeová Motta emphasized that the objective of the reforms was to train the trupier with a strong military spirit and skilled in shooting, tactics and the rules of service on campaigns.2 To achieve this a more severe disciplinary regime was established, as well as a curriculum in which the ‘professional’ disciplines predominated and a complementation of studies in special schools. The dispersal of the academies in distant suburbs in Rio de Janeiro and in Rio Grande do Sul (in Porto Alegre and in Rio Pardo) was

June 2012 285 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman meant to meet the demand for the de-politicization of future officers, which in practice was far from happening. In 1913 new regulations concentrated the training of officers in Realengo, maintaining as a symbolic reference the French image of the army as the grande mudo (literally the great mute) – professional and apolitical. The Report of the Minister of War from the same year reinforces the emphasis on ‘practical teaching.’ The 1918, and subsequently the 1919, regulations sought to understand the transformations which occurred during the First World War. Following the same general orientation of the others, the weight of military disciplines in the curriculum was increased and the military division of students into companies was reinforced. Directly subordinated to the General Staff of the Army, the Military Academy began to qualify its instructors, submitting them to a selection process intended to include practical tests. It was sought to reinforce the professional and meritocratic character, applied to both students and instructors, which opened space for the so-called Young Turks to be able to influence the training of new professionals.3 The 1919 regulations also reorganized the training of officers who had already graduated, so that career progression came to depend on attending institutions of military education during an officer’s career, such as the Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Armas (School of Improvements in Arms), afterwards called the Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Oficiais do Exército (EsAO – School of Improvements for Army Officers), and the Escola de Estado-Maior (EEM – General Staff School). The core of this structure and the meritocratic standards that it aimed at are still in force today. The trajectory of these reforms was not, however, linear. At various opportunities ministerial reports called attention to the precariousness of facilities in the school or the limited equipment for campaign exercises, which hindered the observance of a ‘practical spirit.’ In 1924 a new reform of military teaching sought to achieve a balance between the ‘bacharelismo’ of Praia Vermelha and the limiting of officer training to strictly military aspects in such a way that officers would be “up-to-date with the progress of life in the country,” as desired by the Minister of War, General Setembrino de Carvalho. ‘Scientific’ disciplines such as Analytical Geometry and Experimental Physics returned to the curriculum, while new ones became part of it, such as the Mission of the Army and the Social Mission of the Officer. It is possible that this reform was a response to the “deplorable events of July 1922.” However, the same ministerial report emphasizes that officers from the French military mission were included among the school’s instructors. In 1928 military educa-

286 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy tion was reformed once again, though the same guidelines as previously were maintained, while the position of Direct of Military Education was created, a strategic position which institutionalized the definition of knowledge to be taught to officers and cadets from then on. After the 1930 Revolution new reforms, organized by José Pessoa, sought to reinforce the identification of students with the army and with the abstract concepts of patria and nation in order to weaken student inclinations towards political involvement. An important dimension of this effort was the adoption of ‘new traditions,’ such as the creation of a Cadet Corps and the adoption of ‘historic uniforms,’ of which the handing of Caxias (the patron of the army) rapiers to cadets in a solemn ceremony was the most important symbolic element.4 The reforms were not restricted to the Realengo Military Academy, they were actually part of a broader process of successive restructurings of the army as a whole, which sought to follow similar processes underway in Argentina and Chile and to rectify the weaknesses found in internal conflicts, such as the Contestado. In the period covered here the military corporation adopted an organic structure similar to modern armies with large units and territorial commands, created the law of obligatory military service and with it the beginning of the formation of reserves, and also implemented the instruction and training of troops as a regular practice. It was in this context that, despite being modest in terms of resources and in an army still suffering from the competition of state police forces, the professionalization of officers took a leap forwards. Situated in this institutional panorama related to the military training system of the period, we can look at the generation who were then trained and the experiences internalized, which, despite being filtered through the memory of those giving statements and the memoirs used as sources here, appear to have been most striking in the constitution and individualization of a determined form of perceiving the world and politics.

Teaching in Realengo Military Academy

When the generation being looked at here studied in Realengo Military Academy, it had already been structured in such a manner that the organization of space, time and the cadets themselves was very similar to what happened in French or US academies. The academy occupied a physical space separated from the common soldiers, distant from the center of Rio de Janeiro, and progressively adopted a boarding system. It also had a training field in which the future officers were to exercise and to put into practice their knowl-

June 2012 287 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman edge of bellic operations. Students were immediately militarized, deployed in companies, and particularly after 1919, submitted to a severe disciplinary regime which exercised almost total control over their time and activities. This experience, collectively lived and symbolically marked by rites of passage such as the ‘trote’ (hazing) of freshmen cadets, exams, the choice of Arms, maneuvers, and finally graduation, inscribed in students a strong sense of belonging to the army institution and to their class. It involved transforming adolescents and young civilians, although many of them came from military schools, into professional army officers. In addition to specific knowledge, the Military Academy was responsible for teaching them the ‘military spirit,’ which would be facilitated by the adoption of a teaching system with these characteristics, (Castro, 2004, p.122ss). Professionalization and the reinforcement of the use of meritocratic criteria for progression in the career did not begin with the generation being looked at here, nor did it eliminate the traditional clientelist mechanisms which impregnated the Brazilian military institution.5 Nevertheless, the reforms in military teaching, the activism of the Young Turks and the contracting of the French mission reinforced the perception of this generation as being distinct from previous ones. A soldier with a long and well known political career, Cordeiro de Farias, reports in his statement that in 1919 his class was the first which “left the school with a truly military education,” because until then studies of calculus and physics had been dominant without there being any systematic military instruction.6 The reinforcement of military education involved the expansion of specific content (use of firearms, fortification, tactics of the different arms, etc.) and with the adoption of field instructions and maneuvers simulating war operations. The latter constituted a significant change, since even students from military schools encountered difficulties in adapting to its rigor and demands in terms of physical aptitude. João Punaro Bley, who entered Realengo in 1918 and who had studied in Barbacena Military College, described the field exercises as ‘frequently inhumane,’ and in 1920 Castelo Branco ended up in the infirmary after his attempt to pass the obstacle course through which cadets had to run with all their campaign equipment.7 The routine in the military academy described in many statements was intense, if not total. Both Juarez Távora (a student between 1917 and 1919) and João Alberto (a student between 1919 and 1922) reported in their memoires that the reveille was at 4.30 in the morning; at 6, after having washed, had breakfast and presented morning formation, field teaching began, lasting until 9 am. At 10 the theoretical classes began, and only between 4 and 6 pm did

288 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy the students have free time outside school. Two more inspections and a period stipulated for studies completed the students’ day, which finished at 10 pm with curfew.8 Students’ time and their daily activities, including permission to leave school at weekends, were submitted to the authority of the academy commander. All this discipline was intended to prepare the future officers for obedience to the strict hierarchical principles which ruled military life and for submission to the movements and designations of function which also characterized this profession. The intense discipline and the ‘trote,’ to which new students were subjected by older ones, were part of what Janowitz designates the ‘violent and sudden’ transition to the military academy life in which the “interminable routines and the system of intimidation of freshmen was justified as a means of self-control, as well as resistance to panic.”9 Moreover, abnegation and the capacity to withstand extenuating circumstances appear to have become at this time requirements for beginning a military career. Henrique Teixeira Lott, who was a cadet under the 1905 and 1913 regulations and afterwards was an instructor, emphasized that in Realengo

we had a greater possibility to educate ourselves professionally in the instruction of combat. When I was in the Military Academy, I had the rough hands that come from digging trenches. In compensation, later I made many people dig trenches, including two presidents of the Republic– Castelo Branco and Costa e Silva –, who had to roughen their hands when I was the instructor in the organization of terrain.10

The belief in the primacy of individual merit over clientelism or any form of privilege or favor seems to have been diffused among the Realengo cadets, whose results in the academy classified them for the choice of ‘arms’ and later for the designations of the posts in which they would serve in their last year as a cadet (as aspirants).11 The progressive assimilation of a ‘strong military spirit’ included not only the individuation of disciplinary habits and new knowledge specific to the military environment. It also to a great extent occurred with the internalization of values and postures with which the cadets deemed themselves distinctive and morally superior. This distinction, invested in the uniform and by what it represented for them, was constructed in opposition to the paisanos (a pejorative designation which the military gave to civilians), particularly in regard to politics and civilian politicians.

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Political Engagement and Civilian Repulsion

Despite the consolidation of civilian power in the First Republic during the Prudente de Moraes and Campos Sales governments and the efforts to neutralize the intervention of the military in politics, the trajectories of many cadets of this period were marked by political experience. With the closing of the Military Academy of Praia Vermelha, a large contingent of students not punished or amnestied after the inquiries following the Revolta da Vacina (Vaccine Revolt) were transferred to Porto Alegre. Created in 1906, the School of War, successor to the Preparatory and Tactical School of Porto Alegre, had more than six hundred students. This ‘invasion of students’ had an impact on the city and local politics, so much so that the following year a group of students was firmly engaged in the electoral disputes of the Rio Grande Republican Party, composing with the students of the faculty of law the Bloco Acadêmico Castilhista.12 Amongst other members of this groups were the cadets Eurico Gaspar Dutra and Pedro Aurélio de Góes Monteiro, as well as Getúlio Vargas, Maurício Cardoso, Lindolfo Collor and João Neves da Fontoura. In 1906 the cadets circulated the journal Occidente, in which, according to Laudelino Medeiros, Comtean positivism predominated in the social articles. In 1908 the journal Cruzada entered circulation, whose political engagement was not restricted to the reproductions of articles from A Federação – the official paper of the Rio Grande Republican Party – and praise of Benjamin Constant. In its first issue the journal advocated a ‘regenerative crusade’ and in a tone typical of Florianist Jacobinism, declared: “We have the praiseworthy intention of modestly working for the future of our dear patria, preventing the moral melt- down which has been leading the Republic into the absolute regime of demor- alization” (apud Medeiros, 1992, p.62). It was found that much of the spirit of radicalism and hostility to civilian politicians and the liberal model at the beginning of the Republic still existed in officer training spaces during the period in question. It is for this reason that Cordeiro de Farias states that his “generation became political because the previous one had been political” (Camargo; Góes, 1981, p.70). The circulation of values and attitudes contesting the current political order was also registered by Ernesto Geisel in his statement. When he was still in the Military Academy, also in Porto Alegre, Geisel and his colleagues had been contaminated by the ‘ideas of 1922’ when some older former colleagues, who had participated in the rising, returned to Rio Grande do Sul bringing with them the ‘idealism of revolution.’ This occurred in such a manner that, for him, “the generation that

290 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy was trained at that time in Porto Alegre Military Academy, and in other academies, was frankly revolutionary.” Nelson Werneck Sodré reported that when he was still a boy, he had his first contact with army officers – and with politics – due to the Copacabana Fort Rising (D’Araujo; Castro, 1997, p.28s; Sodré, 1986, p.11s). The impact of the 1922 Rising was considerable and the adhesion of cadets meant that according to the ministerial report of that year, 584 were expelled from the academy. Much has already been said about the ideology of the tenentista movement. This debate probably began in 1927, when Juarez Távora published À guisa de um depoimento..., and decades later it was taken over by academia which discussed whether it was a middle class movement or a strictly military one.13 What the statements of the agents show is that there was a strong feeling of repulsion towards the political model then in force, of generalized disbelief in the politicians of the time, and a self-perception on the part of these cadets and junior officers that they represented a type of moral reserve of the nation, whose action would not take place along institutionalized paths. “We thought that the government was corrupt and inept, that what existed was but petty politics,” and “and when we become officers, we will influence this country for the better,” Geisel stated (D’Araujo; Castro, 1997, p.29). The 1922 election mobilized the expectations of these cadets and junior officers, however the defeat of their candidate to Artur Bernardes, even before the episode of the false letters – which was the trigger for the military rising of that year, was very badly received and only increased their disbelief in the existing institutions. Cordeiro de Farias put the issue as follows:

Personally I felt frustrated in my attempts to participate in politics via normal means, through the electoral process and voting. The officers felt very bad. The young officers, such as myself, felt upset with the defeat, once more a fruit of the old arrangements of the political oligarchy. We concluded that the situation had to be changed. (Camargo; Góes, 1981, p.71)

These dispositions towards political action were distinguished from her- mismo and the so-called salvações, which had marked the return of the military to the Brazilian political scene in 1910. This is because these phenomenon were perfectly inscribed in the practices of the system then in force, and the reports investigated converge towards a feeling of non-conformism and the cultivation among cadets and junior officers of dispositions to transform the political system. The sense of change was at the very minimum vague and imprecise in

June 2012 291 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman terms of political programs or orientations. Once again according to Cordeiro de Farias: “We left shooting everywhere.” Nevertheless, one thing was certain: the influence of the French mission on this set of young officers guaranteed the internalization of a sense of professionalism and a standard of modern organization without, however, the adoption of the image of the army as the grande mudo, immune to political questions. Geisel was very explicit regarding this: “The French Mission had a strictly professional influence on us... In relation to our mentality, our political orientation, it was of no importance” (D’Araujo; Castro, 1997, p.42). Despite the emphasis on professional teaching, the academy was a politicized space in which students developed visions critical of the First Republic. This undesired effect of professional training can only be understood in part when the growing political radicalization of the epoch is observed. What also has to be paid attention to are the symbolic references which inhabited the education of new officers

The Long Duration of Positivism

Although military teaching at the time was changing constantly, there was a gap between what appeared in the new regulations and what actually occurred in the classrooms. Jeová Motta calls attention to part of the teaching staff who were not very affected of the changes and to the fact that the theoretical classes did not differ much from the model practiced in the time of Praia Vermelha. Similarly, Werneck Sodré mentions in his memoirs the continuity of a ‘scientific spirit’ unattached to any military application in Realengo at the beginning of the 1930s (Motta, 1976, p.312; Sodré, 1986, p.88). In his memoirs José Campos Aragão comments that positivism still made itself felt among the teachers and the students in Realengo. According to the latter the first year geometry teacher magnetized the students with his quotations of Augusto Comte, making them incorporate in their vocabulary clichés from positivist philosophy. The continuity of references to positivism, to Florianism and to Benjamin Constant among the cadets operated as a vector of the desire of this generation for political intervention. Associating the creation of the Republic with the Army and ‘the disaster that is coming’ with ‘professional politicians,’ this generation reactivated the memory of the political activism of their predecessors in Praia Vermelha and constructed a self-image in which they felt morally superior to the oligarchies who governed the country and as such saw themselves as the ‘sentinels of the Republican regime.’ None of those giving state-

292 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy ments or writing memorials declared themselves to be positivists and in the period covered here Comtism was in decline. However, elements of positivist discourse were present in Realengo and its instrumental use mixed with other contemporary elements made sense when cadets and junior officers began to produce representations about the political role that they should occupy as soldiers. The Military Academy prepared the future leaders of the Brazilian army, and both the institution and the students knew this. In Realengo the academic curriculum, the experience of living in a boarding system, and the strong degree of solidarity among the cadets, instilled in them the knowledge, taste, affinities, values and expectations of a future officer, at the same time that this fused with a type of commitment to the patria which went much further than defense, connecting with a republican ‘tradition’ of ‘revolutionary leaps’ in defense of the nation. In his memoirs, Campos Aragão illustrates this republican mysticism which Benjamin Constant was invoking to illustrate and legitimate the belief in the political protagonism of officers as a duty:

I felt that a pride was growing in all those wearing the khaki uniform. And the cadets knew how to overestimate themselves. For them being a student meant belonging to a very elevated caste. Furthermore, national history began to cite the name of the academy. Yes, the chapter of the Republic was known by all, with the great Benjamin Constant being a true source of pride for all the generations of Praia Vermelha. And from then on upon all those occasions when the structure of democratic principles was attacked the enthusiastic soul of the cadet did not hesitate in committing himself to the revolutionary leaps.

Campos Aragão was studying in Realengo when the French mission was already more than consolidated with the Brazilian Army and he experienced another important reform of military teaching, commanded by General José Pessoa. However, for him the continuity of the political activism of the cadets and the feeling that mobilized them was clear and immediate: “The reflections of 1889 illuminated the whole rebelliousness climate of 1922. Realengo Academy had fully inherited the conscience of Praia Vermelha.”14 When he recounts the repercussions of the 1930 Revolution among the cadets of his time, once again there appears the reactivation of a ‘tradition’ of political engagement which intended to act in defense of the republican regime. Although the adhesion of officers to the 1930 Revolution was

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only partial, the cadets did everything to also be protagonists. Aragão comments that even though the revolutionary command did not need more troops,

the mass [of cadets] was fanatic about the idea that they were responsible for guaranteeing the victory of the revolution in Rio de Janeiro. The historical ‘leaps’ of Praia Vermelha and even those in Realengo were the high point of the exploi- tation of some talented and inflamed comrades who raised their voices to show: The Academy should go down! ... We remember 1922! There is a tradition of Praia Vermelha to guard! ... Academy go down! (ibidem, p.206)

In fact the Academy did ‘go down’ to the center of Rio de Janeiro, guard- ed some points considered to be strategic, guided the traffic, and, according to Aragão, when the head of the revolution reached Rio to take power the cadets presented their ‘guard of honor.’

The genesis of a repertoire of political action

The years of intense experiences which the students accumulated in the institutions which trained Brazilian military officers, as was to be expected, left profound marks on the modes of being of these individuals. The experiences, nostalgically remembered in autobiographies and discourses, and the choices made there helped to train officers within determined parameters. This pa- rameter, as we have seen, was increasingly ‘professional’ and ‘technical’ and supposed a political disengagement, something which was far from happening. Also reinforced in this process was a secular tendency of the identification of officers with their institution and the consequent withdrawal from their identity ties with other parts of society. For Teitler Gerke this tendency is characteristic of military professionals who, in addition to possessing specific technical knowledge linked to the exercise of their functions, shared with their peers a feeling of belonging to a distinct social group. Thus, for Gerke, the

esprit de corps had its roots in the period of learning common in encampments. This period nurtures a feeling of equality and of being capable of accomplish- ments which cannot be imitated by non-professionals … While the idea that relationships and highly qualified functioning are increasingly important, the supervision of professional activities should not be left in the hands of intruders.

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For this author, it is precisely in opposite to ‘intruders’ – in other words civilians – that the identity of the military professional is constructed:

Consciously relegating intruders expands the possibilities of creating a differentiated style of life, even apart from the exceptional, technically determined, position the professional occupies. In this way the conscious cultivation of, and the emphasis on, traditions, group attitudes, norms and values constitutes a part of the characteristics of the military profession.15

The training of its members, monopolized by the army, thereby constituted a decisive process for the consolidation and reproduction of the institution. Military education is also a form of socialization which develops in individuals the feeling of group cohesion and the adoption of shared values, which in the last instance guarantee a relative homogeneity in terms of expectations, interests and attitudes and consequently distinction in relation to civilians. The years in which they attend the military academy are decisive in the formation of officers’ identities. The training which the generation of army officers focused on in this paper experienced combined, in a complex form, professionalism and political interventionism in the sense of developing among them the perception that only military action in the political sphere could guarantee an actually professional army safe from the influxes and co-options of the political struggle. In part this can be explained by the discontent in the ranks of the army. José Murilo de Carvalho notes that the tenentes represented two thirds of the officer corps and that the reintegration of the Praia Vermelha rebels, the low level of hierarchical control and the slow promotions favored rebellion. Frank McCann emphasizes the generalized dissatisfaction among the junior officers, discontent with the military leadership, with the French mission, and with political institutions; this would not have left the military academy un- touched.16 The approaches focused on in the organizational structure of the army tended to bypass the dynamics that existed among the agents in question, and in fact, by and for them, it was not just an institutional project that was being forged, but a much more pretentious idea of what the country should be like. This attitude, it can be said, of defending the corporation against threats or limits imposed by the state and the civilian world was also based on the cultivation of the interventionist tradition of the army at the beginning of the republic and deep-rooted belief that, although they appropriated the specific knowledge of the ‘craft of arms’ and its deontology, while they reinforced their

June 2012 295 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman ties of solidarity – ‘comradeship’ – and homogenized their affinities, the officers studied here believed that the army was the actual incarnation of the Brazilian nation, and that the young officers were the sole true defenders of the nation. In their training they developed a disposition to think and act as an exceptionally well qualified and morally superior group whose commitment to the ‘nation’ as officers would go much beyond strict obedience to the state, and called them to a regenerating mission for the country. In his memoirs João Alberto doubts that the political events in which he was ‘involved’ would have exercised as much influence in his life, had he not been an army officer. Aurélio Lira Tavares, who stated that he became ‘increasingly more Brazilian’ in the years he studied in Realengo, between 1923 and 1925, gave the most precise formulation about how his peers resolved the apparent contradiction between professionalism and political activism. For him, his “generation, so enthusiastic with their professional duties” did not avoid its role, since “we had the conviction that the revolutionaries of ‘22, ‘24 and ‘30 represented the young elite in what they were ... most expressive and most pure,” fighting with violence to open the paths to the “generalized anxieties of the Nation.” Built into this discourse there was a belief in the moral superiority of the officers who, as an enlightened elite and with pure intentions, would modernize the country, freeing it from the social ills caused by political professionalism and the selfishness of those who administered Brazil. From the other side of the ideological spectrum, Apolônio de Carvalho also reported that as he professionally improved, he increasingly harbored the dream of a new society.17 In the years when they shared the extenuating routine of military schools and afterwards the Military Academy, the students – and later cadets – developed strong bonds of comradeship and associationism among themselves. One example of this is the Civic Literary Society of the Military College of Porto Alegre. In this the students held literary soirees and proclaimed that, “inspired by elevated sentiments of civism and patriotism”, they were engaged in local politics against those who “corrupted and misled society.”18 In Realengo the associationism of the cadets was also intense. In addition to an athletic society, there was an Academic Society which published periodicals. At a time when the boarding system was more flexible, due to the precariousness of facilities or the excess of students, many cadets lived in ‘repúblicas’ (student housing) near to the school. Other students whose political trajectories are well known, such as Siqueira Campos, Eduardo Gomes and Luís Carlos Prestes, had a space

296 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Professional and political education at Realengo Military Academy outside the school in which they discussed politics and questions related to the First World War, which was then attracting everyone’s attention. The ties established there are of singular importance for the accumulation of solidarity, shared experiences and a specific scheme for understanding the world. Its internalization composes the mode of being which distinguishes the military profession from the others. The strength of these ties was shown during political engagements. Cordeiro de Farias, referring to the period of the Prestes Column, attributes his success in the confrontations with the legalist forces to the ties established in Realengo: “We were incredibly united, like true brothers, and between us there was neither jealousy nor secretes. There existed an inseparable union which linked us like members of a family” (Camargo; Góes, 1981, p.65ss and 126ss). In referring to Praia Vermelha Military Academy, Celso Castro emphasizes that a large amount of the spreading of positivism was the responsibility of students. Due to this intense associationism, what circulated among them, in their specific spaces of socialization, can have been as important as the disciplines and programs taught in the configuration of a determined type of education in the Military Academy. The associationism of students functioned in some aspects in a similar manner to the German Kaiserreich of dueling groups and nationalist confraternities studied by Norbert Elias. More than the discipline and the knowledge instilled by the academy, these students’ association also exercised a ‘strongly standardizing function,’ giving a relatively uniform imprint to people from different regions of the country and cultivat- ing a network of relations with which it was difficult for agents to break.19 For the generation who went to Realengo in the 1920s, the ties cultivated there and the standards of behavior and expectations continued to work with a strong identity element. In the 1930s, in turn, there were indications that some of these ties of comradeship also involve a discrete communist militancy, the impact of which would be felt in 1935 (Cunha, 2002, p.47). The relationship between professional military education and political education in Realengo involved the type of education, the reactivation of a ‘tradition’ coming from Praia Vermelha and the specific socialization that the agents developed among themselves. Here another factor needs to be considered, the readings and debates which circulated among them and which contributed to their dissemination of what was not exactly a specific vision of the world, but a range of possibilities of representations and the production of meaning for phenomenon which mobilized the agents. This is of fundamental importance, since it was also on the basis of these readings that these cadets

June 2012 297 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman and young officers began to compose the repertoire of what they thought and frequently used in politics However, it is prudent to question the scope of these readings. Military education, especially that which had progressively been implemented during the period being looked at here, did not require the erudition and knowledge, even though not rarely it was only ornamental – as was common in faculties of law– of the so-called classics and the philosophical currents then in fashion. The actual hierarchical structure of the barracks discourages debate. Moreover, it is also quite improbable that the majority of students, after a long day of exercises and studies for exams and questionings, would have much time for reading anything more dense than novels about chivalry or biographies of the great generals. The majority of them probably read very little; nevertheless, it would not be absurd to suppose that those who actually read were active in academic societies and edited periodicals, were capable of disseminating or reproducing authors, controversies, arguments and debates which ended up influencing the other students. Although it is difficult to quantify, some individuals counted on a more lettered family environment and called themselves ‘voracious readers’ in statements or biographies. This is the case of Ernesto Geisel, whose father bought collections of literature books annually, as well as Nelson Werneck Sodré, an admirer of Jules Verne in his childhood. The readings were appropriated to a large extent under an instrumental prism in the sense of being ‘action orientated’ and generally speaking were critical of current institutions. Cordeiro de Farias comments that he became aware of Os sertões by Euclides da Cunha due to the influence of his father, a Florianist army officer, and that because there was no regular reading program in the Military Academy, they had ‘free and spontaneous’ readings. It is possible to approximate these readings based on the report of Lira Tavares, for whom the principal readings of the 1920s were: José Bonifácio, Tavares Bastos, Euclides da Cunha, Couto de Magalhães, Roquete Pinto and Oliveira Viana. Special emphasis, however, was given to Alberto Torres, who according to Lira Tavares had many followers. Reading of his work provided a large part of the content and the categories of criticism of the current political regime, as well as the practice of formulating them based on a type of diagnosis of ‘Brazilian problems.’ The correlation between reading and political action was clear in the words of Lira Tavares:

Alberto Torres’ book attracted our enthusiasm due to his ideas, but between them and what had to be done to put them into practice there was, in addition

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to inexperience which encouraged us to accept them as definitely valid, the bar- rier of the dominant mentality and the forces which opposed large changes: political professionalism, electoral coronelismo, the monopoly of economic power, and much more than this, lack of knowledge of Brazilian realities, of the great national problems, as well as the lack of formulas and programs to effectively resolve them. (Camargo; Góes, 1981, p.69; Tavares, 1976, p.48)

Antônio Carlos Murici, who was a friend and colleague of Lira Tavares in Realengo, shared the same influences and readings which, according to him conferred

the will to fight for Brazil on me and my generation. Everyone from my generation who was aware began to study Brazilian problems at that time. The 1920s were a time of transformation of Brazil, of the mentality of young Brazilians fighting for Brazil. It was there we felt that we were backward, that we needed to produce in any form. Not just politically backwards, it was also economic and social.20

Conclusion

During the 1920s, a period of growing political and cultural effervescence in Brazil, which ushered in a crisis of the politico-institutional model – and of society – all institutions were to some extent questioned: political parties, the state, the church, the armed forces, ‘Brazilian culture.’ In this period the training of future army officers took place under the aegis of constituting a new professional army, technically up-to-date and apolitical. The reports analyzed here show that the belief in the imperative need for a ‘modern’ and ‘efficient’ army was incorporated as an essential part of the deontology of these new officers. Along with it, however, these individuals of this generation also built a scheme of perceiving and classifying the world in which the ‘modern’ officer believed that he belonged to an elite morally superior to the one which administered the country and lacked belief in liberal institutions. The resort to the ‘tradition of Praia Vermelha’ appeared as a rhetorical innovation to justify the political activities of cadets and young officers as soldiers. At the same time, it is also an indicator that the spaces for training officers (not only according to the curriculum or the teachers, but also according to the values and practices shared and reproduced among the cadets) in-

June 2012 299 Eduardo Munhoz Svartman scribed in individuals forms of perceiving and acting marked by the belief that these officers were a type of ‘guardians of the Republic,’ and for which a moralization of the political customs of Brazil was necessary, and that this would not occur among the current institutions.

NOTES

1 See for example, CASTRO, Celso. Os militares e a República: um estudo sobre cultura e ação política. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1995; CASTRO, Celso. O espírito militar: um antrop- ólogo na caserna. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2004; and SEIDL, Ernesto. A espada como “vocação”: padrões de recrutamento e seleção das elites do Exército no Rio Grande do Sul (1850-1930). Porto Alegre: Ed. UFRGS, 1999. 2 MOTTA, Jeovah. Formação do oficial do exército. Rio de Janeiro: Artes Gráficas, 1976. p.271. 3 The Young Turks consisted of a group of officers who trained with the German army between 1906 and 1910. When they returned they strongly engaged in a campaign for the strengthening and modernization of the army and for its members to withdraw from civilian political fights. In 1913 they founded the journal A Defesa Nacional, in which they publicized their positions. CARVALHO, José Murilo de. As Forças Armadas na Primeira República: o poder desestabilizador. In: ______. Forças Armadas e política no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2005. p.27. 4 CASTRO, Celso. A invenção do exército. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2002. p.42. 5 In relation to the question of meritocracy, see SEIDL, 1999, p.44ss, and for clientelism, perceptible in various officer statements, see, for example: D’ARAUJO, Maria Celina; CASTRO, Celso (Org.) Ernesto Geisel. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 1997. p.103; and SODRÉ, Nelson Werneck. Do tenentismo ao Estado Novo: memórias de um soldado. 2.ed. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 1986. p.251 and 267ss. 6 CAMARGO, Aspásia; GÓES, Walder de. Meio século de combate: diálogo com Cordeiro de Farias. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1981. p.65. 7 Manuscript with the memoirs of João Punaro Bley. CPDOC/FGV JPB d 00.00.0000/2 p.12; NETO, Lira. Castello: a marcha para a ditadura. São Paulo: Contexto, 2004. p.39. 8 TÁVORA, Juarez. Uma vida e muitas lutas. v.1. Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio Ed., 1973. p.86; BARROS, João Alberto Lins de. Memórias de um revolucionário. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1954. p.16ss. 9 JANOWITZ, Morris. O soldado profissional: estudo social e político. Rio de Janeiro: GRD, 1967. p.131ss; in relation to the trote, see CASTRO, 1995, p.34. 10 LOTT, Henrique Batista Duffles Teixeira. Henrique Teixeira Lott (depoimento, 1978). Rio de Janeiro, CPDOC, 2002. p.10.

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11 At the end of the second year the cadets had to chose in which branch of the army they would complete their training and follow their career. At this time the ‘arms’ were Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and Engineering, with the latter two being the most prestigious and disputed. The possibility of choice, however, depended on the position of the student in the general classification of their class. 12 MEDEIROS, Laudelino. Escola Militar de Porto Alegre (1853-1911): significado cultural. Porto Alegre: Ed. UFRGS, 1992. p.39; LOVE, Joseph L. O regionalismo gaúcho e as origens da Revolução de 1930. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1975. p.90. 13 TÁVORA, Juarez. À guisa de um depoimento sobre a revolução brasileira de 1924. São Paulo: Ed. O Combate, 1927. In relation to this question, see, for example, FORJAZ, Maria Cecília. Tenentismo e política: tenentismo e camadas médias urbanas na crise da Primeira República. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1977. p.31ss; COELHO, Edmundo C. Em busca da identidade: o exército e a política na sociedade brasileira. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2000. p.100. For greater details on this historiographic debate, see FORJAZ, Maria Cecília. Tenentismo e Forças Armadas na Revolução de 30. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 1988. Especially the first part of chapter IV. 14 ARAGÃO, J. Campos de. Histórias para soldados. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército, 1964. p.184. 15 GERKE, Teitler. La genesis de los cuerpos de oficiales professionales. Aspectos teoricos. In: BAÑÓN, Rafael; OLMEDA, José. (Comp.) La instituición militar en el Estado contem- poráneo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1985. p.166. 16 CARVALHO, 2005, p.36; McCANN, Frank. Soldados da Pátria: história do Exército Brasileiro (1888-1937). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. p.282ss. 17 BARROS, 1954, p.14; LYRA TAVARES, Aurélio. O Brasil de minha geração. Rio de Janeiro: Bibliex, 1976. p.38; CUNHA, Paulo R. Um olhar à esquerda: utopia tenentista na construção do pensamento marxista de Nelson Werneck Sodré. Rio de Janeiro: Revan, 2002. p.49. 18 Cited in DULLES, John Foster. Castello Branco: o presidente reformador. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 1983. p.12ss. 19 ELIAS, Norbert. Os alemães. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1997. p.57. 20 Statement of Antônio Carlos Murici to CPDOC, p.44.

Article received on 19 October 2010. Approved on 20 April 2012.

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A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic: Revista Americana and the building of a new continental vision Fernando Vale Castro*

Resumo Abstract Este artigo tem o objetivo de analisar a The aim of this article is to analyze Re- Revista Americana como um instru- vista Americana as a tool of Itamaraty’s mento da estratégia do Itamaraty de new strategy of drawing Brazil and the pensar uma aproximação entre o Brasil rest of South America closer together, e a América do Sul destacando o papel a highlighting the role of diplomacy in ser exercido pela diplomacia na Repú- the recently proclaimed Republic. This blica recém-proclamada. É possível no- periodical illustrates how highly valued tar a valorização, nas páginas da Revista, certain elements of cultural diplomacy de elementos de uma diplomacia cultu- were, elements which were crucial for ral que deveriam servir de base para a the construction of a new identity for construção de novas identidades, mar- the South American continent based on cada por características próprias e espe- its own specific characteristics. cíficas do continente sul-americano. Keywords: Revista Americana; Ministry Palavras-chave: Revista Americana; Mi- of Foreign Affairs; cultural diplomacy. nistério das Relações Exteriores; diplomacia cultural.

A little over one hundred years ago Revista Americana commenced publication. This was a journal produced by Brazilian diplomats which circulated, although not continuously, between 1909 and 1919 and which became the place for the dissemination of different aspects of the politics, culture and history of the newly created Brazilian republic, as well as those of the other South American republics. The choices of both themes and contributors provide important elements for the analysis of the explicit and implicit aims of the Revista.

* Associate Professor of the History of the Americas. Instituto de História, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). IFCS – Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais. Largo São Francisco, 1, Centro. 20051-070 Rio de Janeiro – RJ – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 303-326 - 2012 Fernando Vale Castro

Like all cultural constructions, the Revista can be understood as a dialectic between the production and reception of the message, in which there always coexisted various forms of appropriation among the various groups and sub- groups that formed a given community of readers. However, in this article we have chosen an interpretation that valorizes the viewpoint of the producers of the message, which in the case of the editors and contributors of Revista Americana were basically Brazilian and South American intellectuals who were part of the diplomatic life of the continent. By observing the journal as a place in which the social practice of production of meaning for collective experience was carried out, it becomes fundamental to look at the question of the production of discourse. For a better analysis of the texts of Revista Americana we draw on some of the assumptions of the ‘linguistic turn.’1 In this perspective it is fundamental to recover the historic identity of intellectual works though historical and intertextual methodology, in other words, with the aim of discovering the meaning of the text in its time, thereby removing possible anachronistic and reductionist visions. In summary, we see the Revista Americana as a space for the preparation of determined questions being discussed at that time, Thus, the authors who were part of the Revista contributed to the creation of a determined ‘argumentative community’, preparing and issuing specific ‘lances.’2. To understand this construction, the historicity of its production associated with the intentionality of its writing have to be investigated. Understanding the speech acts present in Revista Americana in order to perceive it as an argumentative community of a determined era and in relation to a determined social, political and cultural locus, leads us to look at the diplomatic vision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, i.e., of the Brazilian state which had proclaimed the Republic two decades previously. It should be emphasized that this diplomatic project was constructed as part of the Rio Branco strategy for the preparation of continental diplomacy. Obviously this article does not aim to exhaust the analysis of the periodical. Rather, it aims to highlight some possible interpretative keys, especially that of regarding it as an instrument of cultural approximation between the South American nations.

The Context

The epoch when the Revista emerged was characterized, at both the national and international levels, by a perspective of change and affirmation, the result of the transformations that occurred within the capitalist world. In the

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A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic arts, production techniques, sciences and labor relations an acceleration of time and the reduction of distances could be observed, the marks of a new era. In the final decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, there was an effective growth in the geographic base of industrial production, which reached regions such as Russia and Japan. This reinforced the perverse logic of the international division of labor, in perfect harmony with imperialist advances in dividing the world into large areas of influence and colonial possessions. These transformations were directly linked to the extreme technological advance marked, amongst other things, by the telephone, the wireless telegraph, the phonograph, cinematography, railways which cut across Europe and the United States, automobiles, etc., as well as the great developments in the medical area which represented a clear increase in life expectancy. We can thus state that a new era had emerged which touched the popular imagination in an unequivocal form:

the strongest impact caused on people in the developed and industrial world at that time, even more so that the evident transformation of their economies, was their even more evident success. They were obviously living in a time of prosperity ... in the case of rich Europeans or even the more modest middle class. For them the belle époque was the paradise that would be lost after 1914.3

American intellectuality at that time was not immune to these transformations. The period when the Revista Americana circulated was extremely fertile in Brazilian and South American intellectual debate, having marked profound modifications in the political and cultural fields, which made the epoch into one of those most privileged in historiography in relation to the analysis of the numerous projects developed by intellectuality on the continent. Since the second half of the nineteenth century various groups of intellectuals emerged in Brazil concerned with constructing a new national identity. This generation4 of Brazilian intellectuals from the turn of the nineteenth century, irrespective of various interpretations, which consequently led to disputes between various intellectual groups, had a point in common, seeing Brazilian reality as being a full part of the foreign cultural concerto, tying Brazil to this civilizing project, and from then on establishing the construction of a national identity. The Proclamation of the Republic, however, did not represent a concrete possibility for the construction of a modern and civilized nation as the intellectuals of the so-called 1870 Generation desired. At this time various thinkers

June 2012 305 Fernando Vale Castro engaged in a discussion about the past and future of Brazil and by extension South America which began to attract attention at this historic moment. Since the principal objective was to join the circle of modernity, the elites and the intellectuals of the ‘Republic of Letters’ sought to construct images of the country that both differentiated them from and approximated them to the other South American republics at the same time that they sought the genesis of the nation. In the final analysis, the intellectuality of this period desired to inscribe itself in the tradition of progress and civilization, inherited from the Enlightenment. During the First Republic a leading role was played by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a institution in the Brazilian state which had wide ranging participation in the political and cultural context of the country, since the Imperial era its staff had occupied important roles in the national and international scenarios. It is worth highlighting that diplomats were naturally distinguished in the construction of a project for a nation connected to the state apparatus, thus their function was to seek mechanisms to allow ideological affinity with other sectors of the Brazilian elite. We have to take in account the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assumed a relevant role at this moment in the development of a determined national project, a fact that justifies the importance of studying the intellectuals involved in Revista Americana, to the extent that its publication was organized by the top echelons of the Ministry. Therefore, discussing these intellectuals is a sine qua non condition of shedding light on the actions of the diplomatic corps in the intellectual debate of the time, questions little addressed in the historiography of national intellectuality.

The Ministry and the vision of Baron Rio Branco

A rapid observation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows us that it became a privileged institution in the first decades of the Republic, despite the presence of a certain imperial inheritance among the diplomats who, nevertheless, did not represent a withdrawal from the republican order. Diplomacy assumed the function of an agent of the Republican state both internally and externally. In reflecting on diplomatic action in this or any other historical era, it is necessary to keep in mind that the foreign policy of a nation corresponds to the interests and aspiration of the political faction representative of the dominant social, political and economic groups at the national level. With oligar-

306 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic chies in power, the encourage of agro-exports and the ‘promotion’ of immigration became the two pillars of Brazilian diplomacy, approximating this to the interests of the dominant elite. The new regime, however, was not concerned only with the commercial relations of agricultural exporters, a fact which allows us to note that the Brazilian Chancelaria (foreign ministry) was also concerned with a global scenario that involved imperialism and the struggle between imperialisms. Considering this conjunctural question is a basic premise for understanding Itamaraty’s project, since Brazil enjoyed little autonomy in the general scenario of the capitalist system, and in the early years of the Republic displayed great economic fragility in relation to Europe (especially England). This context created a clear dependence in relation to the center of the global capitalism.5 Given this situation, it was clear for the various segments of the Brazilian elite that the diplomatic actions of Brazil did not present at that moment – the first decade of the Republican period – a defined project and as a result the country did not manage to establish a conscious direction in its foreign policy, a fact that helps in understanding the constant changes in the chancelaria, which aggravated even further the absence of a coherent and continuous foreign policy. In 1902 the principal watershed in Brazilian diplomatic history occurred upon the nomination of José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior, Baron Rio Branco, as foreign minister, someone who had unquestioned legitimacy among Brazilian elites. This legitimacy was directly related, among other factors, to the question of frontiers. According to Demétrio Magnoli, the figure of Baron Rio Branco was inextricably linked to the production of a geographic and cartographic image of the patria. His action on the frontiers question “placed him at the summit of national ideological discourse” (Magnoli, 1997, p.261). It is worth noting that this period, which lasted until his death in 1912 and known as the time of the ‘baron’s diplomacy,’ coincided with the apogee of the First Republic. Analyzing, even very briefly, the political trajectory of Rio Branco starting in the imperial period, the importance given to the question of frontiers is evident, both in relation to the continental dimensions of the country and the centralization achieved during the Empire, facts that in themselves, according to the Baron, showed the distinction between Brazil and the rest of the South American ‘continent.’ In the understanding of Rio Branco, the Monarchy had made Brazil into a country that was “united, large, prosperous and free, the

June 2012 307 Fernando Vale Castro envy of the subjects of Gusmão Blanco and Porfírios Dias.” Rio Branco did not hide his pride at observing Brazil as an exception in South America, considering that Brazilian imperial action represented a real ‘civilizing mission.’6 This perspective helps comprehend Rio Branco’s fear that with the republic Brazil would no longer be an exception and would become the same as the other South American countries. One aspect of Rio Branco’s thought linked to the question of frontiers was the fear of possible European aggression in South American, provoked by imperialist action, as already mentioned. This logic involved the necessity, not only for Brazil, but for all the South American ‘continent’ of looking for a political equilibrium, the best manner of avoiding attacks on national sover- eignties. Rio Branco thus understood that solutions needed to be sought for the constant political crises that plagued the region. The dual perspective – differentiation/approximation – adopted by the Baron in relation to the other South American countries has to be kept in mind. On the one hand, he sought to differentiate Brazil from the other countries in the region, though this differentiation did not signify isolation. To the contrary, the Baron’s time was marked by a considerable increase in the Brazilian diplomatic presence in South America. Added to this was the expansion in the number of foreign diplomats in Rio de Janeiro with the aim of transforming the Federal Capital into the place with the largest diplomatic corps in the South American continent. The policy adopted by Rio Branco sought to raise the prestige of Brazil through a logic in which the country was supposed to occupy a differentiated position in the continental context, which led it to exercise, out of obligation, a leadership position. This position could only be confirmed through the demarcation and delimitation of the national frontiers. With the success of political/diplomatic action regarding the question of frontiers and the search for a new Brazilian position in the international scenario, Rio Branco became an icon in a country that, at least in theory, was united, stable and had foreign visibility. This union was essentially based on the defense of national sovereignty, which, in harmony with the mythological construction built since the colonial period, was based on the defense of Brazilian territory articulated through an approximation with neighboring countries. The new republican regime prepared the way for a better diplomatic understanding with the American republics. This meant that Brazil abandoned, albeit gradually, European monarchism, symbolized by the House of Bragança

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– and adhered to the ‘republican and liberal vocation of the Americas.’ It was not for nothing that the new Brazilian regime was initially recognized by American states and only later obtained recognition from Europe governments.7 The transformations which Brazil and the rest of world underwent at the beginning of the twentieth century – capitalist modernization, the rise of the United States in the international scenario, conflicts in Europe principally arising out of imperialism – led to this change of direction in Brazilian foreign policy captained by Rio Branco. There was an attempt to open the range of international relations, breaking away from what had previously almost been exclusively European. It can thus be argued that Rio Branco sought to resolve the frontier conflicts with neighboring South American countries8 – in a clear attempt to increase the geopolitical influence of Brazil in South America – and at the same time move it closer to the United States. However, he did not accept absolute adhesion to US policy, attempting to achieve a strategically balanced position between the British and American influences in Brazil. At a speech given at the opening of the III Pan-American Conference – held in Rio de Janeiro in July and August 1906 –, Rio Branco reaffirmed the option of progressive approximation with American countries, though maintaining favorable relations with Europe. Rio Branco was clear about the importance that the United States was acquiring in the new century. Within that perspective, one of his measures as minister was the raising of the status of the legation in Washington to the category of Embassy in 1905 (the United States also raised their legation in Rio de Janeiro to the level of Embassy, the first in South America) choosing Joaquim Nabuco to occupy the position, who intensely supported the cause of Pan-Americanism. According to Demétrio Magnoli (1997), the historiography sees the approximation between Brazilian foreign policy and Pan-Americanist policy as a phenomenon associated with the advent of the republic. He sees this perspective as erroneous and superficial, since it does not manage to differentiate between two distinct processes in Brazilian diplomatic history: on the one hand, the rise of US influence which occurred before the Proclamation of the Republic and the other the appropriation of Pan-Americanism as a discourse and as diplomatic action, one of the principal characteristics of the Baron’s policies. In summary, the ‘founding father’ of Brazilian diplomacy promoted rupture within continuity, combining the realist tradition inherited from the

June 2012 309 Fernando Vale Castro

Empire with the renewal of concepts of the world and the concepts and paradigms of the world from national foreign policy” (Magnoli, 1997, p.208). We believe that the baron aimed to adapt Brazilian foreign policy to the new international context in which the United States was being raised to the condition of a world power, made explicit by the construction of a new international order which was redistributing power with the rise of the US. For Rio Branco the great European powers already recognized that there was a great and powerful national in the New World which they had to take into account and which would have to have its share of influence on international policy throughout the entire world. However, this approximation has to be observed through the clear proposal to preserve national autonomy. According to Lafer and Peña, Rio Branco, understanding the relevance of the United States, as highlighted above, sought to approximate the ‘brothers of the north’ to the ‘service of Brazil’ through a “Brazil-United States alliance, within a regional subsystem expanded to cover the three Americas” serving both to consolidate national frontiers and to reduce European influence.9 Using this perspective we can think of the baron’s global vision as being constructed on the two pillars presented here: the first, with the central logic of Pan-Americanism, was linked to the consolidation of the Brazilian position as a link between the United States and Latin America, especially South America; the second was associated with the deepening of the national role of South American geopolitics, possible only after the consolidation of the nation’s frontiers, linked to a policy of equilibrium with bordering countries. “The ‘body of the patria’, completely delimited in the first decade of the [twentieth] century, demanded from a geopolitical point of view, the consolidation of its spinal column” (Magnoli, 1997, p.272). Once the parameters and the geopolitical action of the Brazilian state were established in the early years of the Republic, new possibilities were highlighted for Brazilian diplomats, especially in relation to aspects referring to the construction of possible strategies linked to cultural projects.

In search of cultural diplomacy

According to Sérgio Danese, as soon as these frontier questions were resolved, Brazilian diplomacy was responsible for making itself into a instrument of development for other state projects, with diplomacy coming “to work intensely to place Brazil on the path of regional integration with an expressive

310 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic contribution in the cultural dimension of the construction of nationality.”10 The beginning of the professionalization of the Brazilian diplomatic corps put into practice by Rio Branco corroborates this perspective. In the baron’s time the Ministry became concerned with the cultural and political training of its diplomats, who until then had entered the careers only through personal relationships. Before thinking about the ‘cultural dimension of the construction of nationality’ it is necessary to look at the concept of Cultural Diplomacy. In order to understand this concept we can think of it as associated with the processes of construction of peace between nations. According to Edgard Telles Ribeiro,11 basing himself on T. S. Eliot, who defines culture as being everything that gives value to life, cultural elements are the essence of human relations, as well as relations between countries. Based on this argument, Telles Ribeiro argues that the connection between culture and foreign policy resides in the basic proposition of constructing through comprehension and knowledge a peaceful society. Cultural Diplomacy in a very objective manner can be thought of as an instrument, a strategy for disseminating abroad the cultural aspects of a nation, associated with the internal divulgation of foreign cultures. According to this perspective its thematic universe can be summarized as follows: exchange of people; the promotion of art and national artists; the general divulgation of cultural elements through support for intellectual cooperation projects, etc. According to Telles Ribeiro, international cultural relations are characterized by the search over time for great comprehension and approximation between people and institutions with the aim of establishing mutual advantages. Cultural Diplomacy, according to the author, is the specific use of the cultural relationship to reach national objectives that are not just cultural, but also political, commercial, or economic. Moreover, the author emphasizes that by definition the ultimate aim of the diplomatic game is to contribute to the preservation of world peace, nothing is more efficient for this than strengthening mechanisms of mutual comprehension, and the most efficient and durable way to achieve this comprehension is cultural exchange allowing the transfer from one nation to another of valuable heritage, experiences, and ideas, favoring an atmosphere of understanding. This context also contributes to minimize judgments based on ste- reotypes, as well as reinforcing pacific feelings through the notion of the universality of cultural and artistic heritage. In this area, according to Telles Ribeiro, no matter how small the cultural manifestation of one country in another, these, linked to a modest mechanism of intellectual cooperation,

June 2012 311 Fernando Vale Castro nonetheless reinforce the approximation, contributing to the communion of peoples and cultures. This communion tends to reduce tension between states, since it reduces suspicion and thereby reinforces the principle of reciprocity, helping to legitimate the credibility of cultural exchanges, reinforcing an ‘indispensible sense of mutual trust,’ both at a regional and intercontinental level. In the final analysis, for Telles Ribeiro “cultural cooperation constituted a powerful prop in the struggle for mutual comprehension within respect for diversity – the only valid manner of improving relations between peoples and governments” (Ribeiro, 1989, p.43). This approximation based on the construction of cultural relations between nations was recognized during the twentieth century as a constitutive element of international relations. A ‘third pillar’ of foreign policy,’12 which was established as one of the essential dimensions of the relationship between states in the contemporary era. The analysis of the French sociologist, Marcel Merle,13 reinforces this perspective. He says that the knowledge of cultural questions is necessary for a perfect comprehension of actors in the field of international relations, since these elements are superimposed on aspects that are merely political and economic. Merle’s central argument is based on the fact that most international conflicts, in his reading, are the consequence of tensions with a cultural origin. Therefore, this cultural element has to be taken into account in diplomatic formulations. It is through the insertion in this context that we highlight the importance of Revista Americana, a periodical initially directed by the diplomats Araújo Jorge, principally responsible for the Revista, and Delgado de Carvalho, as well as the journalist Joaquim Viana, and published in Rio de Janeiro from 1909- 1919,14 since we deem it to be of extreme relevance for the understanding of the political and cultural scenario of the time, while we also see it as one of the first, if not the first, manifestations organized by an agency linked to the state that aimed to think of culture and national identities and how these should be inserted in an intercontinental project.

Revista Americana

In the period in which it circulated Revista Americana was one of the most important publications on the Brazilian cultural scene. In addition to disseminating ideas, its principal objective “was to approximate intellectuals, congre-

312 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic gate spirits, reveal identities and promote forms of cultural integration among the various peoples of America.”15 During its ten year existence,16 a wide range of subjects were dealt with, with themes that ran from diplomacy in the strict sense to literary criticism, also including the publication of poems and short stories, which usually dealt with South American questions. It was pioneering and unique in Brazil in its genre at that time. Revista Americana can thus be seen as an attempt to find, if not a satisfactory answer to the questions that emerged in the period, then a path of debate that could henceforth lead to a common denominator that could in short represent continental cooperation and solidarity, the foundations for establishing peace on the continent. According to Álvaro da Costa Franco17 Revista Americana emerged as an innovative intellectual cooperation project performing for ten year “a unique role of great relevance in our cultural scenario,” the nucleus of cooperation between American intellectuals. In Costa Franco’s view this functioned as the foundations for the policy of building closer ties with Brazil’s neighbors. In the editorial of the first issue, it was stated that the aim of the Revista was to:

Publicize the various spiritual manifestations of America and follow at the same time, in parallel, the superior outline of its political and economic development, becoming a feature of union between the representative figures of intellectuality in this part of the world. It will facilitate the historian and the geographer, the politician and the journalist, the artist and the philosopher, secure and determining elements of a precise concept of multiples and paradoxes, aspects of our spiritual life.18

Revista Americana is considered by many as one of the instruments of Rio Branco’s Americanist policy. This policy, as has been observed, was inserted in a new moment of Brazilian foreign policy, inaugurated with the Proclamation of the Republic. In the aforementioned editorial in the first issue of Revista, it was observed that there was a cultural hiatus existing in the Americas, “a continent known for its fragments” which led to “intellectual ignorance” among the countries on the continent. This was reinforced by the distances that separate American countries, as well as the almost total absence of rapid and efficient means of communication at the time.

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There was a need to create an identity for Brazil and for the Americas, since:

ideas to be acceptable need to bear the European mark and to transpose the seas in the wake of the Transatlantic liners, the unjustifiable neglect for things from our continent; the indifference for its history; contempt for the uncountable aspects of its nature and will have an almost complete picture of the various reasons for why the American peoples voluntarily do not know each other... When the American peoples have a more precise concept of the values of their original and native qualities, still not all dimmed by the influx of exotic cultures; when they recognize that our continent, so badly known and outraged, constitutes in itself a perennial matrix of studies, examinations, investigations ... (ibidem)19

Therefore, it is extremely relevant to analyze Revista Americana recognizing the contemporaneity of the concerns that inspired it and its importance in the process that created a republican tradition, approximating it to the belief in a future in which Brazil could assume a leading role in the Continent and in this global context. Undeniably, thinking about these questions leads us to the role and concerns of intellectuality at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Researching a periodical that illustrates the position of diplomats/intellectuals who acted in this period should lead us to projects for the construction of the nation, a theme present in the various intellectual groups of that period. Thought about more precisely, the analysis of this period allows us observe an intellectuality profoundly concerned with what are usually called Nations and Nationalities, understood as specific combinations of cultural identities, more or less forged, more or less inherited, territorialities and modern state apparatus, in other words ‘sovereign’ entities capable of entertaining relations with the ‘subjects.’ This perspective was very common in the so-called ‘New World’ which, during the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, presented as one of its basic aims the construction of its nation states. This construction involved the definition of what a nation was, seen by Ernest Renan in 1882 as:

a soul, a spiritual principal. Two things, which in truth are only one, constitute this soul or spiritual principal. One is found in the past, the other in the present. One is the common possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is daily consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of an inheri-

314 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic

tance received in an undivided form ... assumes a past; but it is synthesized in the present as a concrete fact, the consent, the explicit and clear will to continue a life in common. The experience of a nation ... is a daily plebiscite, to the same extent that an individual existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.20

Factors such as politics, common material interests, military needs, etc, were always shown to be decisive elements in the formation of nations over the centuries, especially from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, an epoch that marked the beginning of the so-called ‘Era of Revolutions,’ which an end to the Ancien Regime. We can find on the pages of Revista Americana a clear effort to analyze these subjects, relating them to contemporary concerns, both in a global context and in the specific context of the so-called New World, seeking to create a space for the debate between South American intellectuality in an attempt to produce syntheses which could be transformed into projects for the continent. Parallel to this, it cannot be forgotten that the Revista also had the aim of consecrating the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the recently created Brazilian republican order, something was not definitely achieved at that time, but in relation to which Revista Americana was an attempt, a landmark in a Cultural Diplomacy, aiming at the approximation of the nations of the Americas, especially those of South America. Revista Americana thus presented as one of its principal concerns the need for reflection on Brazilian territorial formation, and by extension that of South America. Questions referring to this issue, such as Pan-Americanism, were highlighted throughout the period in which the Revista circulated and in the final analysis legitimated this greater project of the consecration of diplomacy in the creation of an imagination based on the approximation of the nations of South America and consequently the construction of continental peace. We consider the reflection on the above mentioned issues to be of fundamental importance for inserting the Revista in a determined epoch, in a determined social, political and cultural locus which in the final analysis brings us to thinking about the position of the Brazilian state from the perspective of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the period, from whom Baron Rio Branco was their principal artifice. We defend this argument to the extent that the approach to these subjects allowses us establish a new perspective for questions related to international arbitration, opening space, for instance, for the debat- ing of questions such as sovereignty, alliances and hegemony, inserted in the

June 2012 315 Fernando Vale Castro discussion process of the delimitation of South American frontiers within a perspective of the maintenance of peace and political equilibrium on the continent. Although these issues are not analyzed in this article they nonetheless frequently appear in the pages of the periodical. As has already been stated, in the actions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the initial decades of the republican era, essentially from the time of Rio Branco onwards, the importance given to the formation of a diplomatic corps can be noticed. This was to be the central pillar of a sufficiently solid institutional staff consisting of true ‘Men of State,’ prepared, irrespective of their political position, to represent, defend and project Brazil, both internally and externally. The construction of frontiers, the demarcation of limits and the consolidation of territory, associated with national defense and a specific type of Americanism, as well as the search for international prestige, were the mark of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the construction of the project for the Republic and to a certain extent defined the role of diplomacy in the recently inaugurated republican order. Revista Americana was part of this political project of approximation with Brazil’s neighbors. Within this perspective issues linked to the territorial formation of the continent, one of the basic functions of diplomacy, were greatly highlighted in the pages of the journal. The valorization of these questions implied the resort to history as a support for the construction of projects for nations presented in the pages of the magazine. This perspective of the valorization of historical narrative as legitimating cultural and political positions is present in Revista Americana at various moments. One of the most important was the death of Rio Branco, when the Revista valorized the memory of the Baron clearly seeking to establish and legitimate criteria that could justify not only the foreign minister’s actions, but also the strategies of Brazil from then on. The analyses then presented were debated in light of what was – and to a certain extent is – defined as the Rio Branco paradigm of Brazilian foreign policy. Shortly after the death of the foreign minister the Revista published an Editorial in February 1912 which allowed it, using the baron’s own words, to restate his ideas and create principles for Brazilian and South American diplomacy. Emphasizing the basic motto of Rio Branco’s trajectory, Ubique patriae menor,21 Revista Americana observed and defended the need for the ways diplomats should act and principally place their country above all and any type of interest, and that this should be the legacy of Brazilian diplomacy. Diplomats were to be responsible for the role of constructing a project of the nation, a

316 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic project aimed at the future, even if for this diplomatic strategies were not perfectly understood, since a characteristic of the international policy of any state was the posterior recognition of its deeds. Making use of the baron’s words, specifically his speech to the 1906 Pan- American Conference, Revista Americana highlighted what was the essence and the legacy left by the former foreign minister, namely: Brazilian territorial unity associated with a cordiality in international relations, with the latter being a basic function of civilized nations. Rio Branco believed that at that time an insane and barbarous tendency was shaking even the educated environments. In relation to this, a real political sense fundamentally concerned with fighting all and any type of international rivalry needed to be established among statesmen. Therefore, Brazil’s neighbors should not have any type of concern. In Rio Branco’s words, as reproduced in the editorial:

This vast country all united in the tranquil security of its destinies, without ambitious concerns ... never had the intention of and predilection for hegemony. Brazilian patriotism has nothing aggressive ... even more so for acts than for words true to the traditions of our foreign policy, we always work to improve our relations with the nations of our continent and particularly with those whose neighbors we are ... Bordering republics, to all American nations we only desire peace, intelligent initiatives and fertile work so that, prospering and up- lifting itself, serve us as an example and stimulation for our peaceful activities, such as those of the great and glorious sister in the north, the promoter of this useful conferences. To the countries of Europe, to whom we are always connected and with whom there will always be moral ties and so many economy interests, we only wish to continue to offer the same guarantees that our constant love for order and progress has given until the present.22

This citation leads us to some questions that are very enlightening about the choice of this speech by the editors of the Revista. As well as the explicit position in relation to South America, with the indications of the political concerto desired by the Brazilian state, the need for approximation with the United States was shown, though from a clearly realist perspective, especially because a favorable position towards Europe was maintained. Finally, Rio Branco finished by extolling the republican motto, a fundamental strategy in his foreign policy, both in the approximation with the US and with its ‘closest neighbors.’ Equally the question of the territorial formation of the continent is highlighted, understood in Rio Branco’s logic through

June 2012 317 Fernando Vale Castro the construction of Brazilian frontiers. This is, as has already been stated, the great legacy of the ‘Baron’s diplomacy.’ This perspective can be observed in an article written by Rui Barbosa,23 published in Revista Americana, in which he stated that Rio Branco had been ‘the ultimate benefactor of our frontiers,’ highlighting that he did not implement an expansionist policy, since he did not widen the Brazilian borders, but rather ‘restored them,’ with his work being not an expansion, but a correction. In the words of Barbosa:

I will not say, as has been said, that he widened the territory for us. No. The great merits of other things do not need anything but the truth. Only this in the judgment of posterity resists the final judgment. Thiers, obtaining the evacuation of French soil by the Germans, did not increase French soil, he re-established it. He was its liberator. Rio Branco achieved the recognition of our right to the region which the foreigner disputed with us, he did not expand our borders, he restored them. His work was not of amplification, but of correction, of restitution, of consecration. But it is not of lesser worth ... In order to be good brothers, among our neighbors it has to be agreed as a settled matter that Brazil never desired nor perpetrated territorial expansions. Envious is the destiny of that fellow in his reality, projecting his achievement to the extremes of the country, a kind of guardian name, like the god Termerus of our national integrity. (Barbosa, 2002, p.17)

It is interesting to note the use of the verb restore by Rui Barbosa. This expression necessarily draws on the myth of the fixed territory. According to Rui Barbosa, the baron’s frontier policy neither expanded nor conquered territories, it only ensured that Brazil’s historic legacy would be fulfilled. Therefore, the valorization of a given historic narrative is of fundamental importance for diplomatic action and discourse, a fact that helps the comprehension of the (re)reading made as a legitimation mechanism of the political positions adopted by the Brazilian state at the dawn of the Republican period. The valorization of the foreign minister’s strategy as an example of a public man and a statesman who should thus henceforth serve as a reference for the Republic was the central theme of various articles published in the issue that commemorated the baron, written by eminent intellectuals from the period, such as Pandiá Calógeras. In a long article, Calógeras24 presented a deep reflection on Rio Branco’

318 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic policies, emphasizing aspects referring to the relations of Brazil with the rest of America and the importance of International Law, as well as the political role played by the baron, which he believed should serve as an example for Brazilian ‘statesmen.’ For Calógeras, one of the principal legacies of the recently proclaimed republic was its drawing closer to the rest of the American continent, especially South America, with the intention of maintaining peace. For this diplomacy had to be transformed into an instrument that was above partisanship, in other words above the ‘disorders of internal politics.’ According to the author, any examination of the baron’s time commanding the Brazilian foreign ministry had to adopt this focus. Calógeras believed that Rio Branco was staunch in the defense of autonomy for the Ministry, something that was fundamental because the new regime encouraged the ephemeral duration of parties and the predominance of individual interests, while a healthy intellectual debate with space for divergences tended to be lacking. International policy should correspond to the anxieties, permanent necessities and duties of the state. Thus, it could not be dependent on any groups that had political vices noxious to the nation, but rather should be the responsibility of an elite, men who, irrespective of their political positions, keep in mind a clear conception of duty to Brazil, with sufficient qualities to exercise this important function. Calógeras states that Rio Branco’s strategy had been to:

attract to his diplomatic orientation collaborators with all the different mental traits, in Chambers and outside them. Concerned with national foreign policy, he achieved his aim through the constant cooperation of all Brazilians, brothers sharing the same ideal that animated the eminent head of the Chancellery. (Calógeras, 1913, p.188)

Despite criticism of this vision, still defended by some until the present day, of a certain autonomy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the baron’s time of the baron, who characterized it as a type of independent arm of the executive, it is interesting to note that the defense of this autonomy, present in Calógeras’ discourse, leads us to the question of what role, and consequently what preparation, the Brazilian diplomatic corps should have. In the final analysis it points to the function of Itamaraty in the recent Republican order, which was: an institution which had to, based on personal merit and a profound knowledge of the nation, construct a national project, with international repercussions in order to guarantee the legitimacy and respectability

June 2012 319 Fernando Vale Castro abroad of Brazilian politics and culture, and by extension South American, since this recognition needed as a central pillar cooperation between the American peoples who would make America the ‘continent of peace.’ According to Calógeras the search for continental peace involved the establishment of ever closer relations between the ‘confronting nations’ of South America. This approximation was included in a Ministry strategy aimed at initially ending mistrust among ‘neighbors.’ As a result the study and the development of international law with an American perspective needed to be given increased importance among the diplomatic concerns of that time, something that was valorized in the pages of the Revista, which in this way highlighted what path and role diplomacy should assume in the political and cultural concerto that was being constructed at that moment. The direction chosen needed to assume a perspective of the valorization of an American model which could guarantee peace for the region. In this, as has already been highlighted, there resides an important argumentative line in the Revista, based on the valorization of the diplomatic corps in a new order that could guarantee the strengthening of the continent’s internal relations, a fact that could demand in addition to political and economic approximation, cultural and intellectual approximation, obviously led by national diplomacies. This would lay both the foundations to establish the place of the Ministry in the new republican order and the insertion of Brazil in the American continental sphere, which needed to present its own morality in light of the international concerto of the period. America as an example to be followed was the basis of the argumentation of J.C Gomes Ribeiro. In an article entitled “As fronteiras do Brasil (The frontiers of Brazil)” he stated that an ‘era of solidarity among the South American nations’ needed to be established, which should be linked to the creation of an exclusive international law for the Americas, the fundamental principle of which would be the decision making formula of questions of borders based on the resources of international arbitration.25 With the clear aim of legitimating his argument, Gomes Ribeiro made a detailed historical analysis of the process of delimiting frontiers during the Brazilian imperial period, highlighting what he considered to be the general principles of Brazilian diplomacy of the Empire: Uti Possidetis and respect for the treaties signed by Portugal and Spain during the colonial period, when they did not clash with the facts of possession and clarified doubts resulting from the lack of effective occupation. Gomes Ribeiro demonstrated in this article a concern with defining the

320 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic term ‘frontier’ in a more traditional legal sense, associating it both with political questions between friends and the internal recognition of territory. For the author:

the territorial limit of nations, the line of contact of their jurisdictions, thereby profoundly of interest to the precise knowledge, not only of bordering states, but also of the individual citizens of each nation, due to the multiplicity of social and political factors that arise out of the frontier, whether of an institutional, penal, administrative, commercial and above all strategic nature. (Ribeiro, 1917, p.106)

To a certain extent, the analysis of the Revista highlights what can be understood as the intended function that the Brazilian – and by extension South American – diplomatic corps should assume at that moment, namely the constructor of an American morality distinct from the rest of the world and which should serve as an example. In the final analysis the role of diplomacy permeated the debates, making it into a touchstone for the argumentation of the writers of Revista Americana. We believe that the valorization of Brazilian diplomacy present in the pages of Revista Americana served as a guide to the role that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should play in the newly inaugurated republican order and, by extension, in the new insertion of Brazil in the continental scene, in which the target would be to establish, as stated, a moral standard for America through the construction of new legal paradigms, intended to serve as models for the other continents. Even knowing that the perspective defended in the pages of Revista Americana deserved all the relativizations and criticisms, since the existence of rivalries between the South American nations was well known, it can be noted that one of the elements that united its writers was the valorization of an American morality based on the defense of the principles that the diplomatic corps had and consequently also the Ministry, the institution responsible for its application and thus a key piece for establishing which paradigms needed to be followed by South America at the dawn of the twentieth century. This premise is also crucial to understanding the project of the Revista and the actual rhetoric of Brazilian and South American diplomacy in the first two decades of the twentieth century, which in summary can be characterized by the need to establish much more than a precise diagnosis of reality, a project for the future that needed to be constructed, with an America that was much more than real, an imagined America that needed to be supported by historic

June 2012 321 Fernando Vale Castro past to achieve a new future in which it would occupy what was considered as its due place. The articles of Revista Americana expressed a determined reading of the role that Brazilian diplomacy should assume in the new political scenario that was being constructed at that moment, both at a foreign level, with the new concerto of nations in the context of the First World War, and internally with the consolidation of the republican order in which the Brazilian diplomatic corps was searching for its space. In both perspectives approximation between American nations was valorized as a motto for the construction of a new continental order which would involve the construction of mechanisms for the resolution of frontier conflicts through an American moral standard based on the set of norms that guaranteed peace and equilibrium between nations. In the tense context of the dawn of the twentieth century, the positions of analysts of the period varied, ranging from the consideration of diplomacy as an instrument of civilization that regulated international relations serving as the institute responsible for the defense of the less powerful nations, to the strategic element of commercial and business expansion in extreme conflict, fundamentally promoted by the central nations of the capitalist economy. In the debates in Revista Americana the need to think of a determined project for the Americas remained latent in a context of evident tension that was the fruit of a clear transition, characterized by a crisis of values and paradigms, which contained an enormous challenge for that intellectual generation: understanding a world in constant change without consolidated references. The Revista valorized diplomacy and indicated paths for Brazil and South America, which had to be followed and constructed. Perceiving the strategies and directions of Itamaraty in the decades following the publication of the periodical, it is clear what the greatest legacy of Revista Americana was. It can be seen as the first Brazilian experience of what was later denominated ‘cultural diplomacy,’ connected to a project involving South American approximation. Led by the diplomatic corps of the continent, this policy was based on the preparation of specific morality and culture of and for South America through the articulation of a series of concepts shown to be important for the diplomatic and intellectual debate of the time. Corroborating this perspective, it was not possible to discuss in this article some aspects present in the structure of the Revista which point to this approximation between South American nations. In particular there is the disseminating logic explained by the journal itself in the Bibliography section, which consisted of a type of report on books that had come to the attention of

322 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic the editors, the Journals section which consisted of summaries of some periodicals published in America and Europe and finally the Notes section aimed at readers talking about various subjects, especially critical reviews of publications about Revista Americana. In addition, it also included texts with a more literary character, dealing with everything from the history of literature and literary criticism in a strict sense, to poetry and fiction. Most of these texts contained a concern with disseminating cultural, historical and sociological elements from various nations in South America. Another aspect that deserves to be highlighted was the sentiment of Americaness that was emphasized in various approaches present in the Revista which simultaneously to the defense of the patria, territorial integrity and national sovereignty, projected the defense of an American ideal, especially in articles that dealt with diplomatic issues. Various history and literary criticism texts had the clear function of in- forming the journal’s readers about various cultural manifestation in South America, especially those of Brazil and Argentina, though Chile, Uruguay and Peru were also highlighted, allowing a greater knowledge of the literature of the ‘neighbors,’ but equally updating and encouraging reflection the cultural policies present with the aim of valorizing similarities among the above mentioned nations. It is interesting to note that the valorization of common aspects of South American nations was quite striking. It can be said that the Revista was concerned with highlighted everything that could encourage nations to become closer, associated with the defense of the thesis that America was a continent of peace. The search for an ideal America was the concern of various author involved in the publication project. Thus, its importance for the analysis of the intellectuals who trained South American diplomats, especially Brazilian ones, in the early years of the twentieth century and who served as the foundations for diplomatic action and thought in the following decades. In relation to this generation of Brazilian diplomats it cannot be forgotten that the overwhelming majority, at the beginning of the republican period, came from the ranks of the Monarchy. In order to analyze this transition from the Monarchy to the Republic it is essential to understand the strategies used by the diplomatic corps and in the last analysis by the writers of Revista Americana. Therefore, it is not possible to agree with those who tend to place Brazilian diplomacy as the nostalgic heir of the time of the Empire. It assumed a new role in the republican order, recognizing itself as part of a group of na-

June 2012 323 Fernando Vale Castro tions who presented the necessary requirements to conduct a determined political and cultural project responsible for the creation and later the consolidation of an intended republican tradition in international relations during the twentieth century. It has to be highlighted that it was during the last century that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs established an institutional policy for the permanent training of staff with the consolidation of the professionalization of the diplomatic career. The beginning of this systematic preparation for an effective education of a uniform and above all highly qualified, especially in the fields of history, geography and law, as well as obviously international questions, both to represent Brazil abroad and to internally legitimate the actions of the Ministry, dates from the period immediately after the ending of the publication of the Revista, the 1920s and 1930s. In this scenario the Rio Branco Institute was created, which from the 1940s onwards became the body responsible for the training of the Brazilian diplomatic corps. The defense of principles such as cooperation and exchange between the South American nations, of a place in the concert of nations, of a unique identity, a specific morality, and model specific legal principles for a new continental and international order, which marked the training of Brazilian diplomacy in the twentieth century are observable elements in the Revista Americana project.

NOTES

1 We have in mind here the assumptions of the ‘linguistic turn,’ especially the perspectives developed by Quentin Skinner and J. G. Pocock. In relation to this, see: SKINNER, Quentin. Meaning and understanding in the History of Ideas; Motives, intentions and interpretation of texts; and Reply to my critics; both found in TULY, James. Meaning and context: Quentin Skinner and his critics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988; SKINNER, Quentin. As fundações do pensamento político moderno. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996. See also: FALCON, Francisco. História das idéias. In: CARDOSO, Ciro; VAINFAS, Ronaldo. Domínios da História. Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 1997; and Introdução: o estado da arte; o conceito de linguagem e o métier d’historien, all found in J. G. POCOCK. Linguagens do ideário político. São Paulo: Edusp, 2003. 2 POCOCK, 2003. The perspective of the ‘lance’ brings us, according to Pocock, to a process in which a speech act is enunciated and in a certain manner seeks to innovate the linguistic context, allowing a historian to observe what an author (or group of authors) was doing when preparing his discourse. 3 HOBSBAWM, Eric. A era dos impérios. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1988. p.85.

324 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 A cultural diplomacy project for the Republic

4 We understand ‘generation’ as being based on the fusion between memory and history, in other words, in the existence of a common memory, a witness of how a group of men lived in a determined period. We should thus link generations to marks, to founding events, but with the care to not to only deal with them, since we should not date a generation only by the social phenomena that occurred, since these can be learned in various manners. In relation to this, see: ATTIAS-DONFUT, Cleudine. La notion de génération: usages sociaux et concept sociologique. In: L’Homme et la Societé, Paris, ané XXII, v.90, 1988; SIRINELLI Jean-François. La génération: la construction du temps historique. Paris: Histoire au Present, 1991. 5 In relation to this, see, amongst others: BUENO, Clodoaldo; CERVO, Amado Luiz. História da política exterior no Brasil. Brasília: Ed.UnB, 2002; RODRIGUES, José Honório. Interesse nacional e política externa. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1966; RODRIGUES, José Honório; SEITENFUS, Ricardo. Uma história diplomática do Brasil, 1531-1945. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização brasileira, 1995; MAGNOLI, Demétrio. O corpo da pátria. São Paulo: Moderna; Ed. Unesp, 1997. 6 In relation to this civilizing mission, see: LINS, Álvaro. Rio Branco. São Paulo: Alfa- Ômega; Brasília: Funag, 1996; CARVALHO, Carlos Delgado de. História diplomática do Brasil. São Paulo: Cia. Ed. Nacional, 1959; CARVALHO, Affonso de. Rio Branco: sua vida e obra. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército Ed., 1995. 7 Uruguay, Argentina and Chile were the first to recognize the new Brazilian government in 1889. In January 1890 it was the turn of Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico and the United States. In Europe, Republican France was the first, in July 1890, followed by Great Britain, Italy and Spain in 1891. 8 During Baron Rio Branco’s period in charge of the negotiations of territorial disputes (from 1893 onwards) and afterwards as foreign minister of the Republic (between 1902 and 1912), various frontier disputes were resolved: with Argentina, French and British Guyana, Bolivia (in relation to Acre), Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador (which at the time had a border with Brazil) and Holland (in relation to Suriname). Between 1893 and 1912, 440,000 km2 were favorably defined for Brazil. In relation to this, see: DORATIOTO, Francisco. Espaços nacionais na América Latina: da utopia bolivariana à fragmentação. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1994. 9 LAFER, C.; PEÑA, F. Argentina e Brasil no sistema das relações internacionais. São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1973. 10 DANESE, Sérgio França. Diplomacia presidencial. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1999. 11 RIBEIRO, Edgard Telles. A diplomacia cultural e o seu papel na política externa brasileira. Brasília: Funag, 1989. 12 A phrase coined in 1966 by Willy Brandt, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the former Federal Republic of Germany, cited in RIBEIRO, 1989. 13 MERLE, Marcel. Forces et engeux dans les relations internationales. Paris: Ed. Economica, 1985.

June 2012 325 Fernando Vale Castro

14 After 1916 Revista Americana was run by Araújo Jorge and Silvio Romero Filho. It should be noted that Araújo Jorge was the secretary of Rio Branco and considered by many as his principal assistant, despite his youth. Delgado de Carvalho had great importance in the consolidation of Brazilian diplomacy, assuming the chair of Diplomatic History in the dip- lomat training course. 15 SENADO FEDERAL. Revista Americana: uma iniciativa pioneira de cooperação intelectual. Seleção de artigos fac-similar. Brasília: Funag, 2001. Presentation. 16 With some interruptions, such as during part of the First World War. 17 SENADO FEDERAL., 2001, Apresentação, cit. 18 Revista Americana, v.1, set. 1909. (Editorial). 19 Revista Americana, v.1, set. 1909. (Editorial). 20 RENAN, Ernest. O que é uma Nação. s.l.: s.n., 1882. 21 ‘Anywhere, the patria is in my mind.’ 22 Revista Americana, Feb. 1912. (Editorial). 23 BARBOSA, Rui. Rio Branco. Revista Americana, abr. 1913. This issue was entirely dedicated to Baron Rio Branco, and was published with the title O barão do Rio Branco visto por seus contemporâneos. Brasília: Funag, 2002. This was the edition used. 24 CALÓGERAS, João Pandiá. Rio Branco e a política exterior. Revista Americana, abr. 1913. 25 RIBEIRO, J. C. Gomes. As fronteiras do Brasil. Revista Americana, mar. 1917. It was continued in April and June in the same year.

Article received on 7 November 2009. Approved on 8 August 2011.

326 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Civism, the Republic and textbooks1 Cleber Santos Vieira*

Resumo Abstract O artigo analisa aspectos do civismo no The article analyzes aspects of civility at alvorecer da República brasileira, com the dawn of the Brazilian Republic, with ênfase na pesquisa sobre dois livros es- emphasis on research dealing with two colares: História do Brasil ensinada pela school textbooks: História do Brasil ensi- biografia de seus heróis, de Silvio Rome- nada pela biografia de seus heróis (His- ro (1890); e A História de São Paulo pela tory of Brazil taught by the biographies biografia de seus nomes mais notáveis of its heroes) by Silvio Romero (1890) (1895), publicado por Tancredo Ama- and A História de São Paulo pela biogra- ral. Por um lado, trata-se de apresentar fia de seus nomes mais notáveis (A His- nuances da Historia Magistra Vitae pre- tory of São Paulo according to the biogra- sentes nestes objetos da cultura mate- phies of its most notable names) (1895), rial. Por outro, de destacar em que me- published by Tancredo Amaral. On the dida suas histórias foram pontuadas por one hand, the nuances of Magistra His- divergências em torno da questão edu- toria Vitae present in these objects of cação ou instrução cívica pela afirmação material culture are looked at. Second, I de um civismo de coloração regional, highlight the extent to which these sto- bem como palco de conflitos entre pro- ries were punctuated by disagreements tagonistas do republicanismo paulista. about education or civic instruction, the Palavras-chave: civismo; livro didático; affirmation of regional civism and the Brasil República. history of conflicts between the protagonists of São Paulo republicanism. Keywords: Civism; schoolbooks; Re- publican Brazil.

Teaching and learning notions of civism through biographies is based on the assertion Historia Magistra Vitae. Coined by Cicero, this history, the master of life “is a crucible containing multiple different experiences, from which we appropriate a pedagogical objective.”2 Remembering the deeds and words

* Departamento de Educação, Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) – Campus Guarulhos. Estrada do Caminho Velho, 333, Pimenta. 07252-312 Guarulhos – SP – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 327-343 - 2012 Cleber Santos Vieira of great characters has the aim of providing examples of moral, ethical and political conduct. This history like a ‘necklace of examples’ played an important role in the civic formation of citizens in the classical world. Over time Historia Magistra Vitae underwent many metamorphoses. In the nineteenth century, as Fernando Catroga has identified, the scientism dis- seminated among historians provoked a scientist version of Historia Magister Vitae: “the study of the past (or of a certain past) is a fundamental condition to understand the present and to perceive the direction of the future.”3 Still relying on Catroga, “rites of remembering, which biographies of national heroes are a part, creational functions of sociabilities. The biographies of figures considered to be most important inserts the example of the action in the act of remembering” (p.58). The civic liturgy of remembering is projected into teaching in the form of hagiography, in which the aim of studying the achievements of certain persons continued to be that of training apt individuals to repeat heroic acts, now however, to insert them in the context of the imagined political community.4 As a result, as in liturgies of remembering, in biographic reports “there always exists a tension between cordiality, or better, between affectiv- ity and knowledge, as well as between memory and normativity, antitheses which tend to be resolved through messages; and these act as pulsating currents which act as duties” (Catroga, 2001, p.27). The lives of some people are narrated in order to construct national identity, which is molded by regularity and linearity existing in the civic practice of its actors. In this rite the temporal and spatial dispersion which conditions the steps of those whose biographies are produced is forgotten. In its place a national unity is constructed recognized in the adventures, challenges and conflicts confronted in these biographies. Recomposing the arguments of Allain Choppin, it is necessary to take into account that in the contemporary world the pedagogical tools concerned with the civic education of citizens were consolidated after the French Revolution. These tools, since they are composed of irreconcilable elements and objectives, contain ambiguous traits. For Choppin the question extends to the differentiation between teaching and civic education and is based on the distinction of the purposes, objectives and content that are part of the teaching of civism, which oscillates between the presentation of given objectives (teaching) and the concern with ensuring adhesion to a value system (education). According to Choppin:

328 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Civism, the Republic and textbooks

it oscillates between two objectives that had difficult to reconcile: on the one hand, should it model individuals in accordance with social norms? Or give them information that will allow them freely exercise their critical spirit in ur- banity? The manual which constituted the concrete preparation of the aims of learning necessarily fluctuates between two functions: disseminate an ideology, a value system, or present objective knowledge.5

In this way, aimed at educating citizens, developing patriotic sentiments, transmitting value systems or offering knowledge necessary for the free practice of liberty by citizens in public life, civism was brought into schools. In this trajectory school books assumed different discursive forms: reading books, adapted and commented constitutions, short stories, poems, narrative biographies, in short a broad range of narrative genres which sometimes privileged patriotic themes and sometimes emphasized looking at laws relevant to the political organization of countries. This paper analyzes the presence of Cicero’s concept of history in two school manuals for civic education published between the ending of the nineteenth century and the dawning of the twentieth. More precisely, it will investigate the dimension of Historia Magistra Vitae prepared in the heat of the commemorations of the Brazilian republican advent, with the following subjects of analysis: 1) História do Brasil ensinada pela biographia de seus heroes (ensino cívico) – livro para as classes primárias, (History of Brazil taught by the biographies of its heroes (civics education) – a book for primary classes) written by Silvio Romero in 1890; 2) A História de São Paulo pela biografia de seus nomes mais notáveis, (A History of São Paulo according to the biographies of its most notable names) published in 1895 by Tancredo do Amaral.6 Special attention will be given to the prefaces of the books studied, seeking to highlight this object as the category of analysis for the book.7 In História do Brasil ensinada pela biographia de seus heroes (ensino cívi- co) – livro para as classes primárias, Silvio Romero and the author of the preface to the book, João Ribeiro, projected the debate about the best form of awakening the patriotic spirit and notions of citizenship. They show the broader debate that accompanied the process of introducing civism in schools throughout the modern world: should civics education be introduced in schools through teaching, i.e., in a set of data and information that allow students to get to know the structures of the nation-state (the constitution, rights and duties, concepts and definitions of the patria, patriotism, national sovereignty, etc.), or should civics teaching prepare them for the assimilation of

June 2012 329 Cleber Santos Vieira values, taking as an example the protagonists who contributed to the formation of society? To the contrary of historic republicans, such as Ennes de Souza, and republicans of the last minute, such as Domingos Jaguaribe Filho,8 for example, Silvio Romero and Júlio Ribeiro criticized the predilection for the idea of civics teaching. Although many nurture admiration of the political and cultural advances existing in modern societies, where the civics texts had a more in- structional nature, as was the case of Switzerland, they diverge from the model of civism teaching based predominantly on the study of the laws of the country. Ribeiro’s argument is as follows:

What is instruction in Civics? We will rapidly study the documents that refer to the legislation in question in the more advanced countries. Neither effort nor erudition is needed. Everything is complied, described with lucidity and without disorder. In Switzerland, where the novelty penetrated at the cost and without the character of the obligatory study of Freiburg, this appears in Vaud completely reduced to summary notion so that what faces us is an essential study of political geography: in other words, it is reduced to notions of the forms of government, society family and tribes. In Belgium constitutional law only appears in adult schools. In the United States, according to Buisson there is still a trop pretentieux program of science of governemment in some schools, which even today no one knows what it is. Where did this Gongorian stubbornness come from, as Herculano called them, these new men enchanted by the vocabulary of modern science, by the brilliant technique of resuscitated antiquities? It came with so many other trivialities of democracy from the amazing torrent of the French Revolution. The declaration of the rights of man brought to primary schools this monopoly of politics over all other activities of common life. (Ri- beiro, Júlio. Prefácio. In: Romero, 1893, p.II-IV)

Enthusiastic and committed following the creation of the Republic, Silvio Romero and Júlio Ribeiro produced a book in which they sought to engender patriotic feelings and political participation at the same time. Against the sacred history that prevailed in teaching until 1889, they proposed the teaching of profane history, in which “the hero appeared as a constructor of the patria concerned with authors in composing biographies which could cover a his-

330 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Civism, the Republic and textbooks tory of the entire country with a common past, explained within a pedagogical concern, the division of large periods marked by territorial conquests and independence.”9 However, to achieve this task the authors considered it more relevant to write history privileging the conduct of the great names of national history. In this way they produced and reproduced the introduction of civism in schools, adopting as a model Historia Magistra Vitae, while they moved away from the idea of instruction:

Civics teaching in the same way as the ancient Rhetoric in preparatory courses, only tolerated thanks to tradition, is a scarecrow that will be created in modern legislation to embarrass the future. Effectively, as Pestalozzi says, the education of men should principally take into account humanity and not the state. Furthermore, the teaching of civics will educate as many citizens as rhetoric has educated orators. (Ribeiro, ibidem, p.V)

The best manner of educating citizens, Júlio Ribeiro stated in the preface to Silvio Romero’s work, was to substitute instruction in civics with the teaching of civics focused on biographies, since “in this way the Patria can be recon- structed by patriots, anonymous history by autographic documents, and syn- thesizing the species by the clearest examples of individuals” (ibidem). Silvio Romero followed the script and provided biographies of Columbus, Cabral and Anchieta; Vidal de Negreiros, Fernandes Vieira, Camarão, Henrique Dias, Tiradentes, Claudio M. da Costa, Alvarenga Peixoto and T. Gonzaga; Alexandre Ferreira and Conceição Velloso; J. Bonifácio, Evaristo da Veiga, Feijó, Luiz Alves de Lima e Silva; Gonçalves Dias; Deodoro da Fonseca, Benjamim Constant and Botelho de Magalhães. Five years later, the model of civics teaching defended by Silvio Romero and Júlio Ribeiro to praise the republic and Brazilian republicans becoming the principal source of inspiration for another author, Tancredo Amaral, praised the São Paulo republicans. The connections between the two authors (and books) were explained early on in the dedications where his friend Silvio Romero was presented as “as one of the most industrious and renowned Brazilian writers.” However, Silvio Romero’s presence in the book went much further than acknowledgements. He was the great source of inspiration, whose influence was clear in the structure of Amaral’s book. In A história de São Paulo na biografia de seus nomes mais notáveis, the line of argumentation previously traced

June 2012 331 Cleber Santos Vieira by Júlio Ribeiro in the preface to Silvio Romero’s manual was reissued in the form of chapters: what had previous been called by Romero “Livro primeiro – Ideias Preliminares Como se deve entender a História do Brasil (Book One – Preliminary Ideas of How the History of Brazil Should be Understood)”, was repeated in Tancredo do Amaral as “Livro primeiro – Ideias Preliminares Como se deve ser estudada a História (Book One – Preliminary Ideas of How History Should Be Studied).” What was the reading protocol for teaching Brazilian’s civics reappears diluted in the body of the preliminary text of the history of São Paulo state:

What is the history of a people, however, but the history of their great men, their most notable deeds, who have been working for the human ideal, which is the ever growing perfection, progress in one word? What is the history of a country but the individual efforts of each person, employing their intelligence and their labor in the various branches of human activity to raise their native earth, their patria to honor humanity. (Amaral, 1895, p.17)

It should be noted that the book was produced in the context of the problems engendered by the affirmation of the idea of the federative republic of Brazil. The manual can thus be understood as structured and structuring structure, using the concept coined by Pierre Bourdieu,10 of a provincial tinted civism. Civics education centered on the biographies of São Paulo republicans, thus, corresponded to regional civic representations in light of the cultural policy articulated around the policies of governors. In this context the recently inaugurated Republican regime was marked by instabilities, attempts at political stabilization and above all, by the ascension of São Paulo republicans to the command of the United States of Brazil. After the promulgation of the 1891 Constitution, the question of the institutionalization of the Republic remained latent: military hiccups, Jacobin actions and principally the economic and political strength of regional oligarchs hindered the stability of the new regime. As soon as he took office Campos Salles took the decisive step that would mark the Brazilian political panorama until 1930: the reform of the regulations of the Chamber of Deputies altered the composition of the Verification Commission, a bulwark of the oligarchic group that guaranteed the functioning of governors’ policies and made the institutionalization of the republic feasible.11 The strength of states at the national

332 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Civism, the Republic and textbooks level, nonetheless, did not end, but rather was articulated to the new republican order. However, this state of affairs did not survive by itself alone. In the background of the deep-rooted feelings of love for the autonomy of states propagated by local and regional leaders were economic and political interests.12 Its survival depended to a great extent on the symbolic forms of production and preproduction of this sentiment over time. It is in this scope that one should interpret the appropriation of the civics teaching model defended by Romero and Ribeiro on the part of Amaral. Tancredo Leite do Amaral Coutinho was born in São Paulo in 1866.13 He was a student and teacher at the Escola Normal, graduating in law in 1906; public prosecutor in Capivari and Batatais, Judge of Santa Isabel, School Inspector, and Inspector General of Teaching, as well as a collaborator with various newspapers (Diário Popular, Jornal da Tarde, O Intransigente, O Federalista, A Platéia, O Mercantil and Gazeta do Povo, amongst others); teacher at Escola Normal and member of the Institute of History and Geography of São Paulo (Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo).14 His dedication to the republican cause dates from the 1880s, when he was appointed teacher in Salto do Itu, and founded the newspaper Correio de Itu (1887), a periodical that was widely engaged in the campaign. He believed that the unconditional defense of the republic and of popular teaching was the inheritance of Silva Jardim. According to Amaral:

I, who was his disciple on the school benches, friend, and soldier in the ranks, where I only admitted one leader – him – I who had admired his young talent and his sincere democratic soul, leave in these lines, as an expression of my deepest sorrow, a sincere and respectful tribute.15 (Amaral, 1893, p.31)

He was also responsible for famous phrases in relation to education: “Tell me how many schools you have and I will tell you what type of people you are,” or “the people who possess the best schools are the best people.” The source of inspiration was the same as the other São Paulo republicans, in other words French writers, Jules Simon in particular. We can find references to these authors in various passages by Tancredo do Amaral, as well as in the private library of President Prudente de Moraes.16 The book that seems to have found favor with educators was L’Instruction Populaire en France, published in 1877. In Tancredo Amaral, as with other authors, there can be noticed a certain harmony in relation to educational discussions in Europe. In commenting on

June 2012 333 Cleber Santos Vieira the lamentable organization of publication education and the lack of a reading public in Brazil, he justified the insufficient reception of school books produced with a modern perspective by Brazilian authors, such as Cartilha da Infância by Thomas Galhardo and Aritmética Escolar by Ramom Docca.17 Amaral also stated:

We regret that we are not a people interested in education as much as Switzer- land, for example, because then their work would be received with greater applause, and the illustrious professor would have more stimuli for new productions. If we concern ourselves a little more with education, if we had a school on each street, a library in each municipality, and a municipal lyceum in each city, if we were concerned with creating schools instead of creating universities, school books using modern methods would have another sort of acceptance. (p.68-69)

The insertion of the regional question in the production of school books was part of the strategies launched by the editorial marker into order to expand business. Tancredo Amaral not only participated in the market expansion process of school books in São Paulo, but published in the press ‘critical judgments’ to defend his school books (Correio Paulistano, 7 abr. 1897, p.3; 15 abr. 1897, p.2; Razzini, 2007, p.34). In addition, the Provisional Government of São Paulo was concerned with civics education as shown in the decree published on 12 March 1890, which reformed teaching and establish republican directives for the so-called Ensino Normal in São Paulo. In the framework prepared by the reformers – led by Caetano de Campos, Rangel Pestana and João Kopke – the study plan for the ‘Normal’ course included the discipline Civics and Political Economy in the third year.18 In the same year he published A história de São Paulo pela biografia dos vultos mais notáveis, Tancredo Amaral prepared the preface for another school book in which he indicated the importance of the regional question for the civics education of children. In O Estado de São Paulo (ensino cívico) – livro de leitura destinado às classes primárias (São Paulo State (civics teaching) – a reading book for primary classes), Tancredo do Amaral showed his source of inspiration, as well as the justification for the primacy or regional as opposed to national. The option for the regional, Amaral explained, took as a reference the pedagogical ideas proposed by Pestalozzi.

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To my readers, Preparing this work, it was my intention to provide the children of São Paulo with a book which in its use for the exercise of reading would at the same time serve to enrich the spirit of young students with knowledge related to the progress of our state. Instead of looking for subjects foreign to our environments, or translating or adapting French tales or short histories, without any practical value, I have preferred to give them notions about our climate, our flora and fauna, our business and industry, our railways, our administrative organization, etc. thereby educating the children in civics, who should first learn about their state and afterwards the republic. In this way I following the thinking of Pestalozzi: move from the simple to the complex; from the particular to the general; from the part to the whole. São Paulo, 6-6-1895. (n.p.) 19

In this, as in the other prefaces, the author included himself in a wider sociability network, centered on the civilization ideal constructed by São Paulo republicans.20 In presenting the characteristics of public education in the state, he fulsomely praised the conduct of President Prudente de Moraes, highlighting the concern with the formation of teachers and the initiative of founding Escola Normal, stating the following: “it was Dr. Prudente de Moraes, first governor of S. Paulo, who open a new era for our public teaching in 1890, authorizing the construction of the Normal School in Praça da República, an establishment that is admired by all those who visit us and is perhaps the only example of its kind in America” (Amaral, 1895, p.3). The book was dedicated to Cesário Motta Júnior, an important member of Partido Republicano Paulista (the São Paulo Republican Party), secretary of the interior during the provisional government, a position that defined the guidelines for public education. The federalists passions which expressed political and economic interests, when seen from the angle of regional civic representations, revealed hasty nuances.21 Thus Cesário Motta, a politician involved in the implementation of reforms in the São Paulo educational system, was among the illustrious biographies presented by Tancredo Amaral. The life and political trajectory of Cesário Mota are examined, highlighting his role as Secretary of the Interior in São Paulo state and his achievements in education and public health. At a certain point Tancredo Amaral provoked Rio de Janeiro, proving the superior civility of Paulistas in the question of public sanitation. He discussed a long report published by the press in the Federal

June 2012 335 Cleber Santos Vieira

District praising Cesário Mota administration in the public health area. In a phrase full of irony he drew a conclusion, making a diagnosis:

For now we will limit ourselves to casting a supplicant eye on public sanitation in Rio de Janeiro and ask instantaneously: we will imitate São Paulo. It is his greatest praise. (Amaral, 1895, p.319)

The book A história de São Paulo pela biografia de seus vultos mais no- táveis is divided into four parts, distributing the people in accordance with the chronological development of the history of Brazil. The proclamation of the Republic, like all the other events in São Paulo history, had as a guiding wire the biography of Paulistas who had been important in the construction of Brazil. According to the author:

The state of S. Paulo now occupies a distinct place among the federated states of the hopeful Republic of the United States of Brazil. Much have you to learn in the following pages, about that which in the colonial times already exercised hegemony among the different captaincies. Ours, that of S. Vicente, was the most important and the most sought after because of the fertility of its soil, its climate and its geographical position. A notable Paulista, the much lamented José Feliciano Fernandes, Visconde S. Leopoldo, said: ‘The history of the captaincy of S. Vicente will be the History of Brazil.’ It was a prophecy! (Amaral, 1895, p.20)

While the matrix for civics came from Silvio Romero and Júlio Ribeiro, the biographies were selected by Tancredo Amaral in Linhas esparsas, a collection of texts published in the Correio Paulistano newspaper between 1877 and 1893. Dedicated to Rui Barbosa, the set of excerpts principally covered the period of the republican campaign. The column was entitled Berlinda and signed using the codename ‘Eu.’ The texts reveal the moment Amaral adered to the cause, the tensions and pressures because he was a public employees (a teacher at the Escola Normal) and an anti-monarchist, as well as presenting certain caricatured images of many who would in the future be well known figures in São Paulo civism. In the first part of the book, there is a section called ‘Instantaneous Biographies,’ a type of riddle in which Amaral described some physical characteristics, daily habits, and political positions leaving the reader to guess their identity. By way of example we can mention the biography of Antônio Bento de Souza e Cosmo, lawyer, freemason, judge, the partner of

336 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Civism, the Republic and textbooks abolitionism, president of the Abolitionist Association of the Province of São Paulo and founder of the Caifazes movement, a radical emancipation organization that defended the liberation of blacks that would be more than formal and legal:

This one has a great virtue. He always says what he thinks, even though it may go against him. When he gives out to any mortal, this person is always broken down, and takes with him his name stretched out at the end of the long talk … He thinks like the much missed Julio Ribeiro. Truth has to be said without shame, hurt who has to be hurt, offend who has to be offended. The readers should avoid having any unresolved business with the man, since he is terrible to get his way … Regular stature, moustache, a great black moustache and a long beard. He is a member of the Brotherhood of the Remedies and according to what has been said to me, president of the same religious association... He was a great abolitionist and did much work to free the captives. Now he is sad and missing his Caifazes and the good times of combat, when he would lash out at the slave owners and on the capitães do matto who would be pushed out and would spend years with the rain and sun, in the morning and in the afternoon… I do not need to say any more. The reader already knows who he is. Remembering the Redemption and the time in which the illustrious abolition leader, somehow cautious for having suffered continuous threats, was always found seriously enwrapped in a large Spanish cape, under which the malicious tongues say he always had a good Smith and Wesson and a pair of pistols. I will finish this now because here he comes into the office with his broad brimmed hat, his overcoat, his frankness and... his love for the Brotherhood of Mount Carmel. (Amaral, 1893, p.88)

The person chosen to write the preface of Tancredo Amaral’s book was Cannon Valois de Castro, whose credentials clearly showed the proximity between the author and the elite of the Republican Party: he was a PRP federal deputy in the 1898-1900 legislature. Elected to the São Paulo Senate in 1916, he had a position in the first formation of the Council of Public Instruction of São Paulo. His political activities allowed him enter the coffee elite with free

June 2012 337 Cleber Santos Vieira transit among the Catholic hierarchy. He was part of the first IHGSP directorate representing the Church. He was present in the municipal chamber of Taubaté in 1906, being one of the signatories of the Letter that sealed the pro- tectionist agreement known as the Taubaté Accord. He was also one of the orators present at the mass held to honor the soldiers who defeated Antônio Conselheiro and the sertanejos of Canudos. He considered that the progress of a people was based on the combination of material and moral elements. For him the importance of the captaincy of São Vicente, the role played by the bandeirantes and the strength of the coffee economy was proof that material progress was advancing at full steam. Popular teaching and civics education would come to fill the absence in the spiritual field. The preface has a certain ambiguity about the idea of patria. Coherent with the purpose and content of the prefaced book, the idea of patria written by Valois de Castro reinforces the values appreciated by Paulistanidade (the identity of São Paulo), which at that time seem to impose themselves on national issues:

It is necessary that the good will of true patriotism has the loyal and uninte- rested contribution of all the ruling classes in order to raise the intellectual level of our people, multiplying the foci of education and good didactic works. ... History taught through biographic studies of great men who knew how to leave to their patria the precious legacy of a life consecrated to the most pulsating interests of humanity, the influx of the youth into education is of uncontestable value and benefit. Concerned with the history of our great state of S. Paulo, the author sketches the lives of men who have stood out with their self-sacrificing civism and the elevation of their characters. (Castro, Valois de. Prefácio. In: Amaral, 1895, p.9)

An illustrious figure, with a flawless civic image for the standards of the Paulista republic at the end of the nineteenth century, years later Valois de Castro was considered unpatriotic by sectors of the Republican Party. This arose out of an episode involving Brazilian ships and Germany in 1918. This was in another context, a period in which the nationalist call awoken by the First World War would redefine the relationship between state and society. The nationalist vogue had repercussions in the formation of various movements, notably Liga de Defesa Nacional (the National Defense League) and Liga Nacionalista (Nationalist League), the best known member of which was

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Olavo Bilac. Discussion appealing for the consolidation of public teaching as an obligatory item in national sovereignty multiplied, so that the struggle for its establishment became an act of profound patriotism. Marta Maria Chagas de Carvalho22 calls attention to the need to analyze the type of discourse spread by these movements. In the case of the National Defense League, created in 1916, the triumphalist questions represented only one aspect of its actions. Part of the internal structure of entity was the Civics Education Commission, composed of Luis Barbosa da Gama Cerqueira, Plínio Barreto, Rui de Paula Souza, Antônio Sampaio Dória. The latter was given the mission of writing a civics education manual, published in 1919 with the title O que o cidadão deve saber (What the citizen should know). In its preface the president of the Nationalist League, Frederico Vergueiro Steidel, outlined the motives for the publication of the book:

The benefit that will arise from this book for the development of the ideas of nationalism is incalculable, as in it in clear language and without pretentions to a doctrinaire sectarianism, he outlines our constitutional system. The people should and need to know the organization of political powers, which are created in their name and as representatives of their will; and more than this they should be aware of their rights and duties. The reality is that among us there are many Brazilians who see themselves as patriots, but who have still not read our Political Constitution, and who have rudimentary ideas about sovereignty, political powers, and even the ‘rights of man.’ This ignorance is ignorance of themselves, of their value, their strength, and their rights... I do not know of any book in our country aimed at spreading among the people the basic constitutional principles, since the compendiums, commentaries and books are only accessible to the intelligentsias already prepared for them, and the pockets that can support their high price.23

The importance of the Civics Education Commission in the National League and Sampaio Dória’s book idealized by it was overvalued in function of Brazil declaring war on Germany. This resulted in an episode which put the Nationalist League on a collision course with members of the Paulista republican elite, in particular Cannon Valois de Castro, who had written the preface of the civics manual published by Tancredo Amaral. The German attack on Brazilian vessels, according to Brasil Bandecchi, resulted in the attack on the

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Deutsche Zeitung newspaper. Its owner, Rodolfo Troppmair, was a friend of Cannon Valois, who immediately offered support to the German. For this attitude he was accused of being a bad patriot and a Germanophile. As highlighted by Elias Thomé Saliba, the episode had great repercussions, becoming amongst other things, the theme of the satirical pamphlet “Galabaro [calabar]: libro di saniamento suciali”, published by two great humorists of the period, Juó Bananére and Antonio Paes, the latter being the pseudonym of the journalist and writer Moacyr de Toledo Piza. The book was written in ‘macar- rônico’, a mixture of two linguistic universes obtained not only from written registers, but also and most of all from unstable oral registers.24

In vista tuto istus fattimo, io co Antonio Paes, Che fumos banderanti giunto nu tempo Du Pietro gaporale, com paura chi a Storia conceda um abras-corpo p’ru Galabáro di saia preta, arisovemos, p’ra garantia da onra anazionale, insgug- liambá mediantamente co tale. Istu livro será p’ru padri Valuá fon choppmais a porta per dove a di entrá na Storia da Patria, nu govile dus traidore e na galeria dus troxa. Dissi. (Saliba, 2002, p.203)

As a result when he launched his candidacy for a place in the São Paulo senate, Valois de Castro faced the opposition of the Nationalist League, presided by Frederico Vergueiro Steidel (who had written the preface to the book by Sampaio Dória) who supported Luis Pereira Barreto. This was only one of the parts of the opposition network which formed in Barreto’s favor. The politically organized segment of students in São Paulo’s third level institutions publically manifested their firm opposition to Valois:

Young men cannot be indifferent to the candidacy of Cannon Valois. Althou- gh without the minimum personal prejudice against this politician, whose acts never interested the youth, it is impossible for them not to make their opinion known in an irrepressible impulse of their outraged patriotism. The anti-national convictions of Cannon Valois de Castro are well known, and there is no need to insist on this, since now rewarded by the movement that is developing, Your Excellency is limiting himself to make declarations whose dubiousness fully confirms what the public already knew. It was thus that there was born in the youth the idea of the candidacy of the eminent Luis Pereira Barreto on behalf of whom we solicit the support and the votes of Brazilians who love their patria.25

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Signing this document were people such as Prudente de Moraes Neto, Afonso Pais de Barros, José Freitas Guimarães Júnior, Joaquim de Abreu Sampaio Vidal, and Paulo Nogueira Filho, amongst others. The protest of the young students against the supposed anti-nationalism of Valois de Castro reverberated in important segment of Paulista elites. The political, religious, cultural and economic circles that supported him confirmed their faith in the patriotism of Luis Pereira Barreto, nosily launching a manifesto in his support. Also with their names on the document were João Arruda, Spencer Vampré, Mário Pinto Serva, Julio de Mesquita Filho, and Vicente Rao, as well as other important public figures. The effort only failed to have an effect in the PRP and in the electoral machine it controlled which assured the victory of Valois de Castro. The skirmishes between those who wrote the prefaces to civics education books at the turn of the century suggests that the introduction of civism in schools occurred in the context of accentuated conflicts including within the groups which exercised hegemony in the political scenario from 1891 onwards. In its way each book, or group, tried to set in the history of the republic the biographies of exemplary republicans by using school books. The restricted network of lettered sociability at the beginning of the century reserved heavy internal fights. Prefaces, since they were instances of protocol which indicated the history and the contexts of the production of the book, were integral parts of this conflictual circuit.

NOTES

1 This article is part of the doctoral dissertation Entre as coisas do mundo e o mundo dos livros: prefácios cívicos e impressos escolares no Brasil Republicano (Among the things of the world and the world of books: civic prefaces and school publications in Republican Brazil), presented to the Post-Graduate Program, Faculty of Education, USP, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nelson Schapochnik. 2 KOSELLECK, R. História Magistra Vitae – sobre a dissolução do topos na história em movimento. In: ______. Futuro passado, contribuição à semântica dos tempos históricos. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto; Ed. PUC-Rio, 2006. p.42. 3 CATROGA, Fernando. Memória, história e historiografia. Coimbra: Quarteto, 2001. p.58. 4 ANDERSON, Benedict. Comunidades imaginadas. Lisboa: Ed. 70, 1991. 5 CHOPPIN, Alain. Os manuais escolares na França e a formação do cidadão. Veritas, Porto Alegre, v.43, nº especial, 1998. p.185.

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6 ROMERO, Silvio. A história do Brasil ensinada pela biographia de seus heroes (Ensino cívico). Rio de Janeiro: Alves, 1893; AMARAL, Tancredo do. A história de São Paulo pela biographia de seus vultos mais notáveis (Educação Cívica). São Paulo; Rio de Janeiro: Alves & Cia, 1895. 7 The use of the preface as a category of analysis of the book is based on Gérard Genette, in other words I consider a preface as “any type of authorial or allographic liminary text (preliminary or post-liminary) that constitutes a discourse producing the purpose of the text which either follows or precedes it” (GENETTE, Gérard. Umbrales. México: Siglo Veintiuno, 2001, p.137). Other authors classify prefaces in the ‘reading protocol’ category. See: SHOLES, Robert. Protocolos de leitura. Lisboa: Ed. 70, 1991; CHARTIER, Roger. A história cultural: entre práticas e representações. Lisboa: Difel, 1990; DERRIDA, Jacques. La dissémination. Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1972. 8 VIEIRA, Cleber Santos. A tradução como ato político: Dr. Domingos Jaguaribe e o Manual de Instrução Cívica, de Numa Droz. Revista de História, n.161, 2º sem. 2009, p.165- 189. 9 BITTENCOURT, Circe Maria Fernandes. Livro didático e conhecimento histórico: uma história do saber escolar. Tese (Doutorado) – FFLCH, USP. São Paulo, 1993. p.226-227. 10 Although Bourdieu did not use this category to analyze books, we believe that his theoretical and methodological framework can be extended to this type of subject, since they are part of the field of a society’s cultural and symbolic production. As Bourdieu stated “symbolic systems, as instruments of knowledge and communication, can only exercise a structuring power because they are structured” BOURDIEU, Pierre. O poder simbólico. Lisboa: Difel; Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 1989. 11 LESSA, Renato. A invenção republicana. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1999. p.226. 12 Among the authors who deal with this question is MELLO, Evaldo Cabral de. A outra independência: o federalismo pernambucano. São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2004; e ______. A ferida de Narciso: ensaio de história regional. São Paulo: Ed. Senac, 2001. 13 MELO, Luis Correia de. Dicionário de autores paulistas. Comissão do IV Centenário da Cidade de São Paulo. São Paulo, 1954. p.169. 14 In relation to IHGSP and other institutions which molded the invention of Paulistanidade, see FERREIRA, Antonio Celso. A epopéia bandeirante: letrados, instituições, invenção histórica (1870-1980). São Paulo: Ed. Unesp, 2002. 15 AMARAL, Tancredo do. Linhas esparsas (1887-1893). São Paulo: Typ. Edelbrock & Moreira, 1893. 16 Ver: GLEZER, Raquel (Coord.). Catálogos do Gabinete de Trabalho de Prudente de Morais. São Paulo: Pólo, 2003. 17 In the article “Livro Didático e expansão escolar em São Paulo (1889-1930)” the researcher Márcia Razzini locates Tancredo Amaral’s two articles in the context of approximation between publishers, São Paulo writers and educational policies in the state. This allowed

342 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Civism, the Republic and textbooks the signing in 1894 of a contract between Tancredo do Amaral and Livraria Francisco Alves. Cf. RAZZINI, Márcia de Paula Gregorio. Livro didático e expansão escolar em São Paulo. Revista Língua Escrita, n.1, p.19-43, jan.-abr. 2007. p.34. 18 REIS FILHO, Casemiro. A educação e a ilusão liberal. São Paulo: Cortez; Autores Associados, 1981. p.38-46. 19 AMARAL, Tancredo do. O Estado de São Paulo (Ensino Cívico). Livro destinado à leitura das classes primárias adiantadas. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1896. 20 MONTEIRO, Regina Maria. Paradigma da nacionalidade. Cadernos do Cedes, Campinas (SP), n.51, p.50-65, 2000. 21 VIEIRA, Cleber Santos. Transfigurações cívicas: A terra fluminense, Contos pátrios e A pátria Brasileira. Revista do IEB, n.50, p.79-102, set.-mar. 2010. 22 CARVALHO, Marta Maria Chagas de. Molde nacional e forma cívica: higiene, moral e trabalho no projeto da Associação Brasileira de Educação (1924-1931). Bragança Paulista (SP): Edusf, 1998. p.137. 23 STEIDEL, Frederico. Prefácio. In: DÓRIA, Antônio de Sampaio. Que o cidadão deve saber: manual de instrucção cívica. São Paulo: Olgário Ribeiro, 1919. 24 SALIBA, Elias Thomé. Raizes do riso no Brasil: a representação humorística na história brasileira: da Bele Époque aos primeiros tempos do rádio. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002. p.203. 25 Citado em BANDECCHI, Brasil. Liga Nacionalista. São Paulo: Parma, 1980. p.69-70.

Article received on 24 February 2011. Approved on 8 August 2011.

June 2012 343

Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century: diversity in size, location and services provided Lucília Siqueira*

Resumo Abstract Por meio da análise de três estabeleci- Through the analysis of three hotel es- mentos de hospedagem de dimensões tablishments of different sizes in the distintas na década de 1900, este texto first decade of the 20th century, this ar- ressalta a heterogeneidade dos hotéis da ticle aims to highlight the heterogeneity cidade de São Paulo no período. Seguin- of hotels in São Paulo City at the time. do os inventários post mortem de pro- Using the post-mortem inventories of prietários de hotéis localizados no largo hotel owners located in Largo São Ben- São Bento, na rua Líbero Badaró e na to, Rua Líbero Badaró and Avenida avenida Rangel Pestana, esta última no Rangel Pestana (the latter of which is in bairro do Brás, o artigo possibilita the district of Brás), the article displays apreender a variedade dos equipamen- the variety of the equipment and ser- tos e serviços existentes, bem como a di- vices made available at that time, as well versidade dos grupos aos quais perten- as the diversity of people who owned ciam os donos desses estabelecimentos. such enterprises. Palavras-chave: história urbana; história da Keywords: urban history; history of São cidade de São Paulo; história dos hotéis. Paulo City; history of hotels.

In São Paulo city in 1890 the Italian Carlo Astone, who was the owner of Hotel Coroa d’Itália, located on number 1 Rua Senador Feijó, registered a complaint with the police against a customer of his hotel. The accusation was for “verbal defamation.”1 According to Carlo Astone, on 17 August 1890, at around six in the afternoon, Felipe Marasca began to curse him in the hotel: “thief, pimp, bastard and son of a bitch!” Felipe Marasca was a 22 year old Italian coachman, single and illiterate. On that afternoon, Felipe had been in Café dos Estados Unidos with two others, both young Italians like him, whom he invited to go to Coroa

* Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) – Campus Guarulhos. Estrada do Caminho Velho, 333, Pimenta. 07252-312 Guarulhos – SP – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 345-363 - 2012 Lucília Siqueira d’Itália to drink some cognac. One of these was the tailor Miguel Bruno and the other the barber Francisco D’Urso. The two stated that when they reached the hotel, Felipe sat at the head of the table to eat, while they ‘went to the secret,’ in other words ‘to the latrine,’ from where they began to hear raised voices. Due to the shouting they returned to the dining room where they saw Astone shouting at Felipe Marasca telling him to leave. In the middle of the confusion narrated by the witnesses – one employee even came from the bedroom area with a knife in his hand –, we can see that in the hotel at that time there were around twenty people, some eating in the dining room, at tables at which eight people could fit, and others in a second room, where there were smaller tables and people were drinking in pairs. Among those present were two or three single Italian men, one of whom worked in São José Theater. In addition there was a doctor – Carlos Garcia – and a policeman born in Portugal, but already a naturalized Brazilian. Little by little the fight scene is revealed in the records: some stated that they heard, before the beginning of the melee, “the coachman shouting at a prostitute who was also present, Felismina Maria de Jesus.” The Portuguese born policeman let the secret out: he said that “some of those boarding at Coroa d’Itália were lost women and that this Felismina had refused to have libidinous relations with Felipe Marasca.” Months later, close to the condemnation of three months in prison which he would receive, Felipe Marasca asked an army captain for help. The latter brought a police chief to the hotel to try to convince Astone to withdraw the complaint – which he would only do a few years later. While the police chief and the hotel were talking in a closed area, the captain waited outside and “talked with a prostitute called Amélia, known as ‘Flor do Chá.’” In this conversation the captain found out some of the details of the fights between the prostitute Felismina and the Italian Felipe; and we now understand that Hotel Coroa d’Itália – or Hotel da Roza in some documents –, was a place frequented by people of every type, from various social groups, and offered, in addition to meals, drinks and board, the service of the prostitutes who lived there, since they were described by all as ‘boarders’ of the hotel. The defendant’s lawyer even argued that although Felipe was “an inexperienced single youth who had come to the hotel with libidinous intentions,” he had committed a lesser crime than Carlo Astone who kept “this hotel functioning, a ‘hotel of a low grade,’ where he certainly ‘exploited prostitution.’”2 In May 1893, after the fight mentioned above, the same Carlo Astone filed a complaint against an employee, Giuseppe Vandiglia, who had disappeared

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Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century from the hotel with the keys to the establishment’s drinks cabinet, taking with him some banknotes which were there for change and a much greater quantity of money which he had obtained from selling drinks without the authorization of his employer.3 A police investigation was opened and Giuseppe declared that he had worked for Astone for eight months and had been hired ‘as a manager of the said Hotel,’ for 30,000 réis per month; since the beginning he had not received his salary and everything he had sold had been with the authorization of the hotel owner. Giuseppe Vandiglia had not appeared in the hotel for ten days because he had gone to Santos to pick up his wife who had arrived from Europe. When he returned to the capital he went to live on Rua Vinte e Cinco de Março. Over the weeks five Italians would testify: a cook who lived on Rua Santo Antônio and probably worked in Coroa d’Itália, a clerk who lived in the hotel, a ‘travelling salesman’ living on Rua Vinte e Cinco de Março, another salesman who lived on Rua Santa Ifigênia and a teacher who lived in Bexiga and was a client of the hotel. Many details of the life around the hotel are revealed: some were guests, other were there to drink, or were employees of the hotel, the establishment had different names – Coroa d’Itália in the almanac and da Roza in the judicial records. Statement after statement were taken, from which the following can be extracted by reading between the lines: Giuseppe, feeling slighted for not having been paid for months, before leaving for Santos to pick up his wife, went to meet customers of the hotel to receive what they owned him for the consumption of drinks. With this money, and now feeling paid, he abandoned his job in Coroa d’Itália. At the end of the case Giuseppe Vandiglia was condemned to pay around one conto to his former boss, but he was not found to be notified of the judicial decision; it appeared that he had disappeared and had left the city. The two stories which took place in Coroa d’Itália in 1890 and 1893 show a city in which many different types of people frequented this medium size hotel located in the center of the city, providing services including food, board and sometimes prostitution. A decade before the period in question, people there sat around tables and the cabinet ‘full of wines, liquors and fine drinks,’ locked with a key, while some cigarettes ‘of an inferior category’ were also kept there. Those who usually frequented Coroa d’Itália –workers, small businessmen, travelling salesmen, the middling sort of person, and even one or other who was richer – little resembles those groupings which are described in the historiography in the confectionary shops and luxurious hotels on the streets

June 2012 347 Lucília Siqueira of the so-called São Paulo triangle. At that time in the heart of the city there could be found the ‘cosmopolitan’ novelties which appeared in shop windows and on restaurant tables, many of which were in the biggest hotels.4 What this text intends, however, is not to look at a sample of people who frequented hotels, or who stayed or worked in them. Nor are we concerned with creating a taxonomy of hotel establishments. Rather we intend to present the diversity of the hotels existing in São Paulo at the beginning of the twentieth century, seeking to classify what was written about them in the period of the demographic explosion of the city, in the years when foreigners arrived in large numbers. Using three post mortem inventories of hotel owners in the city – from 1900, 1901 and 1908 –, we seek to compare the value and the dimension of these hotel establishments, as well as, when possible, what was contained inside them in terms of equipment and facilities. It is worth stating that understanding this heterogeneity is useful for more wide-ranging research we are carrying out on the city’s hotels. While in this article hotels are seen as part of family property and as businesses, later, in a broader focus, they will be studied as places of new sociabilities and relations of work.5 In effect hotels can tell us more about the history of São Paulo that they have done until they moment. It has to be taken into account that due to the growth of the coffee economy in 1920 the capital of São Paulo state had almost ten times the number of inhabitants it had in 1890, in other words, it rose form a little over 60,000 inhabitants in 1890 to almost 600,000 in 1920. The influx of people to the capital created problems in the city, such as a lack of housing and employment, lack of foodstuffs, poor quality constructions, growth of violence, precarious water supply6 and even a considerable worsening in the conditions of health, with epidemics attacking principally in the areas of greatest population density. The authorities could not meet all the essential needs, but some measures were taken, including worker accommodation and the sanitation conditions in this type of accommodation. Discussing the 1893 Relatório da Comissão de exame e inspecção das habitações operarias e cortiços do districto de Sta. Ephigenia, (Report of the Commission of Examination and Inspection of Worker Housing and Tenements of the district of Sta. Ephigenia) Jaime Rodrigues states:

The debate about the public health of the city took form and involved aspects such as street layout, the regulation of new constructions, the control of epidemics and living conditions and the conditions of housing for the poor. In this debate, in which doctors, engineers, parliamentarians and residents were heard,

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the resolution of the problems of collective housing appeared to assume fundamental importance. In its wake, it was sought to define the tenement and diag- nose housing conditions, in order to propose public health measures.7

Next described is how the members of this Commission defined the various types of housing that there was in Santa Ifigênia. Among these was the ‘tenement-hotel,’ described as follows in Chapter III of the same report:

There is also the tenement-hotel, a type of restaurant where the working people meet at night to sleep, both in reserved rooms and in common dormitories. Almost always the rooms are tiny: 2.5m wide by 3m deep, occupied by workers without families. The occupation rate stated rarely exceeds normal, however the reality is much more diverse, and it is known that the amount of people in these places far exceeds reasonable limits.8

As a reading of criminal proceedings from that time shows, people did not stop arriving in the state capital and they had to live wherever they could find a place. Many came to join relatives or acquaintances, whether in hotels, boarding houses, in tenements, or in rented rooms or houses. Some were just passing through and thus slept rather uncomfortably where they ate; such as those who even slept on the floor of the vendas (grocery shops) and taverns where they paid for the food and needed the permission of the owners to stay. Among the middling sort, some of those who remained alone and who did not form families stayed in hotels for years. When a certain level of stability was reached, it was possible to buy or construct a house to live in. Evidentially in this study we are dealing with establishments which provided accommodation services, though these were very diverse. We are interested in places where people paid to sleep and for other services associated with this sleeping space. At the minimum we believe that anyone who slept in a ‘tenement-hotel’ – as named in the 1893 report – would have the room where their bed was cleaned, whether it was an exclusive room or divided with other people. In the other model, in a tenement in the strict sense, or in a rented house, the resident was responsible for cleaning the accommodation; at the limit, that was his ‘domicile’ and thus he is not included within the scope of this study, also excluded from which is another form of boarding which was abundant in the swollen city from the 1880s onwards: the person who lived where he worked and did not pay for this; as we have seen among the records related to crimes this happened frequently in shops, workshops, groceries,

June 2012 349 Lucília Siqueira bakeries, warehouses, etc., in the many establishments where employees worked during the day and arranged to sleep in any corner at night. Later, in another phase of this research, we intend to examine the relations of work existing in hotel establishments. Then we will discuss in a more accurate manner the agreements and payments which permeated the lives of those living where they worked, both while slavery still existed and later. Similarly, it will be possible to discuss and analyze what we mean by ‘resident,’ ‘boarder,’ ‘guest,’ and ‘tenant’ when these terms appear in the designation of many ‘customers’ of hotels and boarding houses. In this research we will deal with establishments where accommodation and another service was paid for: breakfast, the bed clothes which belonged to the owner of the establishment and the washing of which was his responsibility, messages left in the lobby, a ‘living’ space – such as a room for games, drinking, smoking and chatting. In addition, many other facilities were offered by the larger hotels: post, telephone, lighting everywhere, water in the bed- rooms, sophisticated meals and other comforts. In any case we are less attentive to the denominations and to the possibility of categorizing hotel establishments; we rather want to classify them based on the equipment and services which we can describe based on the documentary sources. In those times after the arrival of the train – the first line had opened at the end of the 1860s –, a large part of the people who had come to the capital to work, sell, buy, or carry out business with banks and other companies, stayed in hotels and boarding houses. More than just a place to sleep, there came to hotels for a few hours those looking for a meal, a few drinks, some hours with their girlfriends, or the company of prostitutes. In the city which changed so much and so fast, hotels were a ‘condensation point for the transitory,’ a place where people who were passing through the state capital stayed for a day or two – when they were travelling to other destinations –, for a week or more when they came for business, to shop, or in search of medical treatment –, and also those who lived and worked in São Paulo, but resided in hotels because they were alone or did not have income to maintain a domicile. In a city which received many foreigners and migrants from other cities in the state and from other regions of Brazil, hotels were also a frontier between people with various origins.

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In São Paulo in May 1908, at the age of 62 the Spaniard Francisco Calixto Meza, owner of Hotel D’Oeste, located on Largo São Bento, died.9 At the time of his death, Francisco’s wife was living in Montevideo, where his two sons, both married, were also living. His estate which was worth more than 900 contos de réis included bank and railroad company shares, as well as more than ten rented houses spread out over three city regions. One of these houses was on Rua Vinte e Cinco de Março and was evaluated at 45 contos de réis; another on Rua Frei Caneca reached 35 contos. Calixto Meza’s greatest earnings came from the property where Hotel D’Oeste was located. Although these buildings were owned by São Bento monastery, the Spaniard had been responsible for them since 1873 – the date from which it had been necessary to prove that taxes had been paid –, and had a contract with the Benedictines for numbers 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 of Largo de São Bento until 1921. Before opening the hotel in 1878, Calixto Meza had a liquor store in the square, as well as owning Restaurante Paulistano (Barbuy, 2006, p.105). When he died Calixto Meza was paying the monastery rent for the building in the square; however, the hotel paid him rent that was usually three times higher. For a period of almost four years, for example, the difference was between 28:600$000 and 8:500$000, 70:613$000 and 21:000$000 for the larger buildings, numbers 2 and 6 of Largo de São Bento. Furthermore, he rented the ‘lower parts’ of the hotel to other commercial establishments, something common in the city’s hotels. Evidentially the arrangement in which he intermedi- ated the rent between São Bento Monastery and Hotel D’Oeste was an account- ing strategy which allowed Calixto Meza to withdraw large quantities as income from the hotel without having to render accounts about what he received in accommodation, bar and restaurant activities.10 Hotel D’Oeste can be found in many of nineteenth century photos of the São Paulo state capital. In general hotels are treated as large buildings in the urban scenario by those who have written the history of São Paulo. Hotel D’Oeste was founded at the end of the 1870s, the same year that the star of the city’s nineteenth century hotels was born: the Grande Hotel, considered a landmark among the city’s hotels because, in addition to the sophistication of the services offered then – which had previously never been seen outside the court –, it was the first hotel whose building was not adapted, in other words, it was constructed as a hotel. To explain the emergence of hotels in São Paulo, Eudes Campos pro- duces a periodization which seems accurate to us: according to him, hotels

June 2012 351 Lucília Siqueira emerged as the custom of ‘letters of recommendation’ for hospitality in people’s homes disappeared; in other words from the middle of the nineteenth century travelers who needed to stay in São Paulo city were offered services for which only payment was asked. Even if the new arrival did not known the place and had no indications from anyone he knew, he could find a room to sleep in the city: he received accommodation services and paid for them in turn. Campos notes that for many decades after the middle of the nineteenth century hotels and boarding houses coexisted with resting places at the city’s en- trances, where the people coming into São Paulo with the animal trains stayed.11 Documenting the cosmopolitanization which the so-called central triangle in São Paulo underwent between 1860 and 1914, Heloisa Barbuy divides the history of hotels in this period into three generations. She calls the ‘first generation’ those hotels born in the middle of the nineteenth century, which preceded the Grande Hotel and which were located in buildings that were originally residential, and built in taipa (rammed earth)– of which Hotel de França was the most representative. The Grande Hotel, built in 1877, on the corner of Rua São Bento with what is now Miguel Couto, was, as we have seen, the first building to be constructed in the capital to be a hotel, initiating a second generation of hotel establishments, represented by it, the Grande Hotel Paulista, Hotel Rebecchino and Hotel D’Oeste, with the latter three being in Largo São Bento. According to Barbuy, the third generation of hotels in the center of São Paulo commenced with the inauguration of Grand Hôtel de la Rôtisserie Sportsman on Rua São Bento in the final years of the nineteenth century, which signified the introduction of ‘new hotel standards’ in the city (Barbuy, 2006, p.92-111). Among the little that we know about the functioning of hotels in the São Paulo state capital is something about the conditions of hotel facilities, above all because of the buildings they occupied. In the initial decades, until the 1880s for the large scale establishments, hotels constantly changed address, which reveals that the buildings through which they passed, old residencies, were not prepared to serve as hotels, and that the equipment was relatively easy to transport and install; in other words, they did not have stoves, counters and other utensils specially designed to meet large demands, produce large quantities of food and to wash large amounts of food, for example. Not to mention the rooms which served as dormitories for guests, where the simplicity of the fur-

352 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century niture and the precariousness of facilities such as windows and the supply of water and lighting also allowed addresses to be changed with relative ease. While recommendation letters were no longer used – as highlighted by Eudes Campos –, and relations between persons were more ‘objective,’ in the sense that accommodation was given in exchange for payments in money, it was still very important to know who the owner of the hotel was. In the book A cidade-exposição, Heloisa Barbuy lists remnants of São Paulo hotels in which this was quite evident. We can take from this book two examples referring to Hotel D’Oeste. In the 1900 Revista Industrial there appeared an image of this hotel highlighting the name of the owner ‘F. Calixto Meza’ and the date of its foundation.12 In addition to this propaganda from 1900, Barbuy presents on the same page a receipt from Hotel D’Oeste in 1917 – after the death of Calixto Meza – where ‘I. Zucchi & Irmão’ appears as the owner. On Sunday 12 March 1905, A Patria newspaper included among its advertisements two hotel establishments much smaller than Hotel D’Oeste, and located in less fancy parts of the city; in the two advertisements the owner was the important part. Hotel dos Viajantes, “in front of Estação do Norte and Brás,” on 221 Avenida Rangel Pestana, “with a complete selection of national and foreign drinks” and “food at any time,” presented José Soares das Neves as its owner. For Pensão Pinheiro, located on Rua Treze de Maio, in the Bela Vista neighborhood, the advertisement signed by the owner José Pinheiro stated: “The owner lives with his family in the establishment guaranteeing in this way seriousness in his house.”13 Another type of change that meets our eyes in the history of São Paulo hotels are the successive owners of each establishment –perhaps for this reason it was important to explain who the owner was. Economic instability was certainly responsible for these transfers of property, but it is also worth noting the numerous construction works which the urban design of the capital underwent; the building of tram and train lines, the construction of wide avenues and squares, with the result that demolitions and new buildings did not stop occurring, especially from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards. As the city changed, places offering accommodation to the arriving workers also changed, like the hotels which came to meet the growing needs of poor workers, whose facilities and services deteriorated, and were finally transformed into tenements, as was denounced in the first chapter of the 1893 Report on worker housing in Santa Ifigênia, which was discussed above:

June 2012 353 Lucília Siqueira

The tenements or inns, the boarding houses, or buildings transformed into hostels, the liquor stores or taverns, almost all with rooms at the back for rent, the third or fourth class hotels, transformed into tenements, this is what you see openly in the neighborhood where the epidemic has spread fastest...14

All of this made the price of property and of rent vary enormously, with new centers of attraction of people and business constantly being opened in different parts of the city. In 2001, under the supervision of Professor Paulo Garcez Marins, Raquel D’Alessandro Pires carried out a survey of São Paulo’s hotels.15 Based on alma- nacs– from 1890 to 1916 – and on telephone directories – 1917 to 1971 –, Raquel Pires organized the chapters of her work by region, i.e., starting with the old city center, the so-called ‘triangle,’ it moved on to the environs of the railway stations, went to the new city center, near Praça da República and Avenida São João and finally reached the spike of Avenida Paulista, including Bela Vista and Consolação. In this masters’ thesis the sequence of locations accompanies the chronology of the expansion and urban degradation of the capital. Thus, over eighty years hotels emerged in places where commerce was effervescent, in train stations, in the improvement of the urban infrastructure and equipment. On the other hand, hotel establishments were deteriorating with the evasion of wealth and the official abandonment which some regions of the city suffered from during these decades. Looking through the studies of the history of hotel in the capital of São Paulo, we can see that the examples chosen for analysis are always the large establishments and those located in addresses which are undergoing phases of development, where the city was embellished and it received the wealthiest sectors. Hotels are thus taken as evidence of the growing Paulistano development. In our case we intend to understand the diversity which characterized the groups living in the city in the years of the growth of the coffee economy and the multiplicity of accommodation services offered in different regions of the city, where the urban reforms decorated and rationalized the urban fabric and also where the tenements, factories and more modest housing thickened around the train stations.

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354 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century

Let us now return to the three hotels in São Paulo which we now intend to examine at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hotel D’Oeste, which we saw in the year of the death of its owner Calixto Meza in 1908, was founded in 1878 in Largo São Bento and according to Heloisa Barbuy, “it had a long trajectory that was very representative of the successive changes in architectural style that occurred in the city during that period” (Barbuy, 2006, p.105). During the 30 years that Calixto Meza ran Hotel D’Oeste we can see from photos of the square (largo) that the establishment expanded a number of times and its façade was altered. In the advertisement cited above, published in Revista Industrial in 1900, the hotel was said to have seventy rooms (ibidem, p.104). Moreover, even in the newspaper Hotel D’Oeste advertisements always mentioned the facility of having outside the establishment public and private transport– trams or carriages and Tilburies available for the train stations and all the regions of the city and surrounding areas. It should be emphasized that the owner of one of the largest hotels in the city made more from property transactions – around the area in which the hotel was located which belonged to São Bento monastery and where the hotel business was based – than directly from the services offered by his hotel. Perhaps this explains the insistence of Francisco Calixto Meza to keep the Hotel D’Oeste at that address, even after the fire which struck it in 1901. In fact, when the Spaniard died in 1908, the monastery still owed him 44 contos de réis due to the reconstruction of the buildings after the fire. In 1912, then owned by I. Zucchi & Irmão, D’Oeste had already annexed the building of Grande Hotel Paulista facing it on Rua da Boa Vista. At the turn of the century, less than five minutes walk from Hotel D’Oeste, around three blocks from Largo São Bento, in was what was called Travessa do Grande Hotel, Hotel da Europa was located, facing Rua Líbero Badaró.16 With 36 rooms Hotel da Europa was a much more simple establishment that the neighboring Grande Hotel, which was on the other side of the travessa, but turned away, facing Rua São Bento. In the first half of 1900, in a trip to Rio Grande do Sul, the owner of Hotel da Europa, Roza Fasoli, died.17 She was married to José Fasoli, with whom she had three children; the oldest of whom was only 15. According to Roza’s inventory, the Fasolis’ estate was approximately 70 contos de réis. In addition to the hotel, the Fasolis’ owned a sobrado (a large house) in which they lived on Rua dos Gusmões and the following properties which they rented: three small houses on Rua Rego Freitas, a house with a frontage of 5 meters, a plot of land

June 2012 355 Lucília Siqueira in Brás and a warehouse with land on Rua Santa Isabel, which contained a coach-house and a “piece of zinc on which the furnaces of a factory have been constructed.”18 Hotel da Europa, evaluated at a little over 18 contos de réis, amounted to almost one quarter of the Fasoli’s wealth and was described in the inventory as containing 36 rooms, each with a gas sconce and specially evaluated fittings. From the 36 different values given for the room fittings, we can see that there was no homogeneity among the rooms, all of which had different fittings and equipment, though there were four types of room: the three cheapest rooms, whose fittings, basically consisting of a bed, were evaluated at 50,000 réis, which makes us suppose that they were used by the hotel workers; the other 17 rooms were evaluated at around 100,000 réis and were distributed among two floors; the third category of room consisted of nine rooms with fittings of around 200,000 réis; finally there were the three best rooms, which furniture worth 465,000 réis, 730,000 réis and one conto de réis. Since the Fasoli did not live in the hotel, we can suppose that even if one of the best furnished rooms was occupied by the manager and his family, the establishment had a superior type of accommodation to be offered to those who could pay more. This variety in the offering of accommodation in the same establishment has been found in other hotels and boarding houses in the city which we are investigating, which warns us not to blindly accept the immense praise of contemporary reports and memorialists as proof of the magnitude and the luxury of the establishments in which they stayed. Certainly praise in specific cases shows that the person responsible for it stayed in the best equipped room in the middle of much more simple accommodation in the rest of the hotel. Like in most of the rooms of Hotel da Europa, the fittings in the first floor and second floor corridors were also worth around 200,000 réis each, which makes us imagine the simplicity of what was there. In addition to the rooms and corridors, the hotel also contained a housekeeping room with a value of almost three contos, with the fittings of the lobby and the dining room also being listed. The fittings of the dining room were worth more than 6 contos, revealing the high point of the hotel’s activities, where the tables served for eating and for receiving not just guests but passersby who wanted to use the bar or restaurant. The entire establishment was lit by sixty gas sconces. In the Fasolis’ property, the hotel with modest accommodation, despite being near the Grande Hotel, in the so-called central triangle, neither made up the largest part of what they owned, and nor did it last as a business after the

356 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century early death of the mother who left her widowed husband with the small children. In 1904, four years after the death of Roza Fasoli, João Fasoli’s son appears in court records in a dispute with his father, who was now living in Milan, to where he had brought the other two small children. In 1918, then aged 58, José Fasoli died in Italy. In his inventory, almost two decades after the death of his wife, there still appeared some of the property listed in Roza’s inventory, but Hotel da Europa no longer belonged to the family.19 We now move to another region of the city, more to the east, to Avenida Rangel Pestana, which was the continuation of the Carmo ladeira (a steep road) crossing the Tamanduateí River and running alongside Brás, where in the final decades of the nineteenth century there emerged factories, worker houses, a new railway, train stations and many hotels and boarding houses. According to Raquel D’Alessandro Pires’ research, between 1890 and 1897 there appeared 22 new hotels on Avenida Rangel Pestana; according to Almanach do Estado de São Paulo, one of these was Hotel Leão, located at number 20 of that avenue (Pires, 2001). Hotel Leão belonged to the Portuguese couple Maria Rodrigues and Manoel Pinheiro Guimarães.20 He was Maria’s second husband, who did not have children in either of her marriages. When she died in July 1901, the couple`s estate amounted to a mere five contos of réis. In Rodrigues’ inventory, Hotel Leão was not evaluated by rooms, but by the amount of furniture: it had 28 single beds and eight double beds, each had its mattress and its set of clothes. In addition to the bedroom furniture, ten clothes-stands, 16 sinks and a little more than 22 small tables were also listed. Taking into account that the owners lived in the hotel, and that one or two employees also lived there – as we have found in the hotels we have examined in related to criminal cases –, the hotel offered about forty beds, in other words places for forty people to sleep and not forty rooms. For guests in some rooms there was a bed, a clothes rack, a small desk and a simple wash basin – we suppose just a jar and a basin. However, not all the rooms had these small pieces in addition to the bed. We suppose that there were rooms with many beds, where various people shared the same place to sleep. In the room where the owners of the hotel slept there was a better bed, a wardrobe, two large bags and two bedside tables. The kitchen had a large iron stove ‘for the hotel’ and a smaller stove, pans and other utensils, a table for washing, dishes, glasses and cutlery. In addition to the rooms and the kitchen, the establishment also had two other areas to receive those who were not staying in Hotel Leão: a dining room

June 2012 357 Lucília Siqueira and a bar. The dining room had five tables and their chairs – ‘42 Austrian chairs’ –, two cupboards and a desk. In the bar, in addition to half a dozen smaller tables – made from iron and covered in marble –, there was a wall mirror, three rattan armchairs, as well as a ‘glass cabinet for samples,’ a marble balcony and a cigar balcony with the relevant articles. In these places we can seen that meals were an important part of the services offered by Hotel Leão; in the dozens of seats guests ate, as well as the people who lived or worked nearby, in Brás. As the 1905 advertisement for the neighboring Hotel dos Viajantes, one or two blocks away, stated: “food at any time.”21 In the bar there was also a ‘glass cabinet’ which contained the drinks: wine, spirits, vinegar, and other bottles. The belongings of the hotel amounted to almost 3.5 contos, with the drinks being worth one third of what existed in Hotel Leão! There is no record of who owned the building in which the hotel existed or of any payment of rent. However, the wealth of this Portuguese couple did not go beyond the hotel business and the belongings which were part of it: furniture, utensils and articles for sale – for drinking and smoking. After the goods had been listed and evaluated, the widower declared that he had a debt greater than the total estate, more than five contos, for the ‘supply of food and drink.’ In other words the valuable drinks we saw in the bar had not even been paid for!

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From the inventories of Francisco Calixto Meza, Roza Fasoli and Maria Rodrigues we have seen three hotels from the São Paulo state capital in the first decade of the twentieth century. Each of these represented a type of hotel establishment: Hotel D’Oeste was among the biggest and most stable with seventy rooms, located in Largo São Bento, in the region which for a long time that been the most exclusive in the city; Hotel da Europa was also located in the city center, behind the Grande Hotel, but it was a mid-sized establishment and most of its rooms offered simple accommodation; Hotel Leão was located in Brás, where mainly immigrants stayed, near the railway, offered around forty bed, meals in the dining room with more than forty places and almost nothing more than this. In this sequence from the largest to the smallest of the three hotel establishments – even ignoring the monetary variations that occurred over these eight years, focusing instead on the nature and volume of the goods that composed the estates of the owners of these hotels –, there is a decreasing line of

358 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century wealth in which the estates of the owners fall to less than 10% of the previous amount. In reverse, Maria Rodrigues of Hotel Leão in Brás had an estate worth less than 10% of the worth of the estate of the Fasolis; the latter in turn had wealth that was worth less than 10% of the estate of Francisco Calixto Meza. It was not only the amount that was significant, but the goods that composed it; as we have shown above the Spaniard Calixto Meza was a business- man of his time: he had shares in banks and railway companies, as well as valuable houses for rent. The Fasolis, from what they possessed – equipment to manufacture food and some small houses for rent – and from their past history, showed that that for many decades they had worked in the areas of alimentation and hospitality in the city, having lived from this and that and managed to accumulate some wealth. While the Portuguese from Hotel Leão only had the hotel where they lived and nothing else. Accompanying these differences is the representativeness of each hotel in the total estate of their owners: starting with Hotel D’Oeste the hotel is inversely proportional to the wealth of the owner, in other words, the greater the estate, the lower the representativeness of the hotel among the goods listed in the inventory, the less the owner depended on hotel services for income and/ or enrichment. We are thus dealing with different hotel establishments – regarding their location, dimension, and the type of equipment and services they offer to guests– but also in regard to hotel owners belonging to distinct groups of São Paulo society. In the written history of the city of São Paulo in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, hotels have been used to character- ize urban development and expansion, the incorporation of ‘bourgeoisified’ habits and services. As we have stated, they are always the largest hotel establishments, because, in addition to denoting the enrichment of São Paulo, they serve to exemplify moments of the city’s architectural history.22 The historiography of the city of São Paulo has already examined the palaces, the shop windows, the shops, the restaurants, the factories and the tenements. We have consolidated a dual memory of the São Paulo capital at the time of growth of the coffee economy: on the one hand, the cosmopolitan city which beautified itself; on the other the working class city where workers lived in bad conditions. In the hotels, in addition to mixing people with various origins and social groups, men and women could be seen who had very peculiar insertions in the coffee society: they did not live on the streets incurring the risk of being arrested for vagrancy, they were not in the badly-regarded tenements, nor in the banks, the large commercial houses or the palaces; in

June 2012 359 Lucília Siqueira other words in the hotel we can look at the lives of those who are not in the places most examined by historiography. In this period of the great transformation of the city between the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, the diversification of services grew, accompanying the growth of the coffee economy. In the field of alimentation and entertainment numerous bars, bakeries and confectionaries, restaurants, hotels, theaters, billiards and bowling halls, as well as bath houses, emerged at this time. Not to mention the variety which imports brought to grocers, liquor stores and markets. In relation to services such as alimentation, entertainment and accommodation, or clothes shops, we tend to think of São Paulo history progressively, emphasizing the growing cosmopolitanization of Paulistano customs, the increasingly Europeanized manners of dressing and going to cafés, confectionaries, and restaurants with French cuisine. In relation to hotels, enormous numbers of rich Brazilians and foreign travelers are mentioned who classify our establishments among the best of the world, hosting sophisticated festivities and meals. We still need to document the diversity existing in the consumption and offer of services for different groups in São Paulo society and in the different regions of the city. At that time there were people in São Paulo such as the family of Manoel Monteiro Diniz Junqueira, who died in the last year of the nineteenth century, whose daughter studied in Germany, who traveled often to Europe and had a wooden Swiss chalet on Guarujá beach – very much in European style.23 But there were also the clients of Hotel Coroa d’Itália, who passed number 1 Rua Senador Feijó almost daily for a drink; not to mention people such as Giuseppe Vandiglia, recently arrived from Italy who worked in the hotel serving drink to others. This expansion in the city which came with such intensive and rapid changes is in need of a more complex explanation. As noted by Raquel Glezer, after the 1870s the state capital was transformed preponderantly into a service city: “Only the transformation towards a service city can explain the jump in population between 1886 and 1900.”24 The fortunes of certain groups followed an upward curve, however the middle sectors of São Paulo society, of which most hotel owners were part, experimented the instability of a scenario in which the oscillation of the price of coffee in the international market caused economic retractions.25 Hotels, bars, cafés, theaters, billiards halls, restaurants and other places emerged in São Paulo not only for those who came to imitate the way of living

360 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century in the large European cities and acquired more ‘bourgeoisified’ habits These establishments were very varied and housed people of all types. In the court records of criminal cases in which we continue to study São Paulo hotels – such as those in which we saw Hotel Coroa D’Itália and Carlo Astone – many individuals can be found who came from outside the country, from elsewhere in São Paulo state and other parts of Brazil. In this research we hope that the newspapers, court record and other sources will present a still great multiplicity than revealed by the inventories studied here, providing information about the facilities and accommodation services, about who paid for these services – guests, tenants, prostitutes and others –, about work relations and principally about the functioning of hotels – who washed the clothes, who looked after the meals, made the beds, etc. What the post mortem inventories of hotel allowed us see was only the beginning of an investigation.

NOTES

1 SÃO PAULO (Estado). Tribunal de Justiça do Estado de São Paulo, Capital. Appellação crime. Apelante: Felipe Marasca. Apelado: Carlo Astone, 1893. ATJSP. Like this court case, all the other ones mentioned in the text are located in the Archive of the Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo – ATJSP. We chose not to present its classification number because when this research was being carried out the Archive was reorganizing its collection, altering the in- dicators for locating court cases. 2 In relation to the boarding houses and hotels where prostitution was practiced, including the mention of Rua Senador Feijó: RAGO, Margareth. Os prazeres da noite: prostituição e códigos da sexualidade feminina em São Paulo (1890-1930). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1991. p.81ss and p.120ss. 3 SÃO PAULO (Estado). Juízo de Direito da 1ª Vara do Crime da Comarca da Capital, Cartório do 9º Ofício. Autos de queixa-crime. Autor: Carlo Astone. Réu: Giuseppe Vandiglia, 1893. ATJSP. 4 BARBUY, Heloisa. A cidade-exposição: comércio e cosmopolitismo em São Paulo, 1860- 1914. São Paulo: Edusp, 2006; DEAECTO, Marisa Midori. Comércio e vida urbana na cidade de São Paulo (1889-1930). São Paulo: Ed. Senac, 2002; e MONTELEONE, Joana. Sabores urbanos: sociabilidade, alimentação e consumo: São Paulo, 1822-1910. São Paulo: Alameda, [in the press]. 5 The study of hotels in São Paulo city in the final decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth has been part of the work of a group of researchers who since 2007 have dealt with criminal cases stored in the archive of the Tribunal de Justiça do Estado de São Paulo. Coordinated by Prof. Maria Odila Leite da Silva Dias, most of the researchers are from

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PUC-SP. Currently the members of the group are: Lorena Féres, Maíra Rosin and Monique Borin, masters students from Universidade de São Paulo. At the beginning of this investigation the indications of Maria Luiza Ferreira de Oliveira were precious, who generously provided the location of some post mortem inventories of hotel owners in São Paulo city. 6 SANT’ANNA, Denise Bernuzzi de. Cidade das águas: usos de rios, córregos, bicas e cha- farizes em São Paulo (1822-1901). São Paulo: Ed. Senac, 2007. 7 RODRIGUES, Jaime. Da “Chaga Oculta” aos dormitórios suburbanos: notas sobre higiene e habitação operária na São Paulo de fins do século XIX. In: CORDEIRO, Simone Lucena (Org.) Os cortiços de Santa Ifigênia: sanitarismo e urbanização (1893). São Paulo: Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo/Imprensa Oficial, 2010, p.82. 8 Relatório da Comissão de exame e inspecção das habitações operárias e cortiços do districto de Sta. Ephigenia (1893). Edição fac-similar. In: CORDEIRO, 2010, p.101. 9 SÃO PAULO (Estado). 1ª Vara do Juizado de Órfãos. Cartório do 3º Ofício. Inventário post mortem. Inventariante: Escolástica Rodrigues de Calixto. Inventariado: Francisco Calixto Meza, 1908. ATJSP. 10 In relation to this, it is worth stating that the hotel as such was not mentioned nor evaluated in the inventory. In relation to the apportionment (partilha), the income from the contract with the monastery was estimated at 212 contos; therefore, much less than the shares – 238 contos –, than what was in banks and with debtors – 204 contos –, and what was in property – 240 contos. 11 CAMPOS, Eudes. Os primeiros hotéis da cidade de São Paulo – Século XIX: Império e República. Informativo Arquivo Histórico Municipal, São Paulo, ano 4, n.24, maio-jun. 2009. Available at: www.arquivohistorico.sp.gov.br; Accessed on 26 May 2010. 12 BARBUY, 2006, p.104. As stated in the author`s caption: “The 1900 Revista Industrial was prepared by Jules Martin to represent the state of São Paulo in the universal exhibition in Paris in the same year.” 13 A Patria: orgam da colonia portugueza no Brazil, São Paulo, ano IV, n.413, p.4, 12 mar. 1905. 14 Relatório da Comissão de exame e inspecção das habitações operárias e cortiços do districto de Sta. Ephigenia (1893). Edição fac-similar. In: CORDEIRO, 2010, p.95. 15 PIRES, Raquel D’Alessandro. Hotéis da cidade de São Paulo: história e trajetória (1889- 1971). Thesis (Masters in Environmental and Cultural Tourism: Planning and Management) – Centro Universitário Ibero-Americano. São Paulo, 2001. Without the studies of Raquel D’Alessandro Pires, it would have been more difficult to start his research. Due to her we have dozens of names of hotels from the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century and, principally, the names of their owners, whose post mortem inventories we want to analyze. 16 Probably this refers to Hotel Europa in the 1860s, then located on Rua do Rosário, afterwards moving to Travessa do Grande Hotel. In the 1860s Hotel Europa was mentioned by

362 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Hotels in São Paulo City in the first decade of the 20th century the military engineer Taunay and the US captain John Codman, as mentioned in the articles by Eudes Campos mentioned here. 17 SÃO PAULO (Estado). 1ª Vara do Juizado de Órfãos. Cartório do 2º Ofício. Inventário post mortem. Inventariante: José Fasoli. Inventariada: D. Roza Amsoli Fasoli, 1900. ATJSP. 18 José Fasoli, sometimes under the title José Fasoli & Cia., appears in the sources as the owner of various hotels. According to Affonso Antonio de Freitas, since 1862 he had been the owner of Hotel Europa, on Rua da Imperatriz; in the 1885 Almanach, according to Ernani da Silva Bruno, Hotel Fasoli is mentioned on Rua Senador Feijó; later in the 1890 Almanach José Fasoli & Cia. Own the Hotel Ítalo-Brasileiro, located on Rua da Estação. There also existed in the city Confeitaria Fasoli. 19 SÃO PAULO (Estado). 2ª Vara de Família. Inventário post mortem. Inventariante: Achilles Martinelli. Inventariado: José Fasoli, 1918. ATJSP. 20 SÃO PAULO (Estado). 1ª Vara de Família. Cartório do 2º Ofício. Inventário post mortem. Inventariante: Manoel Pinheiro Guimarães. Inventariada: D. Maria Rodrigues, 1901. ATJSP. 21 A Patria: orgam da colonia portugueza no Brazil. São Paulo, ano IV, n.413, p.4, 12 mar. 1905. 22 It should be noted that this architectural perspective of the analysis of hotels also thrives abroad. A large part of the works about the history of hotels examine hotels principally as buildings – above all in the period before the middle of the twentieth century. See, for example: SANDOVAL-STRAUSZ, A. K. Hotel: an American History. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2007. 23 SÃO PAULO (Estado). 2ª Vara de Família. Inventário post mortem. Inventariante: Maria Guilhermina de Lemos Monteiro. Inventariado: Manoel Monteiro Diniz Junqueira, 1899. ATJSP. This was a family of coffee planters who had plantations in the region of Ribeirão Preto, Jaboticabal and Cravinhos, and whose estate was more than 2500 contos de réis. 24 GLEZER, Raquel. As transformações da cidade de São Paulo na virada dos séculos XIX e XX. Cadernos de História de São Paulo, São Paulo: Museu Paulista/USP, n.3 e 4, out.-dez. 1994 e ago.-out. 1995, p.24. 25 For the nineteenth century: OLIVEIRA, Maria Luiza Ferreira de. Entre a casa e o armazém: relações sociais e experiência da urbanização, São Paulo, 1850-1900. São Paulo: Alameda, 2005; SIRIANI, Silvia Cristina Lambert. Uma São Paulo alemã: vida quotidiana dos imigrantes germânicos na região da capital (1827-1889). São Paulo: Arquivo do Estado/ Imprensa Oficial do Estado, 2003. For the poorer groups: PINTO, Maria Inez Machado Borges. Cotidiano e sobrevivência: a vida do trabalhador pobre na cidade de São Paulo (1890-1914). São Paulo: Edusp, 1994.

Article received on 4 March 2011. Approved on 19 April 2012.

June 2012 363

When the dragon takes the horse’s place: a post-colonial character in Xul Solar’s criollo piece Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores*

Resumo Abstract A figura de são Jorge na luta contra o The figure of St. George fighting the dragão, que tanto aparece nas pinturas dragon, which appears so often in the de Kandinsky, funcionava como um xa- paintings of Kandinsky, functioned as a mã guerreiro e curador dos males da warrior shaman and healer of the ills of sociedade moderna. Xul Solar, repre- modern society. Xul Solar, a represen- sentante da vanguarda criolla argentina, tative of the Argentinean criolla van- na crença de que a América, com seus guard and the belief that America, with sistemas de mitos e crenças, revelava its myths and belief systems, revealed a um espaço espiritual, no qual se desen- spiritual space in which a new humani- volveria a nova humanidade, toma o ty would develop, uses the dragon´s dragão para subverter os fluxos da colo- role to subvert the flow of colonization. nização. Na aquarela Drago, de 1927, ti- In the 1927 watercolor Drago, regarded da como a melhor representação de sua as the best representation of his utopia utopia de unidade latino-americana, um of Latin American unity, a dragon dragão engalanado pelas bandeiras da adorned by the flags of Latin America América Latina desliza por sobre o mar glides over the sea towards Europe, em direção à Europa, saudado pelas greeted by the flags of the metropolitan bandeiras das Metrópoles. O homem countries. The man riding the dragon montado no dragão segura um bastão holds a staff topped by a triangle (which encimado por um triângulo (que para for Kandinsky was the symbol of spiri- Kandinsky era o símbolo da vida espiritual life) to carry the message of the tual), para levar ao Velho Mundo a New World to the Old World. mensagem do Mundo Novo. Keywords: serpent myth; gods and codi- Palavras-chave: mito da serpente; deus e ces; post-colonialism. códices; pós-colonialismo.

* Department of History, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC). Campus Trindade – Caixa Postal 476. 88040-900 Florianópolis – SC – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 365-384 - 2012 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores

The mounted figure who appears so often in Kandinsky’s paintings, functioned as a warrior shaman and a healer in the fight against the materialism of modern society.1 In the position of Saint George the knight performs the role of the liberator of society personified by the virgin. This theme in which Saint George attacks the dragon is frequent in Russian painting and in Bavarian ex- votos. Kandinsky painted the holy warrior in numerous variations, even in his most abstract phase (for example Picture with White Border, from 1913).2 The figure of Saint George fighting the dragon illustrates the cover of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter, edited by Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911 as a manifesto of the Munich primitivist group. Although he shared with other artists the taste for archaic culture and developed abstract art, Kandinsky’s abstract primitivism differed due to the advocacy of spirituality. He saw the visual references of old Russia as a means of evoking spiritual ties and a authentic culture. The figure of the knight in his pictures incarnated the idea of this search, the symbol of the struggle of the spirit against materialism and the victory of the vanguard over tradition.

Podré, 1919. Watercolor on paper.

The Argentinean artist Xul Solar (1887-1963) was also concerned with the theme of the death of the dragon, as can be seen in his 1919 watercolor Podré. The word podré, which in Neocriollo, an artificial language invented by Xul, means power, appears alongside a bird which everything indicates is announcing the new epoch. Starting in the upper part of the painting, a large sun, inside of which can be read the word ‘future’ throws its rays across the picture, dividing it into two spaces: on the left are the symbols which report to us the representations of capitalism; and on the right, those of socialism. In the foreground

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When the dragon takes the horse’s place over this structure, positioned on the right is a man whose head formed by a red flag reminds us of the symbol of the Russian Revolution and leftwing movements, at least from the Paris Commune onwards. Over the man are the words strength and socialism. The man is hitting the head of a serpent, whose body is formed of small green square figures which can be adduced to be paper currency, which was crawling on the opposite side of the picture over a pile of ruins, with the mark of the dollar on its back, as well as the words oro (gold) and pluto (in ancient Greek this meant rich, one further metaphor to symbol- ize the serpent as a representative of capitalism). In this way the artist composes in a painting a literal narrative of the opposition between socialism and capitalism and the belief that the latter is about to crumble. The death of the dragon is portrayed by Xul Solar in two other watercolors. In the 1922 Hombre y dragón a large serpent horizontally occupies the length of the picture in a background illuminated by sunrays. A little to the right in a vertical position a man is holding a weapon in the form of a lightning bolt, with which he is ready to hit the head of the dragon. In addition to the sun rays, the scene is lit by candlesticks, giving it a ritualistic aspect. In the 1923 Drago San Jorge the scene of the dragon’s death appears once again. Here the man, positioned on the right of the picture, is identified as St. George by the words which Xul inserts over him. The man is mounted on a circle, which suggests to us the formal representation that Kandinsky chose to represent the knight in his abstract paintings. In his left hand the man is holding a standard with St. George’s cross. In his right hand he holds a sword pointed in the direction of the sectioned body of the dragon, which crossed the picture horizontally from the left to the right. The pictorial work once again induces mystic aspects, part of Xul Solar’ thinking. In the upper part there is a red sun and in the lower, a path of light where St. George passes, flanked by skulls, cactuses, and strokes which could suggest thorns or crosses. In these three works – Podré, Hombre y dragón and Drago San Jorge –, we can clearly find the configuration of the theme of the struggle of St. George against the dragon as a sign of a spiritual conflict against materialism, worked by Kandinsky in his abstract formulations. Xul Solar’s entire production was marked by this faith in the possibility of art to permit access to a spiritual world and in the role of the artist gifted with spirituality, who had eyes to see what science could not explain. A short while after his arrival in Europe, Xul acquired the almanac Der Blaue Reiter. Enthusiastic, he wrote a postcard to his father, showing himself to be confident and full of high spirits, after discovering that he had been work-

June 2012 367 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores ing alone on a trend that would be the most important of the future.3 Xul Solar remained in Europe for 12 years (1912-1924), spending time in London, Paris, Florence, Milan, Turin and Munich, in the middle of a spiritual revival which allowed him contacts with the theosophy inspired aesthetics in the writings of Mondrian, and with the messianic and religious mysticism found in the pic- turesque practice and theory of Malevich. In Kandinsky’s Do espiritual na arte Xul had found a concrete reference to what had helped him confirm the intentionality of his art, ideally linked to anti-materialism, without however actually developing his own visual language. Xul excelled at a form of expression which communicated his spiritual messages, making recurrent use of symbols, and the peculiar repertoire of his atemporal universal and spiritual world: numbers, signs, arrows, serpents, dragons, birds, angels, the sun, the moon, stars, eggs, flags, hills, stairs, masks, pre-Colombian gods, Egyptian figures, stylized human figures, ruins, trees, symbols he designed himself and others from philosophical and religious traditions (pre-Columbian, Chinese, Indian, cabalistic, tarot, alchemy, zodiac, the Buddist swastika, the star of David and other Christian symbols). The elements are recurrent; the compositions and the formal conceptions of his watercolors and temperas vary. Xul based his visual solutions on the juxtaposition of symbols in imaginary spaces, essentially formed of colors, transparencies and structural. Visually, he is close to Paul Klee. However, while in the works of Klee some graphic elements are repeated, including arrows, numbers and words, in Xul the symbols are even more diverse and more constant, and also assume the hermetic content of his occultist references.

Mexicanidad

Xul Solar would find in Europe an environment suitable to a young artist, musician and painter, who had declared himself shortly before leaving to be, “very studious of the bases of culture, especially symbolism and religion, helped by his philosophic understanding of astrology.”4 Arriving in London in 1912, he remained there for a few days before going to Paris. Among his walks through the city he went to the British Museum, where there was a strong presence of objects from indigenous American antiquity. The 1889 Exhibition had been held there, from which Gauguin had copied Aztec sculptures.5 During a second period in London on other business – between November 1919 and May 1920 –, Xul studied African, pre-Colombian and Oriental symbols,6 in the vogue of primitivism which permeated European art. The

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Mexicanidad (Mexicanness) constructed in Mexico by the muralistas, which made indigenous culture visible and celebrated, was incorporated by European artistic primitivism. Between 1908 and 1910, Rivera had travelled through various countries, including France, England, Belgium and Holland before settling in Paris in 1911, where he was especially influenced by cubism, but also reinforced the Mexican imaginary ideal among artists.7 Another example is that of the painter Jean Charlot (1889-1979), who had emigrated to Mexico in 1921, participated in muralism and produced more than four dozen small easel paintings in oil on canvas on Mexican subjects.8 In 1911 Franz Marc, affected by his studies of African and Peruvian sculpture, wrote: “We have to be courageous and turn our backs on almost everything that until now we have considered precious and indispensible to our thinking, if we want to escape from the sewers and our bad European taste” (Goldwater, 1967, p.127). In short the aestheticization of pre-Colombian objects had a significant impact of primitivist art, as shown in the exhibition of Objects of Indigenous American Art in the Burlington Fine Art Club in 1920 in London and the exhibition Les arts anciens de l’Amérique in the Louvre Musée des Arts Decoratifs in 1928.9 When he was in London Xul did not go to the Burlington exhibition,10 but its immediate context led to the publication of a book by Roger Fry, a renowned art critic, Vision and Design (1918). In the chapter American Archeology, he laments how much humanity had lost by not knowing the pre-Colombian civilizations in the same way it knew those of Greece and Rome. In this article Fry looks at the collections of Aztec, Mayan and Inca antiquities in the British Museum; cites the series of articles by Thomas A. Joyce, discussing archeological remains and publishing original documents and reports from Spanish conquistadors about the ancient culture of Mexico and Peru; equally he mentions the nine volume work on old Mexico by Lord Kingsborough.11 It is also worth noting that in the 1920s D. H. Lawrence’s novel The Plumed Serpent was published. Between the end of 1921 and the end of 1923, Xul was based in Germany, where Humboldt’s Mexican travel diary, written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, made many aspects of the Mexico city and Aztec divinity and cosmology known, leading to as large gravitation of modernists to Pre- Colombian motifs. Xul came into contact with ethnographic collections, studies, publications and works by various artists. During these two years Xul Solar acquired 229 books.12 These included four referring to Mexican culture, including one written by Theodor Wilhelm Danzel on Mexican codices.13 Although Xul did not know of the 1923 Aby Warburg lecture on serpent ritu-

June 2012 369 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores als in New Mexico, as it was not published at the time, it is worth mentioning it here to highlight the increase at that time in Mesoamerican culture. In this conference, Warburg made a description of serpent dances with the title “Serpent Dance, Cultural History, Cult and Memory,” listing various rituals ranging from the pueblos of New Mexico to those of archaic Greece, as well as the symbolic pagan inheritance from Christian western culture, stating that the memory of the serpent culture is repeated because it is a symbolic response to the question of destruction, death and the essential suffering of the world. According to Warburg, what interested him as a historian of culture was that, in the middle of a country which had made technological civilization a precision weapon in the hand of an intellectual, was stuck a primitive humanity which had been fighting with great pragmatism in order to survive. This pagan humanity had a religious veneration for natural phenomenon, for animals and plants, to which the Indians attributed active souls which they believed they could influence with their dances. This coexistence of fantastic magic and pragmatic activism which could appear to Europeans to be the symptom of an internal contradiction, for Indians, Warburg said, was not at all schizophrenic, to the contrary it was an experience which liberated infinite possibilities of relationship between man and the world around him.14 Furthermore, the codices, or Codex in Latin, manuscript and pictographic books, with registers of a wide range of themes from the great civilizations of Mesoamerica, dating from remote epochs before the Conquest, with some going as far as the eighteenth century, began to appear in Europe from the nineteenth century onwards in facsimile editions. Although the Franciscan bishop of Yucatán, in Maní, Diego de Landa, had ordered 27 of them to be burned in 1562, 21 codices are preserved today (Armando; Fantoni, 1997, p.32), some dating from shortly after the Conquest. For example the Florentino Codex was written by the Franciscan Frey Bernardino de Sahagún, who arrived in Mexico after Cortés with the mission of Christianizing the Indians. He learned the Nahuatl language and with the help of informers created a historical encyclopedia of the Aztecs, narrating their customs, gods, dances and ceremonials, under the title Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España.15 Scholar of the codices have alerted that although they were produced after the Conquest and contain information and interpretations linked to the interests of Christianization, it is thanks to these codices that we have knowledge of various cultural and scientific themes of Mesoamerica, religious beliefs, rituals, history, genealogy, alliances of lords, geographic notions, economic systems, etc. The most recent also illustrate aspects of Christianization, the

370 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 When the dragon takes the horse’s place hybridization of culture and economic and social problems which emerged with the presence of the Spanish.16

Xul Solar’s Criollismo

Before embarking on his return to Argentina in 1924, Xul participated in the Exposition d’Art américain-latin in Musée Galerie, Paris,17 presenting three watercolors with indigenous inspiration: Cabeza, Composición and Mujer y serpiente, works which are part of the final cycle of paintings which extends from 1918 to 1927, conventionally designated as the ‘Pre-Colombian’ period. During this period the serpent, together with the references to the Mesoamerican universe, formed the principal theme of his watercolors. It is here that the aim of this article is inserted: by laying claim in his 1920s paintings to one of the strongest symbols in Mesoamerica, Xul Solar proposed to rehabilitate the serpent not as a representation of modern materialism, rather to the contrary, as the evocation of spiritual forces for his pictorial program of the creation of a new world. While Kandinsky saw the archaic culture of Russia as an ‘authentic culture,’ Xul believed that America would reveal with its systems of myths and beliefs a spiritual space in which a new humanity could develop, in light of a Europe shattered by wars. It was no longer enough to dress as a criollo – there are statements from companions, as reported by Mário Gradowczyk, who spoke of Xul in Montparnasse cafés always dressed in a poncho with blue and white stripes. Together with his contemporary, the cubist Emílio Pettoruti, his plan was to return to make an impact on the Porteño (from Buenos Aires) artistic scene.

We can say that the Argentinean painter Pettoruti, one of the Criolla vanguard for the future … We are and we feel new … The old Cuzcos and Palenques and Tenochtitlanes have been torn down (and nor are we more than the same red race). We can clearly see the urgency in breaking the invisible chain (as the strongest are) which in so many fields still sees as a Colony the great Iberian America with 90 million inhabitants.18

Returning to Argentina, Xul entered the Criollista movement of the Martín Fierro journal (1924-1927), which brought together young poets from the Argentinean vanguard: Oliverio Girondo, Raúl González Tuñon, Jorge Luis Borges, Macedônio Fernández, Eduardo González Lanuza. In Borges’ crio-

June 2012 371 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores llismo Xul found not only interlocution, but a means of expressing himself: he illustrated El idioma de los argentinos (1928) with his vignettes and designed the cover of the journal Proa (1925), the subtitle of which was Latin-American Union and had the aim of spreading ideas of aesthetic renewal. In this image the crew of a boat head east, wielding machetes and accompanied by vivacious serpents which seemed to vibrate and applaud. Borges and Xul were not searching for a lost essence, but rather both, having spent a long time in Europe, wanted to transcend time and place in Latin America, connect the national and the universal, identity and otherness. The hypothesis is that Xul, fed by the aesthetic principles of Kandinsky, by claiming in his painting one of the greatest symbols of Mesoamerica, proposed to take the serpent to visually compose the message of the New World, inverting the spaces of colonization, not to dominate Europe, but to combat its state of decadence with spiritual weapons, provided by the cosmology of interaction between human and divine which the artist conceived in Criolla America.

The Serpent and the New World

In the years following the end of the First World War, Xul established himself in Italy and saw himself ever more affected by European decadence and touched by the spiritualist utopias of the continent. The architectures called Bau or Estilos are from this period, with expressionistic characteristics, mixed with typical elements such as filigree arches in the façades with Neo- Gothic references, which seem to visualize the artist’s intention to materialize Volksbauen (buildings for the people), where the masses could congregate to raise a new world. Or to implement Adolf Behne’s precepts, for whom the mission of architecture was to unite all the arts into order to create a final unity: of man with man, or man with nature, of man with the cosmos.19 It was at this moment that his watercolor Nuevo Mundo (1919) appeared. In this dream, iconographically expressed, the serpent becomes the ‘loyal’ companion or helper. It made its first appearance in the watercolor Otro mundo (1918), a title which in itself brings us to visualize a different world. In the foreground are two human figures encircled by blue auras behind two hills. One of the figures is looking on and the other seems to be giving a speech to four snakes who are emerging out of the ground, as if to listen to the speaker. In 1919 Xul painted a small watercolor in which two snakes dragged them-

372 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 When the dragon takes the horse’s place selves over an abstract background, formed of various colors among which a reddish color stands out. Interspersed among the snakes words form the phrase: “The wise snake is in the house of his serpent father.” Few creatures seem to have been given such a wealth of iconographic symbolism as the snake. It has been used as a symbol of fertility, mortality, wisdom and prosperity. Due to its underground lairs and its powerful venom, it has been associated with death and hell, or the underworld, guardian of ancestral souls. Since man saw the snake emerging from dark hideaways and rocky niches, he imagined it as guardian of the land, protector of everything placed on the ground. As a sexual symbol, due to the analogy with the virile member, the snake became connected with prosperity and life. With the ability to change its skin, it appeared to have the power of renewal, youth, strength, immortality, and wisdom. Symbolically it is respected and feared. In Mesoamerica, although various powerful animals – jaguars and ea- gles, for example– were also important in iconography, serpents assumed the broadest and most varied role as a religious symbol: in a state of ecstasy gods dance the serpent dance; large rattlesnakes adorn support columns from Chichen Itzá to Tenochtitlan; gods such as Mixcoatl, Quetzalcoatl and Coatlicue icongraphically represented by the figure of the serpent. Two characteristics of the behavior of the serpent were probably the reason for its use by Mesoamericans: first, snakes swallow their prey whole, leaving them to decompose within their bodies, (imagetically the large supernatural serpents belched creatures from their mouths – a warrior, a human, a god, or a skel- eton); second, snakes change their skin. Their skin split along their back, allowing the snake to slide out, leaving the old skin behind and in the case of rattlesnakes even their rattles. This characteristic associated snakes with the idea of being vehicles of rebirth and transformation. Three fundamental notions accompanied the Mesoamerican serpent: one, the serpent is water and thus a conductor of water; two, from his mouth a cavern opens; three, the serpent is heaven. This last concept survives in Mayan linguistics: the words snake and heaven are homophones, coatl and caan or chan, depending on the language.20 The serpent dance, rich in symbolism,– in performances, choreography, the use of adornments and clothing –, accompanied the ceremonies of various gods, calendar celebrations, festivities and rituals dedicated to the evocation of mythological forces or nature, associated with rituals of fecundity and fertility.21

June 2012 373 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores

Sandanza I, 1925. Watercolor on paper, 23 x 31 cm.

Warburg, in his famous lecture mentioned above, described the ritual of the serpent dance in New Mexico which aimed to ask the serpents to provoke the rain. In 1925 Xul Solar produced the series Sandanza, in which there appear approximations with the Mexican codices in relation to narratives, integrating images and texts about serpent dances, choreographies which imitated serpentine movements, or groups of dancers who used clothing and adornments with inferences to serpents and performances with ritual aims. In addition to the inspiration in the theme of the dragon taken from the mystical and visual thought of Kandinsky, as well as the use of Mesoamerican iconography for his purposes, it can be supposed that in his time in Italy when the figure of the serpent began to enter his pictographic ‘fauna,’ Xul had entered into contact with other sources. He was studious and rather than just working as a painter, he wanted to be recognized as an artist, as his friend Emílio Pettoruti reported,22 ‘prying’ in museums, libraries and archives. In his searches he may have come into contact with the literature on the myths and symbols of archaic culture. Among the ancient Etruscans, who had lived in the Italian peninsula before the Indo-European migration and the arrival of the Latins around 1000 B.C., the symbolic presence of the serpent was strong: “The Etruscans who coexisted with these notable creatures, very probably knew their attributes.”23 Another source with which Xul may have been in contact with in Italy is

374 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 When the dragon takes the horse’s place the book of Filipo Picinelli, an Italian abbot who in the sixteenth century made a compilation, a type of large encyclopedia, of the iconography of the serpent and other animals.24 In its various editions this book was much used by artists from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The serpent appeared in a poly- valence of symbols and meanings. Between the ‘mystic serpent,’ who represents the image of Jesus the healer and the ‘serpent of sin,’ cause of the downfall of Adam and Eve, there were a wide range of ‘moral physiologies’ from the political dominion exercised by Christian monarchs, to the secrets of Neo- platonic metaphysics. Through antonomasia, it represents various dimensions of life: damned since Genesis for engendering Pride (the worst of all sins), it is also exalted and assimilated by Christianity as the best image of the divine concept of Eternity, the Incarnation of the Word, the resurrection of Christ and the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Visually it appeared in distinct symbolic traditions: in classical mythology, in heraldry, medals, hieroglyphics, and emblems. According to Filipo Picinelli: three great teachings are revealed by serpents: the periodic change of skin with the help of cracks between the stones; the union of its face with the glue; the hiding of the head under the coiled body as a means of prevention. There is no emblemist, it can be concluded from the reading of the book, who is not caught by some of their renowned qualities: renewal and sagacity (skin), immortality and universe (circle), prudence and cunning (spiral).

Gods and Codices

Serpents began to appear in Xul’s watercolors, as he himself stated, when he was in Italy after the First World War, at the most acute moment of the feeling that European civilization was in ruins. They emerge from their lairs, or drag themselves through leaves, as in Troncos (1919) or Una Drola (1923). They climb into the heights, as in Reptil que sube (1920). Serpientes (1919) presents a strange figure, a hybrid of man, bird and serpent. In other works the serpent plays the leading role in the scene with esoteric type human figures, as in Figura i sierpe and Dama, pájaro y drago (1921), Tú y Yo (1923) and Tres (1924). In Composição Surrealista (1923), a serpent stands up and faces a figure with large blue eyes. The eyes of the serpent and of the man meet and challenge each other. In Tres y sierpe (1921), three women’s faces contemplate with spec- tral eyes. They are restless faces which suggest expressions of astonishment, surprise, expectation, fear. The serpent drawn as a flat strip with its golden aura appears to bring the spectator to the terrestrial, uniting the ethereal fem-

June 2012 375 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores inine figures in the cosmic plane. This is what also can be observed in Drago T and Dos dragos from 1920, Hado and Rei Rojo from 1922, and Ña Diáfana, from 1923. In various of these the human figures are composed of cylinders, the hands have long figures, and the eyes are large and pronounced. In others, they are transparent bodies with visible organs, diluting the frontiers between inside and outside. While in others again there are juxtapositions of various characters, diluting the individual identities, or superimpositions of themes in the same picture. In this case this involves the condensation of connected, but different, aspects which through abstract and formal syntheses, allusively refer to the gods and the successions of ages, to cosmological myths, the celebration of ritual, emblems with divine powers and magical practices. 1923 is a year of great chromatic wealth, full of references to pre-Colom- bian gods with approximations to the codices, such as Juzgue, Cuatro Cholas, Homme das serpents, Por Su Cruz Jura, Jefe de Dragones, Hombre y dragón, and Dios estaki. In Homme das serpents, a central figure appears flanked by three serpents which stand themselves up – one of them appears to want to lick the face of a man or speak into his ear. Symmetrically, a large arrow like a flame or phallus, stands itself up. The inclusion of the word ‘doma’, in light of other works such as Jefe de dragones, in which the characters appear exercising a supernatural power over the serpents, situated these paintings in the sphere of the magi who, according to Sahagún’s report, capture live snakes to cure with them. In Por Su Cruz Jura the fight between man and serpent appears once again: here the two figures are back to back, each one moving in such a way that leads us to think that they are moving apart. In the watercolors in which Xul Solar expresses his intention of returning to Argentina, and wants together with his contemporary, “criollo, as criollo” as an Indian,25 the cubist Emílio Pettoruti, to have an impact on the Porteño artistic scene, the serpent transforms itself into a boat to make the Atlantic crossing, as in Fluctua nave sierpe por la extensión y su cornake, Añoro Patria, and Chaco, dating from 1922. In 1923 there is another series: another Chaco, América, and Drago y dama fluctúa. When the serpent does not assume the figure of the boat, it is a travelling companion following the boat, a protector of the crossing, as in yet another Chaco from 1923. In Despedida (1923) the traveler occupies a stylized boat and two serpents welcome their passage. In Mansilla 2936 (1920) the desire for return appears clearly. The title indicates the name of the street and the number of the house where his father lives in Buenos Aires, according to the interpretation of Mário Gradowczyk, mentioned above. The image is suggestive: at the center is a man whose body is

376 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 When the dragon takes the horse’s place composed of the architectural plans of his father’s house; the profiled face is schematized by a geometric form and open arms; two large rectangles compose the figure, in a mixture between the plans of a building and a drawing of a human figure. The character stands over a serpent which acts as a platform for the man-house, while two birds fly overhead. In the center of a the image appears in a green rectangle the word patio, and around the house or man-house the words B. Aires, plano, mansilla, puerta and la casa, and number 2936.

Tlaloc, dios de la lluvia, 1923. Nana-Watzin, 1923. Watercolor on paper, 26 x 32 cm. Watercolor on paper, 25,5 x 31,5 cm.

1923 is singular. Together with the extreme creativity in the use of colors, lines and simple planes which suggest spaces with perspectives and depths, the presence of certain signs is significant in his visual language: flags, especially of Argentina, some only suggested by color, letters and numbers with enig- matic symbols, words in neocriollo, representations of pre-Colombian gods. It can be seen that at this moment the artist was increasingly linked to the iconol- ogy of Mesoamerica and increasingly determined to return to a project of aesthetic renewal. In this way the references to pre-Colombian elements in his watercolors acquires full expression. Tlaloc and Nana Watzin, taken in sequence, suggest to us the narrative of the birth of Quinto Sol (the fifth sun) and the Moon, with approximations to what appears in the Florentine codex, which demonstrates the central importance of the sun and the ritual of sacrifice for its birth.26 In the first picture, Tlaloc, the god of rain, stands erect integrating the planes of heaven and earth, unifying the two opposites which constitute the dual aspect of this divinity, whose dual relations appear linked to water and to fire. The serpents, the words agua (water), Tlaloc and alt, which means water in Náhuatle, and also the rays which descend from heaven announcing the

June 2012 377 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores rain, complete the formal unity of the work. According to the narrative the rains which Tlaloc sends to his children, the Tlaloques, fertilizes the field occupied by the gods Xipe, Cintéotl and Xochipilli. In the mythological narrative the third age of the succession of ages of the world, the sun of water, placed under his protection, ends in a spectacular catastrophe (which appears in the upper part of the picture, in a shower of fire in the form of thunder and lightning): heaven fell down, all the waters on earth overflowed and men were converted into fish, who appear in the lower part of the picture coming out of water. After this sequence in which the fourth age is represented by the presence of fish (who appear in the lower part of the picture leaving the water), the fifth age occurs, the age of the Sun, which is associated with the goddess Nanahuatzin. In this cyclical concept of time, the age of the Sun begins in Teotihuacán when the gods are gathered around a large fire, which can be seen in the second picture, Nana Watzin. Here Nanahuatzin is over the flames and another person is kneeling beside him as if they were praying. It is possible that this is Tecuciztécall waiting for the moment of sacrifice to convert himself into the moon. Over an altar, Mama Terra (mother earth), Tlazolteotl, leña (firewood) and passión (passion) – all indicated by geometric forms and by inscribed words –feed the fire (a feeling reinforced by the word s’exalta – exalted), whose flames like arrows rise up to the sun and moon, suspended in the upper part of the scene. In the terrestrial plane, over pointed firs, the inscription Xolotl, a god associated with the underworld, contrasts with a bird in the heavens with its wings opened. A strong luminosity achieved with yellow and orange bands, covers the space in all directions. Clear and dark geometrical shapes form the background over which the words Renovación por fogo santo (renewed through holy fire), on one side and Germina ora adora da-se (germinate, pray, worship, devote yourself) are written. The two scenes in the pictures induce an approximation with the cosmo- gonic narratives of the Nahua universe, which include a cyclical concept of time. According to the version transmitted by Sahagún’s informants, the Fifth Sun, the sun in movement, was created in Teotihuacan when the gods met around a brazier. One of these was supposed to throw himself into the flames to transform himself through his sacrificial death into a new sun. Nanahuatzin threw himself, transforming into the sun. Tecuciztécalt repeated the gesture and transformed into the moon. However, the sun and moon remained immobile. For them to follow their paths, the other gods decided to die. In the Albin codex Tlaloc appears intimately linked to the foundation of

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Mexico and the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Tláloc called a priest and told him that the city of Tenochtitlan would be the home of his son Huitzilopochtli.27 In the Vatican codex Tlaloc has various functions, including being the regent of the sun, rain, and fire, companion of the four winds and the four times of the year. His actions could be beneficial or malevolent. Particular powers were granted to the rain gods, of whom one was Tlaloc, in antiquity. “They are the ones who give courage and leadership, they are the guardians of tradition and in their domain reside what the ancestors called ‘giants.’28

Drago, 1927. Watercolor on paper, 25,5 x 32 cm.

The New World – America or epilogue

Given what has been discussed in this article, the watercolor Drago (1927) can be considered Xul Solar’s best representation of criollism. In the foreground there is a large person standing, defiant, transported by a dragon dressed up in the flags of Latin America and flanked, perhaps greeted, by the flags of the metropoles, – Italy, France, Yugoslavia, the United States and Portugal – slides over the sea, leaving the Americas in the direction of Europe, inverting the flux of colonization. The scene gives the work a feeling of dyna- mism and velocity, a determination and the certainty of a mission to be fulfilled. The sun, the moon, the stars and a comet which crosses the heavens

June 2012 379 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores confer a mystical aura on the scene, which references pre-Colombian divini- ties. It can be hypothesized that Xul Solar subverted the place of the dragon. While, in Kandinsky, the horse ridden by St. George attacks the dragon (as a symbol of modern materialism), Xul, believing that the struggle against modern materialism comes from the Americas, takes the serpent (it should be borne in mind that Cortés defeated the Aztecs riding a horse) to transport the ‘good news.’ In place of St. George’s sword the emissary carries a staff topped by a triangle, which for Kandinsky was the symbol of spiritual life; on the dragon’s head are the symbols of three large religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islamism, which for Xul were sources of wisdom. In addition to the 1927 Drago, Xul also painted with the theme of a dragon turned into a boat leaving the Americas for Europe Outro Drago, 1926; Mundo, 1925; País, 1925, and Horóscopo, 1927. Thanks to the narratives of Friar Sahagún we know of the myth of Quetzalcóatl, also called the Plumed Serpent – a mixture of a serpent and a bird –, supreme god, lord of corn, the art of weaving, the mosaic, dance and music, the science of curing illnesses, craftwork, trade, time, the stars in heaven, the calendar, orations and sacrifice. The Plumed Serpent was the performance of the miracle, magic, sorcerer and guardian of all the secrets of enchantment. However, in its mythology the Plumed Serpent confronted his evil twin, Tezcatlipoca. According to the Aztec belief, Tezcatlipoca infiltrated one of his servants who intoxicated the Plumed Serpent and his sister, making the two of them sleep together, breaking their vows of chastity. The Plumed Serpent, feeling guilty and in agony, abandoned his possessions on earth and began an epic flight: a pilgrimage to purify himself, which resulted in the proliferation of his image and his name through ancient Mexico, always heading east. He promised he would return in Ce Ácatl of the Aztec calendar, which occurs every 52 years. Dressed in a turquoise mask and a mantle of feathers, he had a raft made of serpents and sat in it as if it were a canoe and departed, sailing over the sea. After this the Plumed Serpent exploded in flames. The ashes of his heart rose and like a phoenix were transformed into the planet Venus. Ironically, 1519 when the Spanish boats were seen off the coast of Veracruz, coincided with Ce Ácatl. It is assumed that this was understood by the Aztecs as the return of the Plumed Serpent: many of the interpretations of the Conquest believe that Cortés’ good reception occurred because the Aztecs believed that he was Quetzalcóatl (Baldwin, 1998, p.9). The works of Homi Bhabha, Said, Barbero, Canclini and Stuart Hall, amongst others, deal with the question of post-colonialism, looking at the

380 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 When the dragon takes the horse’s place cultural potency of the colonized areas. Serge Gruzinski highlights co-invention in the creation of American culture, the exchanges and intermixing which is produced between metropoles and indigenous knowledge. The colonized digest the culture of the colonizer to better fuse it with native culture rather than simple assimilation or imitation. The colonizers were not passive. The Cantares are neither Amerindian works nor European: they are intermixed. Gruzinski takes Mário de Andrade’s lines “Sou um tupi tangendo um alaúde” (I am Tupi, strumming a lute) to mean that “it is possible to be Tupi – in other words an Indian from Brazil – and to play such an European instrument as ancient and refined as a lute.”29 Perhaps, in defense of inversion, or the path back, we can cite Oswald de Andrade’s poem Erro de Português (Portuguese Mistake) which sees things in a more dialectic manner: “Quando o português chegou / debaixo de uma bru- ta chuva / Vestiu o índio / Que pena! Fosse uma manhã de sol / O índio tinha despido / O português” (When the Portuguese arrived / under a brutal rain / They dressed the Indian / What a pity! / It was a sunny day / The Indian had undressed / The Portuguese). For Oswald Europe did not emerge immune from contact with the new world. It was the discovery of American man which inspired Europeans to create the utopian literary genre, since, after all, we were born as ‘new men:’ “Utopias are a consequence of the discovery of the New World and, above all, the discovery of new man, a different man found on the lands of America.”30 According to the poet the geography of utopias is based in the Americas. It was a Portuguese sailor who described for Thomas More the peoples and customs of a land not located in Europe. Campanella in Cidade do Sol reported to a Genoese amateur who reminds us of Christopher Colombus. Bacon wrote New Atlantis based on an expedition to Peru. In the essay O achado de Vespúcio (Vespucci’s Discovery), Oswald comments on the letter entitled Mundus Novus, which the sailor sent to Pedro Lourenço de Médici in 1503: “It was Vespucci who offered late Ptolemaic Europe a different panorama of the human species” (ibidem, p.210). The letter, according to Oswald, was successfully publicized at the time in various languages, and the images of the new world it contained unchained an intellectual movement of grandeur. All of this opened “a horizon for European man, confined on a flat and immoveable earth between heaven and hell.” The images of America were the midwives of European utopias, since Europe had discovered that on the other side of the world the lands were inhabited by different people. To corroborate his thesis Oswald drew on Afonso Arinos’ book entitled O índio brasileiro e a Revolução Francesa (The Brazilian Indian

June 2012 381 Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores and the French Revolution), in which the ambassador argued that the way of life of Brazilian Indians influenced the thought of humanists such as Thomas Moore, Erasmus, Montaigne, John Locke, and Rousseau’s concept of the natural goodness of the savage, fundamental in the 1789 French revolution. The conclusion is that Europeans did not emerge immune from contact with the New World. As we have seen Mexican culture became an argument of Europeans to criticize their own world, although in the space of art and not science. Pre-Colombian iconography became part of the visuality of European modernists. Nor was it only from the discourse or interpretation of Europeans, for whom the world was divided into Europeans and non-Europeans. Mexicanidad was built within Mexico by the muralists. Brought to Europe by Diego de Rivera, it influenced European artists. In Orientalism Said says that Orientalist thought domesticated a scientific knowledge capable of legitimating the authority of the West over the Orient: the latter, Said says, is an invention of the West. More subtly and subjectively, he adds, is what can be perceived in the literary works of poets and novelists who never travelled abroad: the fasci- nation with the Orient which gave their works an imagination and aesthetic marked by the effects of orientalism. Xul Solar, as we have seen, believed that America, with its systems of myths and beliefs, was giving “the shaking world a great example of co-existence, fraternity, mutual respect, about all the countries with a Latin origin.”31 His criollista desire was to bring to “the tired world, to contribute a new meaning, a more multiple and higher life...”32 His patriotism was to find “the highest possible ideal of humanity – achieve it and extend it to the world ” (ibidem, p.99).

NOTES

1 WARREN, Sarah. The reality of the abstract image: rethinking spirituality in abstraction. In: KROMM, Jane; BAKEWELL, Susan B. A history of visual culture. Oxford & New York: Berg, 2010. p.319-330. 2 Denise Bonato identified the presence of the knight, either explicitly or implicitly in approximately 120 of Kandinsky’s works, including studies and completed works between 1901 and 1943. In the most abstract phase the circle assumes the importance of the figure of the knight. BONATO, Denise. Kandinsky e o Cavaleiro. Masters Thesis (Contemporary Art) – Instituto de Artes, UnB. Brasília, 2006. 3 Cf. GRADOWCZYK, Mário. Alejandro Xul Solar. Buenos Aires: Ed. Alba; Fundación Bunge y Born, 1994. p.29.

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4 ARTUNDO, Patrícia M. (Org.) Xul Solar, Alejandro: entrevistas, artículos y textos inédi- tos. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2005. p.7. 5 GOLDWATER, Robert. Primitivism in Modern Art. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. p.66. 6 Cf. KERN, Maria Lúcia B. As invenções da paisagem na modernidade. In: BULHÕES, M. A.; KERN, M. L. B. (Org.) Paisagem. Porto Alegre: Ed. UFRGS, 2010. p.144. 7 BRETT, Guy. Mexicanidad. In: HILLER, Susan (Org.) The myth of primitivism. London & New York: Routledge, 2005. p.128. 8 THOMPSON, Karen. Jean Charlot: artist and scholar. Available at: libweb.hawaii.edu/lib- dept/charlotcoll/J; Accessed on 23 August 2011. 9 ARMANDO, Adriana; FANTONI, Guillermo. Dioses y códices en la obra de Xul Solar. Ciencia Hoy, Facultad de Humanidades y Arte, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, v.7, n.37, p.26, 1997. 10 ARTUNDO, Patricia. Papeles de Trabajo. In: Xul Solar: visiones y revelaciones. Buenos Aires: Malba; São Paulo: Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2005. p.21. 11 FRY, Roger. Arte americana antiga. In: ______. Visão e forma. Trad. Cláudio Marcondes. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2002. p.145-152. 12 FISCHLER, Graciela Viviana. Xul Solar: 2 años y 229 libros. Paper Presented to Complete a Degree Course (Licenciatura em História da Arte) – Faculdade de Humanidades e Ciências Sociais, Universidad de Palermo. Buenos Aires, 2005. 13 Ver: FLORES, Maria Bernardete Ramos. Xul Solar e o Brasil: sobre uma biblioteca muito particular. Eadem Utraque Europa, Revista del Centro de Estudios en Historia Cultural e Intelectual Edith Stein de la Escuela de Humanidades, p.119-154, 2010. 14 WARBURG, Aby. El ritual de la serpiente. Trad. Joaquín Etorena Homaeche. Madrid: Sextopiso, 2008. p.12. 15 BALDWIN, N. Legends of the Plumed Serpent: biography of a Mexican god. New York: Publicaffairs, 1998. p.8. 16 GALARZA, Joaquín. Códices Prehispánicos. Arqueologia Mexicana, Revista Bimestral, Ciudad de Mexico: Museo Nacional de Antropología, v.IV, p.6-15, jan.-fev. 2007. 17 Folheto da Exposição, acervo: Fundação Pan Klub, Museu Xul Solar. 18 XUL SOLAR: ‘Pettoruti’ Datiloscrito original, s.f. [1924?]. In: ARTUNDO, 2005, p.98-99. 19 GRADOWCZYK, 1994, p.77. For a better understanding of the architecture of Xul Solar, see: FRANCO, Marina M. As arquiteturas de Xul Solar: imagem e texto. Masters` Thesis – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH), Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo, 2007. 20 MILLER, M.; TAUBE, K. An illustrated dictionary of the gods and symbols of Ancient México and the Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993. p.149-151.

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21 MARTÍ, Samuel; KURATH, Gertrude Prokosch. Dances of Anáhuac: the choreography and music of precortesian dances. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1964. p.38-56. 22 PETTORUTI, Emilio. Un pintor ante el espejo. Buenos Aires: Ed. Solar, 1968. p.141. 23 HOSTELLER, Kristen Lee. Iconography Serpent. Journal of the Etruscan Foundation, v.10, jan. 2007. Available at: scholarworks.umass.edu/etruscan_studies/vol10/iss1/16/; Accessed on 12 mar. 2011. 24 PICINELLI, Filipo. El mundo simbólico: serpientes y animales. Trad. Rosa Lucas Gonzáles. México: Ed. El Colegio de Michoaccan, 1999. 25 XUL SOLAR. Emílio Pettoruti. In: ARTUNDO, 2005, p.98. 26 MARKMAN, Roberta. The creation of the Sun and the Moon, from the Florentine Codex. In: ______. The flawed God: the Mesoamerican Mythological tradition. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. p.120-125. 27 OLIVIER, Guilhem. Tláloc: el antiguo dios de la lluvia y de la Tierra en el Centro Del México. Arqueología Mexicana, Ciudad de Mexico: Museo Nacional de Antropología, v. XVI, p.40, mar.- abr. 2009. 28 CONTEL, José. Los dioses de la lluvia en Mesoamérica. Arqueología Mexicana, Ciudad de Mexico: Museo Nacional de Antropología, v.XVI, p.25, mar.-abr., 2009. 29 GRUZINSKI, Serge. O pensamento mestiço. Trad. Rosa Freire d’Aguiar. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001. p.28. 30 ANDRADE, Oswald de. Obras completas. VI: do Pau-Brasil à Antropofagia e às Utopias. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1978. p.149. 31 SHEERWOOD, Gregory. Gente de mi ciudad: Xul Solar, campeón mundial de panajedrez y el inquieto creador de la ‘panlingua’. In: ARTUNDO, 2005, p.76; SHEERWOOD, Gregory: “Gente de mi ciudad: Xul Solar, campeón mundial de panajedrez y el inquieto creador de la ‘panlingua’”, en Mundo Argentino. Buenos Aires, 1951. In: ARTUNDO, 2005, p.76. 32 XUL SOLAR, Alejandro. Pettoruti. [1923-1924]. In: ARTUNDO, 2005, p.99.

Article received on 14 October 2011. Approved on 18 April 2012.

384 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties in 1950s Belém1 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa*

Resumo Abstract O artigo discute o uso de referências The article discusses the use of symbolic simbólicas de origem memorialística e references, from memories and printed jornalística atribuídas ao contexto so- periodicals, ascribed to the socio-spatial cioespacial dos bailes dançantes de or- context of orchestral and sonoro balls in questras e sonoros em Belém, nos assim Belém, at the so-called ‘social clubs’ and chamados ‘clubes sociais’ e ‘clubes su- ‘suburban clubs’. The varied forms of burbanos’. As formas variadas de orga- organization of dance parties in the city nização de festas dançantes na cidade were connected to musical broadcasting estiveram associadas à difusão musical on the radio in the 1950s, as well as be- radiofônica nos anos 1950, mas também ing linked to the performance of com- se ligaram à atuação dos sonoros comer- mercial sonoros or those that specialized ciais ou daqueles especializados em bai- in dance parties. The different ways in les dançantes. Formas diferentes de uso which the urban population used and e acesso aos meios de comunicação/so- accessed the means of communication norização pela população urbana foram acompanhadas pela ênfase da imprensa were accompanied by an emphasis on local na distinção social. Referências social distinction in the local press. simbólicas e valorativas do espaço urba- Symbols and values related to the urban no emergem nos registros de jornal e space emerge in newspaper reports and memorialístico acerca do panorama fes- memorialist recollections the city’s fes- tivo da cidade. tive panorama. Palavras-chave: bailes dançantes; sono- Keywords: Balls; sonoros; social distinc- ros; distinção social. tion.

This article examines the meanings attributed to the dance parties that were a part of the urban panorama of mid-twentieth century Belém. These meanings are evoked through memorialist recollections and journalistic refer-

* Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA). Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas. Rua Augusto Corrêa, 1 – Guamá. 66075-110 Belém – PA – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 385-405 - 2012 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa ences that focus on many different aspects of the dance parties of the time. This article presents and discusses some of these recollections, collected from people involved in the world of popular dance parties in 1950s Bélem, as well as journalistic references from the city’s major publications at the time. The suburban dance parties were organized around presentations by what the contemporary press referred to as picarpes or sonoros, predecessors of the modern sound systems that can still be found in Belém.2 These sound systems began emerging and developing in Belém between the 1950s and the 1970s. The sonoros that animated these dance parties were assembled, beginning in the late-1940s, in an artisanal manner by people with expertise in electronics. They were composed of a metal valve amplifier, a 78 rpm record player (the pick-up, which came to be known by its Brazilianized form, picarpe), a small speaker and a sound projector, known as the boca de ferro (iron mouth). These sonoros or picarpes were related to the commercial sonoros, but they were mainly used at festive events, particularly dance parties. Many sonoro owners began their careers at neighborhood parties, at birthdays and weddings. Those who were successful could start charging to provide music for festive events at both established and lesser known suburban clubs. However, the so-called ‘social clubs’ located in the downtown area of the city and/or catering to middle and upper class society, preferred live music performances by popular ensembles and orchestras. In this study, I seek to identify and discuss the symbolic memorialist and journalistic references regarding the socio-spatial arrangement of the dance parties featuring orchestras and sonoros in the city, at the so-called ‘social clubs’ and ‘suburban clubs.’ The diversification of means of communication (and the means of playing music) in the mid-twentieth century is linked in a variety of ways to the organization of dance parties in the city. The different ways in which the city’s population made use of these means of communication and broadcasting have ties with ideas related to social distinction. These ideas are evoked in the consulted sources as symbolic references to the urban space. The memorialist records discussed below were collected from personal memoirs and compilations of journalistic reports. Interviews were also conducted with people involved in the festive scene of the 1950s dance parties. At the same time, a range of journalistic reports regarding the 1950s – primarily from A Província do Pará and O Liberal – were extensively consulted. The memory of the parties and the urban landscape of the time is herein considered to be based on the individual experiences of the subjects in relation to the festive events. I was therefore guided by the work of Halbwachs,3 who

386 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties

Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties highlights the relationship between the individual who engages in the act of remembering and the collective, who are the people who were closest to that person and who exchanged/shared their impressions. Each of our stories, in this sense, is intertwined with memorialist impressions from a variety of sources (media, conversations, hearsay, experienced events), based on collective contexts and condensed into personal versions.4 The journalistic references are taken simultaneously as historical accounts and discursive creations. On the one hand, the news and advertisements in publications served as ‘historical witnesses,’ because they reveal the informa- tive dynamic of the press as a means of communication, mediating the interests and points of view of a variety of social subjects.5 On the other hand, they reflect the choices and stylistic options of authors, taking into account their commitment to the editorial line of the publication and certain political forces of the time. By treating journalistic texts as discursive creations, it is possible to uncover their compositional processes and, in turn, their artistic and social influences.

Radio, sonoros and popular music

Beginning in the early 1930s, samba became the most popular musical style in Brazil, following the early twentieth century popular preference for maxixes, tangos and boleros.6 In the case of Pará, radio broadcasts played samba while also featuring Latin rhythms that had been heard since the 1920s on programs from foreign stations, such as Rádio Havana, from Cuba. In the 1950s there was a local audience for boleros and merengues, as well as salsas, congos, mambos and cúmbias, which stood out as unique characteristic of the region’s musical receptivity. The mass production of radios in the 1930s contributed to the popularity of radio programs. The Rádio Club do Pará (Pará Radio Club), founded by Edgar Proença, Roberto Camelier and Eriberto Pio on April 22, 1928 –becoming the first radio station founded in the Amazon region – benefitted from radio’s increasing popularity. Its employees were largely recruited from the local newspapers. PRC-5 and ‘the voice that speaks and sings for the plains’ became Rádio Club do Pará’s prefix and slogan, respectively. It was created under the system of associated radio stations,7 paying a monthly fee and playing records that were borrowed from business owners, whose names, establishments and products were publicized in return. The invention of valve radios in the 1930s helped lower the production

June 2012 387 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa costs of receivers and helped broaden the access of the listening public. The increased financial contribution by sponsors to the programming made it a profitable business venture. At the same time, political groups of the era began to see radio as a formidable instrument for reaching out to society. The 1940s are seen by radio professionals as ‘the golden years.’ The Rádio Club broadened its reach using the Ondas Tropicais (Tropical Waves) radio frequency, which allowed it to be heard in far-flung corners of the state. The radio started to perform a role that had previously been carried out by river traders – and subsequently by the postal service – passing along information to the residents of distant localities. With respect to music, the Rádio Club hired its own orchestra, while also incorporating musical ensembles into its rotation, such as Edyr Proença’s (the son of Edgar Proença) Banda da Estrela and the Alberto Mota ensemble, which will examined in greater detail later in this article. The station’s musical programs were performed in its auditorium, opened in 1945 in the Aldeia do Rádio (Radio Village) complex, the station’s first headquarters, located in the Jurunas neighborhood. Competing with the city’s only radio station until the early 1950s were the sonoros, speaker services in the commercial areas of the city, devoted to advertising, interspersed with musical programming. The commercial sonoros featured speakers mounted on poles, connected to a network that led to a kind of central studio, installed within the area of business. The authors of the work Ligo o radio para sonhar (I turn on the radio to dream) mention the existence of three sonoros in the neighborhood of Pedreira and another in the neighborhood of Comércio, during the 1940s: A Voz Suburbana (The Suburban Voice) and A Voz da Pedreira (The Voice of the Quarry), which operated in the neighborhood market; O Canto da Felicidade (The Song of Happiness), on the corner of Rua Barão do Triunfo, and A Voz do Dia (The Daily Voice) on Rua João Alfredo, in the Comércio neighborhood. In his memoir about Belém radio, journalist Expedito Leal8 emphasizes that the ‘mass communicators’ of radio in Pará in the mid-twentieth century adhered to a nationwide radio practice that followed the U.S. model of disk jockeys (DJs). Some of the Club’s broadcasters worked as sonoro announcers before joining the station. Accustomed to interacting with the public while engaged in commercial advertising, the broadcaster/DJs were able to maintain their same communicative style on the radio programs. Leal identifies some of the successful Belém broadcasters of the 1950s and 1960s as having come from commercial sonoros. The most prominent examples are the broadcasters

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Costa Filho and Eloy Santos, who worked at Sonoros Rauland, the city’s first mobile sonoro (installed in an automobile), and Haroldo Caraciolo, an important proponent of merengue on the airwaves in Pará. Expedito Leal points out, in the section on Caraciolo, that “merengue was fashionable in the suburbs of Belém during the 1960s and 1970s, connected mainly to the dance style.” Merengue from the Antilles was very popular in the city, especially the hits from the orchestras Sonora Matancera (from Matanzas, Cuba) and Sonora Santanera (a Mexican group), and from the Dominican singer Luis Kalaff, known for his boleros. Caraciolo’s interest in merengue originated from his initial experience as a sonoro announcer – not the commercial advertising sonoros, but the ones that played music at parties held at suburban clubs. Caraciolo, like other lead picarpe and sonoros announcers that played each week in the suburban clubs, came from the suburbs. Caraciolo began his career with “Sonoros Flamengo,” in the neighborhood of Pedreira. He then transferred to “Clube do Remo”, followed by “Botafogo”, which was also located in Pedreira. In the neighborhood of Umarizal, he worked for “Diamante” and then at “Big-Bem”, a sonoro that operated as an ‘affiliate’ of “Flamengo”. In the mid-1960s, Caraciolo was hired by Rádio Guajará, originally to work as a commercial announcer. Soon after, he became the host of a musical program, where he made a name for himself by using slang and popular expressions, the trademarks of his communicative spontaneity that attracted the attention of listeners. Through this music program, Caraciolo was said to have created and spread the use of the word ‘lambada’ to refer to what he ‘would take’ during the intervals between his presentations. A lambada was a shot of cachaça that he would take at the bar next to the station as the merengue songs were playing. By the 1970s, the term lambada came to be associated with Caribbean dancing rhythms played by local music groups. Caraciolo worked at other radio stations in the city during the 1970s and, at the end of the decade, due to professional problems, abandoned radio work and began working for sonoros dedicated to commercial advertising, where he would remain until the end of his life. There is a clear line running through Caraciolo’s career, from his experience with the sonoros, to the height of his popularity on the radio. Both his communicative style, which featured popular expressions, and his preference for merengue accentuate the characteristic elements of the festive environment of the suburban clubs where the sonoro ‘announcer/controllers’, as they were known, would work. The continuum of party sonoros, radio stations and com-

June 2012 389 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa mercial sonoros that characterized Caraciolo’s career all fell within the same realm of professional possibilities. The evolution of the radio announcer profession followed the growing presence of party and commercial sonoros throughout the city. The sonoros did not merely fulfill a complementary position to radio, but instead occupied a particular space as a means of communication connected to festive events.

‘Stick and string’ and electronic orchestras

Ensembles and orchestras were given preference over sonoros at popular dance parties. According to Salles,9 the development of urban music in Pará, particularly from the 1920s onwards, was closely associated with the spread of instruments such as the flute, the banjo and the cavaquinho, which served as the foundation for small musical ensembles. In addition to the music being broadcast by Brazilian and foreign radio stations (choro, samba, tango, bolero and mambo), other dancing rhythms, such as the foxtrot, the Charleston and swing music, among others, became popular in Pará during the 1920s and 1930s, due to the popularity of American cinema. These influences formed the basis of the musical references that underpinned the work of the orchestras and musical ensembles that were introduced as Jazz Bands in Pará. According to Corrêa,10 jazz became a ‘real epidemic in the city’ during the 1920s. According to the author, during the 1920s and 1930s, a variety of groups with jazz features emerged in Belém,11 although their repertoire was diverse, and included tangos, marches, choros and sambas. With respect to the performances of these ‘jazzy’ musical ensembles, their musical identity seemed to be more associated with the formation of these ensembles (in which the wind instruments, in particular, stood out) than with an exclusive connection with a musical genre. ‘Jazzy’ ensembles, in this context, corresponded more with a group of non-scholarly musicians who also played rhythms from Brazil and other countries, than with a musical specialization in an American genre.12 Their performances first started in the 1920s, in the salons of the elite, and then began taking place at public events in the 1930s and 1940s, as they became more popular. News reports highlighted the presence of orchestras at carnival parties in Belém beginning in 1945, where they played ‘the sambas, marches and choros of the time.’ The jazz bands and orchestras circulated among the more ‘aristocratic’ and other, less sophisticated salons. Furthermore, the presence of musical ensembles in the more modest salons signaled the occurrence of a special

390 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties event, for which the attendees most likely took care in preparing themselves. The newspaper advertisements cited by Lúcio Flácio Pinto stressed the importance of these parties by accentuating the fame of the musical group that would perform, stressing the ‘high-class’ public that would be in attendance and the dancing rhythms that would be played. These ‘jazzy’ groups or ‘club ensembles’, as they were known in the 1950s, had their fame accentuated by the success of their performances in the ‘salons of the elite.’ The instrumental composition of the band – with a double bass, trumpet, saxophone, bass, drums and a Brazilian tambourine known as the pandeiro – became the standard for the ‘stick and string’ orchestras, as they were also known. The Jazz Orchestras that were most publicized in the newspapers of Belem during the early 1950s were: “Batutas do Ritmo”, led by Sarito; “Jazz Internacional”, led by “O Mago da Viola” (The Viola Magician) Professor Candoca (subsequently led by Orlando Pereira, beginning in 1955); “Jazz Martelo de Ouro”, led by the musician Vinícios; “Jazz Vitória”, led by Raul Silva; “Jazz Marajoara”, led by maestro Oliveira da Paz; “Jazz Orquestra de Maçaneta”, led by Reginaldo Cunha; “Jazz-Band Pará”, led by Professor José da Paixão, and the Orchestra of Maestro Guiães de Barros, connected to the Club’s radio station. The ‘stick and string’ instrumental ensemble would only change in the 1960s, when the orchestra “Alberto Mota e seu conjunto” included an important electronic novelty at their parties at the Automóvel Clube: the solovox.13 Two years later, the Automóvel Clube dance party became a regular occurrence, livened by the Orlando Pereira’s Orchestra, which featured their novelties the vibraphone14 and the ukulele. Their first musical performance took place during a twist contest, and they would perform again at a cha-cha-cha contest, both styles referred to in the local press as ‘fashionable dances.’ Due to the pioneering introduction of electronic instruments into these ensembles, the so-called ‘stick and string orchestras,’ which were entirely acoustic, quickly lost ground to the more modern orchestras, such as those led by Alberto Mota, Orlando Pereira, Lélio Pais Henrique, Maçaneta and Guiães de Barros. The introduction of instruments such as the solovox, vibraphone and electric guitar were attractions in and of themselves during the performances of these musical ensembles. The main attraction of the ‘stick and string’ orchestras were the wind instruments, such as the trumpet, saxophone and trom-

June 2012 391 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa bone. The electronic orchestras, in turn, were organized as addenda to the electronic equipment. According to Costa,15 the high price of these instruments made it difficult for many acoustic ensembles to ‘modernize’, leading them to stop performing altogether. Meanwhile, familiarity with electronic instruments helped the careers of popular artists identified with the new musical genres being released on the radio and on records. One interesting example of this is the early career of the musician Joaquim Maria Dias de Castro, born in Cametá, who came to be known as “Mestre Cupijó”. In Sociedades de Euterpe, Vincente Salles writes that the early career of the young musician was marked by the ‘anxieties and indecisions of modern youth,’ resulting from the influence of mass communication, particularly radio and television. When he was 13 years old, Joaquim Castro began playing in a ‘pop music’ group, “Batutas do Ritmo,” while also practicing with the traditional band Euterpe Cametaense, which was founded in Cametá in 1874. He began composing sambas and mambos in 1951. In 1960, he formed his first ensemble, equipped with an electric guitar and a solovox, which is referred to by Salles as ‘merely a matter of status.’ The end of the decade brought a major turning point in his career. He ‘discovered’ siriá, defined by Salles as a typical dance of the Tocantins region, and he began making records with his folk ensemble “Ases do Ritmo.” On his siriá records, Joaquim Castro began performing as Mestre Cupijó. Salles is rather critical of the early stages of Cupijó’s career. The future siriá master had been interested in the musical universe that Salles refers to as pop, in reference to the popular music played on the radio and on television. The ‘anxieties and indecisions of modern youth’ had led the young musician to compose and perform sambas and mambos with his musical ensemble, equipped with electronic instruments. His ultimate turn towards folk music is not questioned by Salles, since it could be seen as a natural development in the career of a countryside musician. In fact, Cupijó’s experience with so-called ‘pop music’ can be viewed as a relatively common occurrence, given the popularity of ‘electronic’ orchestras in Belém and the boleros, mambos and sambas being played on the radio. It was not ‘merely a matter of status,’ as Salles states, but rather a question of musical taste connected to the different stages of the artist’s career. The change in his identity is largely related to the opportunities to further his career: the choice between playing in a dance party orchestra, similar to many that ex-

392 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties isted in Belém, or to becoming the precursor of a musical style (siriá) with strong links to the popular traditions of Baixo Tocantins, Pará. A different route was taken by Aurino Quirino Gonçalves, who came to be known in the 1970s as Pinduca, the “Rei do Carimbó” (King of Carimbó). Also from Baixo Tocantins, Pinduca began his musical career in Belém in the 1960s as a member of the Alberto Motta Ensemble, where he became familiar with electronic instruments. The know-how that he acquired performing at dance parties led Pinduca to establish his own ensemble in the late 1960s. His group, which was known as “Pinduca e seu Conjunto,” featured ‘modern’ elements from the very beginning, incorporating the popular dancing rhythms of the time into his performances, including the twist (which was popular at the ‘society clubs’) and the merengue (which was very popular at the ‘suburban clubs’). In the early 1970s, Pinduca’s ensemble began playing carimbó – the popular musical style and dance from the countryside – at dance parties on the outskirts of the city, becoming relatively successful. The performances by Pinduca’s ensemble were unique because the carimbó was played using the modern formation of the electronic orchestras, even though it was originally an acoustic musical style. Pinduca recorded his first carimbó record in 1973 and sold a whopping 100,000 copies that same year, mainly in the local market. Pinduca’s record resulted in some relative national success for carimbó during the first half of the 1970s. At the same time, comments published in the local press during the mid-1970s tended to look unfavorably upon Pinduca’s innovations, often described as a misrepresentation or degeneration of the ‘creation of popular culture.’ The opponents of Pinduca’s music lost sight of the fact that his musical output was strictly in line with the interests of the public attending the suburban and social club balls in the innovations of sound technology. Carimbó played with guitars and perhaps even a solovox was an attractive ‘language,’ particularly for the suburban audiences of Belém, who were already accustomed to the sonoro dance parties and the popular rhythms being played on the radio.

Social clubs and suburban clubs

The leisure options connected to ‘bohemia’ expanded in Belém throughout the 1950s. In addition to the cinema, the Arraial de Nazaré theater and the traditional parties (carnival, the festas juninas held around the Feast of St. John,

June 2012 393 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa the feasts of other patron saints, etc.), the bars, and the elite and suburban clubs were important leisure options for the city’s residents. Some of these clubs were founded even before the 1950s. Among them are a few dating back to the early twentieth century, such as “São Domingos Esporte Clube.” In an article published in the newspaper O Liberal on May 27, 1987, São Domingos is described as the oldest club in the neighborhood of Jurunas. It was founded in 1915, and its name was a tribute to the São Domingos Chapel, located in the same neighborhood. In the beginning, the club was mainly focused on athletics and its members took part in several sports (soccer) tourna- ments in the ‘suburbs.’ The club also began to carry out initiatives focused on the welfare of the neighborhood’s residents, which ultimately led it to change its name, in 1940, to “São Domingos Esporte Clube Recreativo e Beneficente” (São Domingos Recreational Sports and Charity Club). According to the article, the club operated under a system that relied on the payment of monthly dues by members, in which women were cooperating members and men were sitting members, most likely composed of couples who lived in the area. The club’s high point came during the 1940s and 1950s, when it ‘progressed,’ on account of the revenue earned from the ‘social parties’ it hosted. The article does not provide details regarding the nature of these parties, but it is possible to deduce that they were dance parties featuring musical ensembles and/or sonoros, tied to the festive dates of the club and the city (carnival and the festas juninas, for example). From among the ‘social clubs’ cited by the press in the 1950s, several stood out in the regular advertisements of the time: Assembleia Paraense and the Automóvel Clube, on Avenida da República, in the neighborhood of Campina; Azas Esporte Clube, on Avenida Independência, in the neighborhood of Nazaré; Delta Clube, on Travessa Rui Barbosa, in the neighborhood of Nazaré; Clube Paragon, on Travessa Cintra, in Cidade Velha, as well as the nightclubs of the Central Hotel and Palace Teatro, in the back of the Grande Hotel, in the neighborhood of Campina. Meanwhile, in the suburban neighborhoods, dance parties were promoted by a wide range of clubs, which served as the headquarters of trade unions and professional associations, as well as associations for sports and leisure.16 Some clubs whose locations were identified in the newspapers published in the early 1950s are listed below (including their neighborhood and street, when available): Artístico Esporte Clube (Umarizal, Avenida Alcindo Cacela, 663); Bôa Fama Esporte Clube (Pedreira); Botafogo Esporte Clube (São Bráz); Esporte Clube Norte Brasileiro (Cremação); Imperial Clube (Jurunas); Leblon

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Esporte Clube (São Bráz, Avenida Ceará); Municipal Clube (Cremação); Santa Cruz Esporte Clube (Pedreira); Sociedade dos Estivadores da Borracha (Umarizal, Rua Boaventura da Silva); Sociedade União e Firmeza (Jurunas); Uberabinha Esporte Clube (Telégrafo Sem Fio); Viação Beneficente Esporte Clube (São Bráz, Travessa de Maio, 175); Vitória Clube (Umarizal, Alcindo Cacela, 563). Here we see the strong presence of clubs located in the immediate outskirts of central neighborhoods such as Cidade Velha, Campina and Nazaré. From Jurunas to Telégrafo sem Fio, from the banks of the Guamá River to the Guajará Bay, these clubs were spread across a range of suburban neighborhoods during the 1950s, marking the city’s longitudinal territorial boundary to the East. The presence of picarpes and sonoros was more common at the dance parties in these neighborhoods, while the city’s successful orchestras preferred to perform in the so-called ‘society clubs.’ The occasional performances by Jazz Orchestras in the suburbs were filled with merengue, boleros and sambas, among others. It was the same repertoire performed by Pinduca’s ensemble, with the inclusion of that ‘old’ musical style and dance, the carimbó, which came to be played with electronic instruments. In the years that followed, these preferences with respect to music and dance would become characteristic musical traits (of composers and music lovers) of this part of the Brazilian Amazon. The process later resulted in the formation of popular musical genres at the end of the 1970s, such as brega and lambada. Currently, the professionals involved in the world of sound system parties tend to see a continuity between the older and more recent musical preferences, to the point of characterizing brega as a ‘lighter bolero’ or a ‘more finely tuned bolero.’ In his “Canto da cidade” column, published from November 11 to 17, 2001, the journalist Walter Pinto of the newspaper O Paraense also evokes memories of the suburban clubs that operated during the 1960s and 1970s. Pinto highlights the “big dance parties at the site of Clube Athlético São Paulo,” which, in his opinion, was the “largest suburban club in the Marco neighborhood.” Below is an important passage from among his recollections:

It was there that I had the pleasure of watching one of the greatest popular dancers of my childhood. The fabulous Agostinho, a thin black man who wore loose linen clothes and danced the merengue like nobody else. That guy Agostinho was an ace. You just don’t see things like that anymore.

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Amateur dancers like Agostinho were unquestionably a common presence at the suburban dance parties of Belém, particularly when dancing rhythms like the merengue became one of their hallmark features.17 The number of these suburban clubs swelled during the period between the 1950s and the 1970s. His recollection is invoked by the memory of some of the people who used to attend these dance parties. Valderina Lopes, a history professor and longtime resident of the neighborhood of Marambaia mentioned during an informal conversation (in April 2010) that there were several clubs in the neighborhood since the 1950s. According to her, there were ‘lookouts’ at the ‘more renowned’ clubs (also known in Marambaia as ‘social clubs’) who prohibited children and women associated with prostitution from entering the dance parties. According to Lopes, this concern highlights the difference between the ‘family parties’ and ‘cabaré parties’ often cited by the people who attended these events. The same distinction is mentioned by the owner of G. Amaral Produções, Gilmar Amaral (interviewed in February 2003), who points out that since the 1950s, the cabarés (cabarets) were known as places of prostitution, unlike the gafieiras (dance halls), which were geared towards dance parties. The professional dance party promoter Sinval Pereira, 56, (interviewed in April 2010) makes a distinction between dançarás18 (places to hold dance parties) and boates (nightclubs), where patrons were ‘more interested in drinking.’ In most of the memorialist references to the suburban clubs, there are few allusions to the association between these party halls and prostitution. Perhaps this may be explained by the relative anonymity of the cabarés at the time and/ or since it was an issue that was of little interest to the interviewees. The collective recollection of the carabrés retained negative associations. We therefore have a very lively festive dynamic present in the social and suburban clubs of Belém during the mid-twentieth century, through which circulated party organizers, musicians and singers from ensembles, sonoro professionals, dancers and a captive audience that frequented dance parties in each neighborhood.

Suburbs and suburban parties

The characterization of the suburban clubs in the journalistic reports of the 1950s shows connections to the representations made at the time about the urban configuration of Belém, which contrasted the city center with the suburbs. Beyond the spatial references, the city center and the suburbs could be

396 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties understood as evaluative assessments,19 stated in the press of the time as a mark of social distinction.20 Using São Paulo-based geographer Antonio Rocha Penteado’s research into the spatial configuration of Belém,21 carried out during the 1960s, it is possible to visualize the suburban setting where the sonoro parties took place. In his work, the city is presented as being divided into ‘distinct functional areas,’ beginning with the neighborhoods of Nazaré and São Bráz, which are ‘elegant’, filled with trees and ‘surrounded by beautiful gardens’; the neighborhoods of Cidade Velha, Campina and Reduto, all of which surround the neighborhood of Comércio, are characterized as being modest and occupied by the ‘middle class’; the third sector, which is the most populous, is the one occupied by ‘poor residential neighborhoods’ on the outskirts of the city, made up of: “wooden houses covered with leaves, covered with palm trees, some of which were built on very moist terrain and are raised on stilts, others of which sit directly on the ground.” This socio-spatial arrangement is relatively consistent with the journalistic and memorialist descriptions of the city regarding the marginal position of some of the so-called ‘suburban neighborhoods.’ In the 1960s, the outskirts of the expanding city were marked by the presence of the so-called vacarias, described by Penteado as “unsanitary backyard stables next to residences, or small farms.” The vacarias provided milk and flowers for most of the suburban population and were mainly located in flooded sections, far from the urban infrastructure. The suburban neighborhoods, with their homes made of straw, mud, wood and filling, according to the description provided by Penteado, testified to the “degree of poverty of the residents of the urban outskirts of Belém.” The disappearance of the vacarias would only come to pass in the 1970s. The first to be deactivated were those closest to areas that were urbanized or in the process being urbanized. At the same time, the ones located in the flooded regions and those that were located further from the city center, did not give way to any improvements in the urban infrastructure. This is more or less the situation that per- sists up to the present day, with a lack of infrastructure in the peripheral neighborhoods. It was in this environment of poverty and a near total lack of urban infrastructure that the suburban clubs flourished until the 1970s. Despite the popularity of the dance parties in these clubs, which were located in the poor and peripheral neighborhoods, it was not common to find news written about them

June 2012 397 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa in the press at the time. In fact, it was common to find news in the local periodicals that associated urban violence with the suburban dance parties, such as the in the article “Duas Desordens” (Two Disorders), published in the O Liberal newspaper on January 2, 1951:

It is common, almost a general rule, that after consecutive days of parties, the police records are full of incidents, particularly disorderly conduct. Oftentimes the rounds in the suburbs exceed all the others in the police records. The parties at some suburban clubs, where Prohibition is not respected, often give rise to serious cases of disorderly conduct, which result in injuries and altercations where, as a general rule, the aggressive parties wind up in the police station and those who were attacked wind up in the Emergency Room.

The news item specifically mentions two dance parties held in the neighborhood of Jurunas, one at “Sociedade União de Firmeza” and the other at “Imperial Clube”. In the end, it is emphasized that the incident took place at a suburban party, while in the streets, only one disturbance was reported. The author mentions “Prohibition,” which was probably enforced after a certain hour in the evening. It is important to note the emphasis given to the police rounds in the suburbs and the perception of suburban clubs as places of violence. This is the journalistic focus that placed news of suburban clubs on the police page, while the social columns were filled with announcements about parties in ‘aristocratic and elegant clubs.’ Although not often reported upon, suburban parties enjoyed widespread popular participation, at a time of significant population growth in the suburbs. Suburban parties were the preeminent spaces for performances by the city’s sonoros and picarpes. Whether at the regular weekend dance parties or at major festive events that mobilized the entire city, the sonoros and their variants would be present, creating the festive environments typical of suburban Belém. The press in Pará did not limit itself to reports of violence at suburban parties or police concerns about sonoro dance parties. There was also a certain idealization of the popular festivities. Such is the case with a 1956 mention of the suburban parties for the Feast of St. John in the newspaper A Vanguarda as a place “where the happiness is more abundant, more sincere, more joyful.” The sonoros, meanwhile, seem to be everywhere in which the festive effervescence was marked by a massive popular presence, whether during carnival or the festas juninas.22 The item below, from O Liberal presents the pro-

398 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties gram of carnival celebrations at the Club “Estrela do Mar,” in the neighborhood of Pedreira, on January 10, 1951:

Program of parties at the Estrela do Mar headquarters, located at Av. Marquês do Herval, 883 Saturday – 20 (Picarp) / Thursday – 25 – jazz-Guaraní / Satuday – 27 (Picarp)/ Thursday – 01 (Picarp) / Saturday – 3 (Picarp) / Monday – 5 – jazz Guaraní

This programming includes a mix of performances by (unnamed) picarpes and a jazz ensemble, with more frequent performances by the former. The same registry mentions a performance by the future Mestre Cupijó’s jazz ensemble “Batutas do Ritmo” at the Sociedade dos Estivadores da Borracha’s pre-carnival party. The various types of carnival parties came to be associated with the sonoro parties, composing a new form of celebration. This is the case with the carnivalesque ‘assustados’, common in Belém in the early 1950s. The ‘assustados’ were a type of surprise party created by a Radio Club program in the 1940s.23 During the carnival period, radio employees and announcers would choose a residence and hold a surprise party, transmitted over the radio. The news archives consulted for this article showed that the ‘assustados’ moved beyond their exclusivity with the radio and began to occur much like the other carnival parties. This can be seen through the ads in the newspaper O Liberal on January 12 and 26, 1951, respectively:

Assustado Guaranteed to please, the Queiroz brothers will hold an assustado tomorrow night, in the ample halls of Atlético Regional, at Praça Floriano Peixoto, 390. A powerful “pick-up” will play this year’s biggest carnival hits, and the club’s headquarters will be decorated, transforming the location into an authentic kingdom of Pandegolândia.

Virgilio’s Assustado Next Saturday, at Rua Mudurucús, 1760, a pyramidial carnivalesque assustado will take place under the command of Virgílio, one of the most faithful subjects of Momus. For this party, which is sure to be a nig hit, Virgílio hired the Queiroz brothers’ “Pick-up,” which guarantees its absolute success. We received an invitation.

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The ‘assustado’ reinvented as a popular carnival party therefore included the presence of the sonoros, or ‘pick-ups’ as the journalist faithfully rendered the term in English. The ‘guarantee of absolute success’ was modeled on the suburban popularity of the sonoros at regular weekend parties.24 This popularity was further increased by being featured in the press, which was duly com- pensated with an invitation sent to the newspaper’s offices. Moreover, in the case of the Queiroz brothers’ assustado, the ‘carnival hits’ would be played by their own sonoro at the headquarters of the Atlético Regional club. And the 1951 party in honor of Momus would feature the sounds of the picarpe that belonged to the very same Queiroz brothers. During the 1950s, picarpes could be found at unlikely events and locations, such as at the parties held at the São José Prison, according to a January 3, 1951 report in O Liberal:

Two days of festivities at the S. José Prison At the “São José” Prison, from December 31 to January 1, parties were held for the prisoners, at the initiative of Dr. Orlando Brito, warden of the prison, with support from the State government, which provided a grant to improve the meals.

DAY OF SATISFACTION The 1st of this year was filled with satisfaction for the prisoners of the “São José” Prison. Early in the morning, a powerful “Pick-up” was installed inside the prison, which transmitted recordings of the most recent musical successes… Throughout the morning there was music… Visits were allowed in the afternoon, which, much like the morning, featured musical recordings…

Of course, this vaunted ‘day of satisfaction’ served much more to ensure the satisfaction of the public security authorities, particularly the warden. The reports of ‘improved’ meals were excellent propaganda regarding the government’s performance in this area. In addition, the prisoners, most of whom came from the lower echelons of society, could use to event to engage in a leisure activity with which they were already familiar. The prisoners from the suburban neighborhoods of Belém certainly knew how to appreciate a good picarpe party.

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Sound systems and social stratification in ‘sonoro city’

The emergence of new technologies for the amplification, broadcasting and recording of sounds, which began in the late nineteenth century,25 defined a new orientation towards the production and dissemination of popular urban music and songs. The insertion of gramophones, records and radios into the consumer market and the increasing ease of purchase and access to these products by the middle class had a decisive influence in transforming the musical preferences of various segments of Belém society during the mid-twentieth century. As Hobsbawm points out, the 1950s and 1960s were a time of economic prosperity for developed countries.26 There emergence of new productive technologies, which decreased the need for labor, was accompanied by an expo- nential increase in production and consumption capacity. At the same time, the expanding means of mass communication gave the working class27 access to a more diverse range of magazines, newspapers, radio programs and records, which better suited the multiplicity of interests of this diverse and growing audience. In the case of the peripheral countries in the capitalist system, access to the technological innovations of the industrialized world in the realm of communications remained, in the mid-twentieth century, limited to wealthy urban areas. However, this did not stop the poor population, settled in the suburbs of Brazil’s major cities, from creating a means of inserting themselves into the new society of mass communication that was taking shape in the country at that time. In the case of Belém, in addition to radio broadcasts of music, there was an extensive and diverse field of musical propagation and leisure at the dance parties held at ‘social’ and ‘suburban’ clubs. This was the historical makeup of a form of celebration, which gradually brought together diverse elements such as Brazilian and international musical influences, radio broadcasting, as well as the proliferation of sonoros and suburban clubs, primarily. The newspaper reports helped register the meanings attributed to the ‘aristocratic’ and suburban dances at the time, the performances by musical ensembles, the presence of sonoros at dance parties, and the relationship between parties and urban space. The variety of meanings related to the city’s festive dynamic was configured in such a way as to provide a clear sense of distinction and social stratification between ‘suburban’ and ‘aristocratic,’ between elegant leisure and entertainment for the masses.

June 2012 401 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa

However, the memorialist records presented in this article generally assume a nostalgic position with respect to the artists, communicators and fre- quenters of the dance parties of the past. The present-day city, which serves as the temporal and spatial reference from which the subject recalls the past, is far from the Belém of the 1950s, which featured a clearly defined separation between the city center and the suburbs. Recollections of the diversity of festive events put aside social divides to highlight the eccentricity of the older modes of celebration. In the pages of the newspapers and the minds of those who share memories from that time, taking part in the dance parties is fully associated with a variety of forms of access to the urban space. This access can even be viewed from the perspective of Lefebvre,28 as participation in the (at times symbolic) construction of the city and its collective appropriation. The use of sound systems and access to them, to orchestra and sonoro performances, and to dance parties in social and suburban clubs, are examples of the struggle for a ‘right to the city’ in Belem in the mid-twentieth century.

NOTES

1 This article is the partial result of research carried out for the project “Expressões da cultura de massa e da cultura popular em Belém na segunda metade do século XX,” coordinated by the author at History Department of the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA). The project is funded by the Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at UFPA. The author thanks Elielton Benedito Castro Gomes and Edimara Bianca Corrêa Vieira, undergraduate students in the History program serving as research fellows in connection with the project. 2 Sound systems known as “aparelhagens” are used by companies that specialize in parties with brega music, first introduced in the 1970s. For more information, see COSTA, Antonio Maurício. Festa na Cidade: o circuito bregueiro de Belém do Pará. Belém: Eduepa, 2009. 3 HALBWACHS, Maurice. A memória coletiva. Translation by Beatriz Sidou. 2.ed. São Paulo: Centauro, 2006. p.51. 4 See also the collective article by Alistair Thomson, Michael Frisch and Paula Hamilton, as well as the text by Henry Russo in the collection of AMADO, Janaína; FERREIRA, Marieta. Usos & abusos da história oral. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2006. 5 According to FREHSE, Fraya. O tempo das ruas na São Paulo de fins do Império. São Paulo: Edusp, 2005, p.23-32, newspaper texts can be understood as cultural productions, full of the values and symbolic repertoire of the time. These are revealed through typical expressions of journalistic jargon, the emotional tone of the author, the design of the head- lines, subheads and layout.

402 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties

6 For more on this, see VELOSO-PAMPOLHA, Augusto. Figuras do sereno: desejos amoro- sos, transgressão e boemia na poesia das canções de sucesso dos anos 50. Dissertação (Mestrado em Literatura Brasileira) – FFLCH, Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo, 2003; TINHORÃO, José Ramos. Música popular: do gramofone ao rádio e TV. São Paulo: Ática, 1981; and TINHORÃO, José Ramos. Pequena história da música popular brasileira: da modinha à canção de protesto. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes, 1974; VIANNA, Hermano. O misté- rio do samba. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar; UFRJ, 1995. 7 Most of the information to follow about the history of radio in Pará is from VIEIRA, Ruth; GONÇALVES, Fátima. Ligo o rádio para sonhar. Belém: Coordenadoria da Prefeitura de Belém, 2003. For more on this topic, see also FERREIRA, Paulo Roberto. Após o regatão, o rádio e a televisão (Available at: “Almanaque da Comunicação”, www.almanaquedacomu- nicacao.com.br/artigos/1173.html; Accessed on: Dec. 5, 2010); and the website “O Pará nas Ondas do Rádio” (www.oparanasondasdoradio.ufpa.br; Accessed on Dec. 5,. 2010). 8 LEAL, Expedito. Rádio Repórter: o microfone aberto do passado. Belém: Meta, 2010. p.13. This book is a collection of biographical accounts of the trajectories of noteworthy professionals from the history of Pará radio. It is commemorative in nature, accentuating the importance of the communicators to their local audiences. The author also carried out interviews with some of the subjects of the book. The text does not concern itself with the truthfulness of the information or with comparisons between differing versions. The historical record, in this case, is intertwined with an effort to “rescue” the past and assign value to the memories of professionals who were very popular at radio’s height as a means of communication. 9 SALLES, Vicente. Sociedades de Euterpe: as bandas de música no Grão-Pará. Brasília: Ed. do Autor, 1985. p.105. 10 The information about the spread of jazz in Belém in the early-twentieth century was taken from CORRÊA, Ângela Tereza de Oliveira. História, cultura e música em Belém: décadas de 1920 a 1940. Tese (Doutorado em História) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em História Social, Pontifícia Universidade Católica. São Paulo, 2010. p.165-166. 11 Such as “Jazz-Band do City Club” (1923), under the direction of Maestro Isaías Oliveira da Paz; “Jazz-Band Escumilhas” (1924); the group of black musicians “Los Creollos” (1927); “Dandy-Jazz” (1929), “Jazz Alegria” (1931), “Jazz da Mocidade” (1931), “American Jazz- Band” (1937) and “Yara Jazz-Band” (1938). All of these are cited in Ângela Corrêa’s dissertation (ibidem, p.166). 12 See HOBSBAWM, Eric. História social do Jazz. Translation by Ângela Noronha. 7.ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2009 [1961]. Writing about the rise of jazz in the United States in the late-nineteenth century, Hobsbawm states that the music of New Orleans was the same as that of the military bands, in terms of the use of wind instruments and the repertoire of marches, waltzes and quadrilles. The proliferation of jazz bands in New Orleans was the fire expression of a genre as a mass phenomenon: with a population of 89,000 black inhabitants in 1910, the city had 30 bands. In the twentieth century, the appearance of orchestral jazz in the United States was associated with musical performances at dance parties, where

June 2012 403 Antonio Maurício Dias da Costa swing was the characteristic rhythm. The music of these so-called big bands in the 1920s and 1930s was, according to the author, a musical hybrid, jazz turned into a danceable pop style. (p.62, 69, 93, 83). 13 Monophonic synthesizer that can be coupled with a piano or organ to add a solo voice. It was invented in the United States around 1940. An example of the solovox as a novelty in terms of musical equipment in Belém in 1955 can be found in this passage from a memorialist work by Lúcio Flávio Pinto: “the Associação Desportiva Recreativa Bancrévea, ‘the club for major social events,’ lit up its New Year’s festivities with Armando Sousa Lima, ‘the king of the solovox’ (brought directly ‘from the television and São Paulo nightlife’)...”. Ibidem, p.33. 14 Instrument composed of electrified tubular bells, with similar functions to those of a xylophone. 15 COSTA, Toni Leão da. Música do Norte: intelectuais, artistas populares, tradição e modernidade na formação da ‘MPB’ no Pará (anos de 1960 e 1970). Dissertação (Mestrado em História Social) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Amazônia, Universidade Federal do Pará. Belém, 2008. p.160. 16 Mainly athletic clubs (basketball, volleyball, nautical sports and amateur soccer) at whose headquarters the dance parties were held. This perhaps accounts for the continued practice in Belém of using the Portuguese word “sede” (headquarters) to refer to places that hold dances parties. 17 Expedito Leal presents broadcaster Paulo Ronaldo, “the phenomenon of Pará radio in the 1960s and 1970s,” as a dance hall regular and merengue dancer, “in the best suburban style” (LEAL, 2010, p.121). 18 The term dansará is featured in the seventh verse of the lyrics of poet Antônio Tavernard for the song “Foi Bôto, Sinhá”, by Waldemar Henrique. The text is from 1933 and it is re- plete with regional words and expressions representative of “talk used by the Amazon cab- oclo.” For an analysis of some of the lyrics to Waldemar Henrique’s songs, see ALIVERTI, Márcia J. Uma visão sobre a interpretação das canções amazônicas de Waldemar Henrique. In: VIEIRA, Lia Braga; IAZZETTA, Fernando (Org.) Trilhas da música. Belém: Edufpa, 2004. p.121-162. 19 Here I am following the perspective of Evans-Pritchard, in which space is taken as a symbolic construct, resulting from a process of appropriation that articulates the representations and values of it inhabitants. For more on this, see chapter II, “Tempo e Espaço”, em EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. Os Nuer. Translation by Ana M. Goldberger Coelho. 2.ed. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1999. p.122-123. 20 In line with the thinking of Pierre Bourdieu, who identifies “social distinction” as a form of classification and stratification of social groups according to their amount of symbolic capital. See BOURDIEU, Pierre. A distinção: crítica social do julgamento. Translation by Daniela Kern; Guilherme J. F. Teixeira, São Paulo: Edusp; Porto Alegre: Zouk, 2008. 21 PENTEADO, Antonio Rocha. Belém: estudo de geografia urbana. Belém: Edufpa, 1968. This study was presented as a dissertation for the Free-Teaching competition in Geography

404 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Festivities and urban space: music broadcasting and dance parties at the Universidade de São Paulo in 1966. The passages in quotations that follow were taken from pages 45 and 54. 22 This is also the case with this report from the newspaper A Vanguarda from June 26, 1955, entitled “Another Saturday of quality and originality, filled with balloons and fire- works”: “The early hours of yesterday morning marked the end of the big party at the small farm that Pedro Belfort and other residents of Rua Cuçurá… held in honor of St. John. The music was provided by Sonoros ‘Lira de Ouro’, which played the biggest hits from its excellent collection for the junina party. In a broad clearing, dozens of couples danced the qua- drille, the baióes, the choros and the maxixes.” It is one of the few positive newspaper references to the presentations made by sonoros that was identified during through the research for this article. It is pointed out in the text that the collection being played was focused on the dance rhythms appropriate for the festas juninas, including choros and maxixes. The next year, A Vanguarda announced the presence of ‘the sound of boleros’ echoing in the streets that “filled with people and bonfires.” The boleros heard by the journalist were probably played by a sonoro. 23 VIEIRA; GONÇALVES, 2003, p.65: “the program Assustados da Onda do Rádio. During the three days of festivities, a group of employees and announcers from the broadcaster knocked on the door of a random house and went in to throw a wild party.” 24 Several sonoros are mentioned at the party for Rei Momo Virgílio, announced in the newspaper O Liberal on February 1, 1951: “The assustados are happening. On Saturday, Virgílio will be at Mundurucus, leading the frevo. Sunday, São Domingos, Paraense, Botafogo, Regional and rounding out the festivities Rei Momo with his court of Colombinas, Pierrots, Arlequins...” (emphasis mine). 25 See: WILLIAMS, Raymond. Means of Communication as Means of Production. In: ______. Culture and materialism: selected essays. London & New York: Verso, 2005. 26 See the chapter “Os anos dourados”. In: HOBSBAWM, Eric. A era dos extremos: o breve século XX: 1914-1991. Translation by Marcos Santarrita. 2.ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995. p.253-281. 27 For more on this topic, see HOOGART, Richard. The uses of literacy. 6.ed. London & New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008. This book, originally published in 1957, – with Culture and society (1958), by Raymond Williams and The making of the English working class (1963), by Edward Thompson – is one of the foundational works for the development of “Cultural Studies” in England. 28 LEFEBVRE, Henry. O direito à cidade. Translation by Rubens Eduardo Frias. 4.ed. São Paulo: Centauro, 2001.

Article received on 5 December 2010. Approved on 18 May 2012.

June 2012 405

“One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) Raquel Varela*

Resumo Abstract A 25 de abril de 1974 um golpe de Esta- On 25 April 1974 a coup d’état by the do levado a cabo pelo Movimento das Armed Forces Movement (MFA) put an Forças Armadas (MFA) põe fim a 48 end to 48 years of the Estado Novo dic- anos de ditadura do Estado Novo e ini- tatorship in Portugal, starting what cia o período que ficaria conhecido co- would become known as the Carnation mo Revolução dos Cravos. O MFA gran- Revolution. The MFA immediately at- jeia de imediato apoio popular e mais tracted public support and later political tarde um crescente prestígio político que prestige which allowed it have a promi- o levará a ocupar um lugar de destaque nent place in the stabilization of the na estabilização do Estado e na consoli- state and the consolidation of democra- dação do regime democrático. Porém, cy. Nevertheless, the MFA would even- sucumbirá na crise de governação im- tually succumb to the crisis of gover- posta pela tensão social da segunda me- nance imposed by social unrest during tade de 1975. Neste artigo analisamos a the second half of 1975. In this article ascensão e queda desse movimento de we analyze the rise and fall of this move- oficiais, a forma como ganhou apoio po- ment of Army officers, how it won pop- pular e as razões explicativas do seu des- ular support and the reasons that ex- moronamento, um caso de estudo a ní- plain its collapse, a case study of global vel mundial pela participação destacada relevance due to the prominent role it que teve no derrube da mais longa dita- played in overthrowing the oldest mili- dura militar da Europa Ocidental do sé- tary dictatorship in twentieth-century culo XX. Western Europe. Palavras-chave: militares; Movimento Keywords: Military; Armed Forces das Forças Armadas (MFA); Revolução Movement; Carnation Revolution. dos Cravos.

* Instituto de História Contemporânea, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Av. de Berna, 26-C. 1069-061 Lisboa – Portugal. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 407-430 - 2012 Raquel Varela

For example, let us look at our case: unconditional supporters of the MFA (and not rarely insulted for this), over time we came to realize that this MFA had entered into a type of reproduction by scissiparity, in such a way that where once there had been one, we began to see two, three, if not four … José Saramago Member of PCP, Oct. 1975

The End of the Regime and the MFA

On 25 April 1974 a coup d’état led by the Movimento de Capitães (Captains’ Movement), re-baptized as the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA – Movement of the Armed Forces), brought an end to 48 years of the Estado Novo dictatorship. The MFA immediately received the enthusiastic support of the population of Lisbon, who in less than a week destroyed the symbols of the old regime. The government was besieged in Carmo Barracks in Lisbon; the doors of Caxias and Peniche prisons were opened, with all political prisoners being released; Pide, the feared political police, was dismantled; the offices of the regime newspaper A Época were attacked; and censorship was abolished. However, no one expected such a dizzying end of the oldest colonial empire. The most organized party in Portugal at that time, which probably had between two and three thousand members,1 the Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português – PCP), advocated the overthrow of the dictatorship with an alliance between the “masses allied to the progressive military sectors,” to overcome the country’s ‘backwardness.’ However, the regime fell at neither the hands of the ‘masses’ nor of the soldiers, but at those of a group of middle-ranking officers in the Movimento dos Capitães, who no longer wanted to fight in a war they considered to be lost.2 The dragging on of the war over 13 years without any glimpse of a political solution from within Marcelo Caetano’s regime and the imminence of defeat opened a crisis in the Armed Forces.3 The revolution was determined by the combination of the anti-colonial struggle with the eruption of conflicts in the metropole e vice-versa, the situation in the metropole reinforced the legitimacy of liberation movements in the colonies and precipitated the independence of these in a short space of time (in 19 months all the former colonies had become independent). More than a corporate question, the Captains’ Movement emerged out of the divisions within the ruling classes of the Estado Novo, the prolonging of

408 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) the war, the scenario of an economic crisis the depth of which had brought an end to the Bretton Woods system and the 1973 oil crisis.4 A combination of factors which led on 25 April the MFA, the majority of whose members came from the intermediate layers of society, were not very politicized, and limited to the objective of bringing about an end to the war, carried out a coup d’état and formally handing leadership of the country, through the Junta for National Salvation (Junta de Salvação Nacional – JSN), to a sector of the Portuguese elite represented by António de Spínola, the general who had previously published the famous Portugal e o futuro (Arcádia, 1974) in which he advocated a political solution to the war. Since the beginning António de Spínola had been associated with a federalist type solution for the colonies.5 After trying during the preparation for the coup to impose changes on the MFA program – and having been obliged to back down –, he stated in the first communiqué to the country from the Junta de Salvação Nacional, shortly after the coup, that the first political task of the JSN was to “guarantee the survival of the nation as a sovereign Patria in its multi-continental entirety.”6 The following day the MFA Program was published stating that the “overseas policy of the Provisional Government com- mences by recognizing that the solution to overseas wars is political and not military.”7 In less than 24 hours the country had become aware that had been divergences about the question at the origin of the coup: the way in which to bring the war to an end and the solution for the colonies (Ferreira, 1993, p.21-33). However, the MFA, irrespective of the weak political experience of its members, was de facto against the war – this was what had motivated the middle- ranking officers to carry out the coup.

The Law of Independence for the Colonies and the Division of the Military

The First Provisional Government, which took power on 16 May 1974, included members of the PCP, the social-democrats from the Socialist Party (Partido Socialista – PS) and the liberals of the Democratic Popular Party (Partido Popular Democrático – PPD) in an unstable and fragile coalition which did not withstand for more than two months the intensification of social conflict in Lisbon and the colonies. Its fall has been interpreted by various researchers, above all, as the result of divisions within the government and the

June 2012 409 Raquel Varela

MFA and the Junta de Salvação Nacional about the solution to the colonial war, in which General António de Spínola represented a delayed solution to the colonies in an attempt to prolong Portuguese dominion in Africa, while the MFA, PCP and PS wanted their independence. Kenneth Maxwell (1999), whose studies highlight the relationship between the advance of the anti-colonial struggle and the Portuguese revolution, defends the perspective that the dismissal of the prime minister close to Spínola, Palma Carlos, on 9 July 1974, and of António de Spínola himself on 30 September 1974, were the result on a close relationship between politics in the two geographically distant places, but ones that were part of the same historical and political process:

The crises which pushed Portugal decisively to the left also pushed Portuguese Africa decisively to independence. These emerged as a series of often prolonged conflicts in which the political tensions in Portugal, events in Africa and external pressures combined to provoke serious confrontations. The majority of politicized Portuguese were well aware of the underlying causes of these crises, although the Portuguese press did not publicize them, or when it did, it was done in vague form. Only when the crises had ended and when their consequences were visible – the dismissal of prime minister Palma Carlos on 9 July and the appointment of Coronel Vasco Gonçalves in his place; the dismissal of General Spínola on 30 September and his replacement with General Costa Gomes – were they publically discussed. No one involved in these crises, however, ever doubted that the form and content of the future politics of Portugal and the conquest of independence of the African colonies were intimately linked. The result of the struggle in one sphere would help to consolidate the victory or bring about the defeat of the other. (Maxwell, 1999, p.99)

The war had resulted in the fall of the regime at the hands of the army. Prolonging the war – which would face determined opposition in the colonies and in Portugal – could result in the triggering of a dynamic resulting in a deepening of social instability in Portugal. International factors also contributed to the independence of the colonies: the Soviet Union, the United States and, albeit with less influence, China, wanted the independence of the colonies.8 The liberation movements and the leaders of African countries fought for independence; in Portugal the escala- tion in social conflict also favored their independence. On 28 July, a day after the publication of the law granting independence to the colonies, a joint com- muniqué from the PS, PCP and PPD9 called for a demonstration of support for

410 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) the president of the Republic, the government and the MFA, to celebrate and support the independence of the colonies. Until February/March of 1975, a period when the carnation revolution was carving out a previously unseen path in Western Europe – involving the occupation of latifúndios, the creation and generalization of resident committees, the growth of worker committees, the expropriation of large fortunes in the country and the nationalization of the national bank and insurance companies – the MFA remained one of the legitimating structures of the leadership of the state, which enlisted support from the people. It was the MFA that people asked for help to occupy houses or land and also the MFA from which worker and popular organizations accepted in certain conditions (such as the case of the post office strike in 1974 and the 1974 TAP strike, or the anti- NATO demonstration in February 1975) a level of repression which it no longer accepted from police forces such as the PSP or GNR10 or from the Quadro Permanente das Forças Armadas (the Permanent Armed Forces). It grew in terms of prestige and also gained institutional power with the signing of the MFA/Parties Pact and later with the creation of the Conselho da Revolução (Revolutionary Council) which formally gave the military a leading role in governing the country.11 Intimately linked with the Communist and Socialist parties, the MFA played a role in the consolidation of democratic liberties in opposition to the sectors most associated with support for the Estado Novo regime, but also, when called on to do this, was involved in the restraint and repression of the most radicalized labor conflicts, especially through COPCON, associated with the most leftwing sectors of the regime, whose leader was the person most responsible for the operational aspects of 25 April, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. According to Philip Schmitter, the unity of the MFA with the people was “the cornerstone of its legitimacy.”12

The Prestige of the MFA

How was this unity, which Schmitter considered the cornerstone of the Movimento das Forças Armadas, formed? The MFA kept for itself the immense prestige of having overthrow the hated 48 year old Salazar dictatorship. However, its strength would be expanded by the policy of the PCP, which would cause impacts within the actual MFA, progressively reinforcing its role within the leadership of the regime, a role to which it was called by other parties within the coalition, notably in

June 2012 411 Raquel Varela the stabilization of the state and the repressive apparatus, which had fallen into disgrace after the coup. From May 1974 onwards the PCP, at that time the best organized Portuguese political party, and the one which would be determinant in the leadership of the workers’ movement organized in Intersindical, adopted as a strategy the ‘People-MFA Alliance,’ trying to support itself on the military to carry out its political program. Shortly after 25 April the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) praised the officers who had carried out the coup. On 30 April the charismatic leader of the PCP, Álvaro Cunhal, returned from exile and gave a press conference where he stated before hundreds of supporters that “our people in alliance with the soldiers of 25 April will lead our country on the road to liberty, democracy and peace.”13 On 4 May the Central Committee of the PCP stated that: “The continuation of the Movement, at least until the elections for the Constituent Assembly, is one of the essential conditions to consolidate and expand the results achieved and to successfully confront counterrevolutionary plots and conspiracies … On the reinforcement and irreversibility of this alliance depends the final victory of democracy in Portugal.”14 In the speech celebrating 1 May 1974, Álvaro Cunhal reaffirmed that the conditions of the victory of democracy were the unity of the masses and the alliance of the people with the Armed Forces.15 In the first legal Avante! this alliance was seen as a “question of life or death for the democratic revolution.”16 With the approximation of elections for the Constituent Assembly, set for 25 April 1975, the PCP would reinforce the MFA in the leadership of the state. In addition to the MFA program being a democratic program that coincided with the PCP one of ‘national democratic revolution,’ Álvaro Cunhal had already predicted at this moment that the elections would leave his party in a weaker position in terms of political representativeness. In the MFA the PCP sought a ruling partner, a form of reconstructing a popular front leadership, since everything indicated – and the leadership of the PCP was aware of this – that the PS would win the elections with a sufficient margin to leave in question the coalition in the same form as it had functioned until then, accelerating the dispute for key sectors in the state apparatus (the ministries of Finance, Communication, Labor and Agriculture). At the beginning of April 1975 the PCP let it be known that in order to prevent conflicts after the electoral result, and since the MFA had no representation in the Constituent Assembly, negotiations were underway between the political parties and the MFA to “to reach an agreement about the basis of Portuguese democracy after the elections.”17 As Maria Inácia Rezola mentions,

412 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) since the beginning the PS, PPD and CDS had contested the presence of the MFA in the Constituent Assembly (Rezola, 2006, p.159). The speed at which strikes and occupations spread between February and March 1975 led all the parties to prudently support the reinforcement of the military in the running of the state, although the PS argued that this reinforcement should be more nuanced. At the beginning of March 1975, the Socialist Party declared through Mário Soares that it defended the institutionalization of the MFA, and the “superiority of elections.”18 On 11 April 1975 a ceremony was held to sign the pact between the MFA and the PS, PPD, PCP, MDP, FSP and CDS.19 With the exception of AOC, who adhered to the accords later, the extreme left did not sign the pact.20 The terms of the agreed platform respected the MFA Program and defended that the future Constituent Assembly should take the same form as the platform; it restated that that the Constituent Assembly had no power to make any alteration in the Provisional Government (c-5); prevented the institutionalization of the MFA from being questioned, as well as obliging its inclusion in the new Constitution (c-6):

In addition to the provisions which formed the basis of this agreement, the Constitution was also to enshrine the principles of the program of the Movimen- to das Forças Armadas, the victories legitimately won during the process, as well as the developments of the program imposed by the revolutionary dynamic which openly and irreversibly pushed the country along an original path to a Portu- guese socialism.21 Comrades, a few days ago an agreement was established between the MFA and various political parties. What does this agreement signify? Essentially it signifies the following: these parties commit themselves in the Constituent Assem- bly to prepare a Constitution which will reinforce the alliance of the People with the Armed Forces … We believe that the existence and continuity of the MFA is a guarantee for the liberty and democracy of our country.22

The Revolutionary Council and the Crisis in the MFA

A failed rightwing coup led by General Spínola provoked a general mobilization of workers and the middle levels of society to prevent the coup on 11 March 1975. One of the military aims of the coup was the subduing of the 1st Light Artillery Regiment (Regimento de Artilharia Ligeira 1 – RAL 1) from Lisbon by paratroopers. However, the latter, after some hours of what came to

June 2012 413 Raquel Varela be considered a misunderstanding – they did not know why they had left their quarters with orders to surround RAL 1 – ended up embraced by their comrades from the Lisbon artillery unit, some even crying (they were not going to participate in a ‘fratricidal’ fight).23 Thousands of people spilled onto the streets and COPCON called for barricades to be erected. Unions, most propelled by the PCP, mobilized almost the entire country against the coup. The front page of Avante! published on the afternoon of 11 March proclaimed “The Reaction Shall Not Pass; Unity of the PEOPLE-MFA”, “Portuguese People. Everyone Take to the Streets.”24 On the same day the occupations of factories and strikes continued. TAP, the Portuguese airline, whose workers had confronted the government and the MFA before 28 September 1974, entered into a general strike, not only of TAP but of all air traffic. Bank workers refused to leave their premises until the nationalizations of their banks were decreed. The coup was defeated and those responsible arrested. Among these were various officers and some of the richest men in the country, such as Jorge de Mello, José Roquette, Jorge Espírito Santo. A new phases of occupations of houses, companies and factories began and popular mobilization increased again. In a study carried out by Durán Muñoz, March 1975 was the month with the most labor conflicts and the most labor conflicts with radical actions.25 One of the political solutions of the parties in the government coalition for this crisis was the immediate institutionalization of a leadership which could counter the social advance of which the Spinola coup had been both a product and an engine. The argument given by those in favor of the Revolutionary Council – “protect the popular movement of the parties of the elite, in the words of Costa Gomes” (Maxwell, 1995, p.158) – did not hide the fact that the Council, which had absorbed the functions of the Junta de Salvação Nacional, the Council of State and the Conselho dos Vinte (Council of Twenty), aimed to create a center of state authority (ibidem), a transformation which was supported by all the parties of the coalition, from the PCP to the PPD. On 12 March the Conselho dos Vinte transformed itself into the Conselho da Revolução (Revolutionary Council), and to this there was added an MFA Assembly, in the words of Maxwell “a confusing amalgam of executive and legislative functions which usurped a large part of the authority intended for the Constituent Assembly” (Maxwell, 1995, p.158). The Revolutionary Council thereby emerged as the creation of an institution which had both popular legitimacy and military strength to carry out the revolution and the duplicity of

414 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) powers, while at the same time isolating the sectors linked to the dictatorship. In this way it was an essential institution in the consolidation of the democratic regime. However, its creation did not prevent the worsening of the crisis within the MFA, which sprung from the rupture between the PCP and the PS after 11 March and the elections of April 1975, and which would lead to the breakup of the MFA during the so-called ‘hot summer’ of 1975. The MFA was one of the leaders of the revolution, together with the political parties, especially the PCP and the PS – the other parties, to the left and the right, never managed to present an alternative leadership of the process. It had various advantages which placed it in a privileged position to stabilize the state during the revolutionary process: it had the prestige of overthrowing the regime; the support of the PCP, the greatest defender of the People-MFA Alliance, and it controlled the weapons. However, it had many weaknesses, the first of which was a military leadership – it had military support and the strength to take action within the ranks of the army, but had little influence on the social movement which characterized the country at this time. This social strength, which involved Intersindical, the residents and workers committees, resided above all in the parties – the PCP and PS, and sectors of the extreme left, especially Maoists –, as well as in the Church, notably in the center and north of the country. The MFA was also socially a peculiar military organization, with some degree of social homogenization arising from the middle classes:

A statistical survey showed that the members of the Captains’ Movement were generally speaking, from the sociological point of view, from the petit bourgeoisie and the middle classes (some were working class). Born in the 1940s (they were thus young people in their thirties) and with more than two commis- sions of service in Africa (in the case of the majors). A relative majority (39.4%) came from families of public employees, while another significant group belonged to the most disadvantaged layers: rural proletariat, workers, employees in the tertiary sector, artisans, etc. (20.5%). At the beginning of 1974 there were 4165 officers in the permanent staff of the army; of these 703 participated in the coup (16.9%). Of the participants, 73.82% belonged to the infantry and the artillery, and 80.8% were captains and majors.26

Finally, it was a leadership that had been in permanent crisis since 25 April, when the divergences with the Spinola sector had begun and which developed in such a manner that in September 1974 the MFA ended up remov-

June 2012 415 Raquel Varela ing the general to whom it had handed over power five months earlier. This instability within itself would be reinforced during the revolutionary period – the reinforcement of the MFA in control of the state took place in light of the reinforcement of the internal divisions within the MFA, which would succumb to the social conflict between the PS and PCP.

The PS-PC Rupture and the Breakup of the MFA

In effect until March and April of 1975, despite the substantial differences that emerged between the PCP and the PS in January 1975 in relation to the institutionalization of single trade union confederation, called Intersindical – which the PCP defended, arguing that this would ensure worker unity, and which the PS opposed, defending trade union pluralism as a condition of the democratic consolidation of the country –, the government coalition, with the growing participation of the MFA managed to assure the governability of the country. However, from the second half of 1975 onwards the coalition would fall apart as the result of various factors. The already mentioned failed coup of 11 March 1975, led by General Spínola – whose leaders found political and financial support in Francoist Spain –, reflects a process of the radicalization of the revolution. Between May and June 1975 there were strikes, threats of strikes, and other labor conflicts in the metallurgical, chemical, hotel and textile sectors, in municipal councils, in civil construction, and from the miners, electricians, bakers, printers and TAP.27 Occupations stretched from Ribatejo to Alentejo. Dozens of large companies were nationalized. Then there emerged the occupations of houses which at the national level achieved an extraordinary rhythm from the middle of February 1975, especially in Lisbon, Porto and Setúbal. Houses were occupied and the residents met, making decisions as surprising as demanding the nationalization of a bank or that the empty house become a neighborhood crèche.28 Residents committees came to be in many cases the organizational base of the urban social movement and were transformed, in the analysis of Chip Dows, into a “real dual power at the level of the city.”29 In response to the social tension, the government was obliged to increase the minimum wage and to approve measures to restrict price increases for food. This was after demonstrations had been held throughout March against the “high cost of living.”30 In many companies production and employment were maintained, while in many others pay rises were granted, while collective contracts, holiday pay and a Christmas bonus became very common. Also

416 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) implemented were generalized improvements in pensions, and maternity, sickness and invalidity benefits. It was also during this period that workers were granted unemployment benefit. These facts, combined with the defeat of the 11 March 1975 coup, would provoke the transformation of a regime crisis into a general crisis of the state, translated into the greatest crisis of governability of the revolution following the departure of the PS and later the PPD (liberals) from the IV government, which led to its collapse in July 1975 and the creation of the fragile V government on 8 August 1975. The PS moved from an alliance with the PCP towards a broad social block which included sectors of the right and the Church – and the PCP was left alone, with its only allies being sectors which the party did not trust or control, such as part of the military left and part of the extreme left. Along with the political crisis there emerged divisions within the MFA itself, which would be shown to be irremediable. In an attempt to make the PS change direction and to recreate the former coalition, the PCP would use various tactical resources, including creating military control over the workers’ movement. This attempt to militarize labor was stated in Documento Guia Povo-MFA (People-MFA Guide Document),31 which allowed for a super-party organization in which the MFA and other bodies from the state apparatus would ‘support’ the popular assemblies and where the Revolutionary Council was the “supreme body of national sovereignty.”32 It was an attempt at the militarization of the labor force which attempted to put workers and all the bodies of popular power under the control of the MFA, and in particular the Revolutionary Council. However, it was never more than a project, because within the framework of the Portuguese revolution after the crisis within the army it was to start with a less ambitious sketch – probably based on a certain flirtation of the MFA with theories called at that time ‘third worldism.’ Another of the attempts at social stabilization was the production battalion policy,33 which sought to prevent all obstacles to the maintenance of production, whether they came from sectors of the bourgeoisie (economic sabotage, the decapitalization of companies), or from workers (strikes and demands, especially related to wages). However, despite these efforts the ‘production battalion’ policy neither managed to mollify labor struggles nor invert the de-investment process in Portugal. Between April 1974 and November 1975 the number of unemployed rose from 40,000 to 320,000, to a large extent because of the impact of the 1973 oil crisis.34 In Portugal the Gross Domestic Product growth rate fell from 11.2% in 1973 to 1.1% in 1974 and to -4.3% in

June 2012 417 Raquel Varela

1975. The deterioration of economic conditions was one of the objective factors that worsened the crisis of state. In June 1975 in confidential document English diplomats described the political situation in Portugal as follows:

The situation in Portugal for investors continues to deteriorate … The principal difficulties continue to be successive increases in wages, drastic labor problems and a sharp fall in productivity. In many cases managers and businessmen have suffered physical intimidation from worker committees – they have been locked into their premises or received telephone threats. The attitude of the Portuguese authorities has frequently been vague and very inefficient. In fact, there was even a case where confidential discussions between British companies and the Portuguese authorities were reported to a worker committee.35

On 10 July 1975, the PS decided to formally abandon the IV Provisional Government.36 Officially the reason presented was the dispute over the República case which would oppose the extreme left, the PCP and the PS, who would accuse the PCP of wanting to have a dictatorial control of the means of communication. The growing weight of the PCP in numerous state structures and the direct control of or political influence in the majority of daily newspapers at this time was evident. However, the case of República was not obviously a case of communist domination of mass communications. Melo Antunes, in a conversation with the British prime minister, stated that “The communists were actually surpassed by workers who were more to the left,” according to the Melo Antunes because although the Maoists came from the “bourgeoisie and had university educations, they had managed to penetrate deeply among workers.”37 However, the pretext was based on a real situation – avoiding a revolutionary upswing, with the PS believing that the strategy of supporting a popular front government with the communists needed to be reconsidered. The PCP would be accused by the socialist leadership of wanting to create a communist dictatorship in Portugal, and the PS proclaimed itself as being capable of rescuing liberty from collectivization, trade union control, anti-Catholicism, and the dictatorship over mass communications,38 seeking in this way to consolidate the support of the intermediate sectors of Portuguese society. The anti-communist campaign was structured during this hot summer,39 supported not by the willingness of the PCP to lead the transition to socialism in Portugal, but by the dispute between the PCP and PS over the key positions in

418 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) the state and military apparatus and by the increasing lack of control over the popular, worker and student movements. The Political Commission of the PCP considered the PS decision to leave the government as ‘very serious;’ holding the PS and its anti-communist campaign responsible, it refused to allow the formation of a rightwing government without the communists; and appealed to the PS to reconsider and refuted “energetically the calumnies in which it was accused of grabbing power,” stressing the democratic trajectory of the party.40

“One, Two, Three MFAs...”

On 25 1975, the MFA Assembly met and came up with a proposal of creating a triumvirate, consisting of Costa Gomes, Vasco Gonçalves and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, to try and bring an end to the crisis. The PCP supported this decision and said that the “principal enemy” continued to be that of “re- actionaries,” and that precise solutions were needed to make “the democratic order be respected.”41 In the negotiations for the formation of the V Government, Vasco Gonçalves sought to form a plural government within the orbit of the left, but without success. On 29 July 1975, Melo Antunes abandoned the position of Foreign Affairs; the next day he was followed by Jorge Sampaio and João Cravinho from MES (Movimento de Esquerda Socialista – Socialist Left Movement). On 4 August 1975 it was the turn of Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, close to the extreme-left, to refuse the support of Copcon for a ‘strong’ government led by Vasco Gonçalves.42 On 8 August the V Government took office. The same day a group of officers close to the PS – Melo Antunes, Vasco Lourenço, Sousa e Castro, Vítor Alves, Pezarat Correia, Franco Charais, Canto e Castro, Costa Neves and Vítor Crespo – made public a document which they said refused to accept “the Eastern European model of socialism” and rejected the model of the “social democratic society in force in Western Europe,” published the previous afternoon in a special edition of Jornal Novo (Rezola, 2006, p.352-353). It became known as the Documento dos Nove (Document of the Nine). On the same day this newspaper published a note from Mário Soares demanding the resignation of Vasco Gonçalves (ibidem). When the V Government finally took office, on 8 August 1975, it no longer had the social conditions to govern. The V Government, headed by Vasco Gonçalves, was composed of soldiers, independents and members of MDP/CDE, but politically it only had the

June 2012 419 Raquel Varela formal support of the PCP and MDP/CDE. The relationship of the PCP with the officers linked to the V Government is unclear, since the only source available for now are interviews, whose veracity cannot be testified by other types of sources, and because often the political relationships of the officers with the Communist Party were not translated into an organic relationship. We know that the V Government would fall without much resistance from its members – including Vasco Gonçalves, who supported the PCP policy –, and we also know that the fall of the V Government provoked a worsening of the tension between the military left and the PCP. When he took office Vasco Gonçalves made an appeal for reconciliation and for the unity of the Armed Forces,43 but Costa Gomes explicitly spoke of a ‘transitory’ solution (Rezola, 2006, p.347). It was a government supported more than anything by the military left and by an important part of the extreme-left. From the day it took office the support of the PCP was elusive, and the Party would start during this period a process of increasing rupture with the military left, which it did not fully control and whom it distrusted.44 The communiqué45 from the political commission of the central committee of the PCP about the formation of the V Government, issued on 8 August 1975, stressed the urgency of filling the political vacuum as the principal reason behind the formation of the V Government (“not to leave the state machine paralyzed”); held the PS responsible for having abandoned the governmental coalition; left open the recomposition of the government to “widen the social and political support of power,” defended the rapid resolution of divisions in the MFA and the complementarity between MFA and the government, and stated that the PCP was ready to fight ‘for socialism’ and ‘liberties.’ In contrast with the communiqués from the beginning of July,46 in which the possible marginalization of the PS was threatened, the communiqué ended by stating that the PCP was ready to review the composition of the government without any discriminations:

Faced with the dangers which surround the revolution, it is time for vigorous and decisive action and also for the joint search for solutions to the serious problems faced. For its part the PCP is ready to proceed to such examination with all the forces interested in the revolutionary process, without any discriminations or exclusions.47

Avante!, the PCP’s official newspaper, never published a cover explicitly supporting the V Government or Vasco Gonçalves, but a special Avante! was

420 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) actually published questioning the same government. The weekly newspaper, published on 7 August 1975, was aimed at defending the PCP from the attacks its offices was being subjected to;48 it would be published a week later focusing on the same subject.49 In the meantime, on 11 August a special issue of the party’s newspaper was published50 with part of the report of Álvaro Cunhal to the extraordinary central committee meeting of 10 August, in which the communist leader questioned the viability of the V Government. In this report Cunhal explained, in a passage only later published in full, that “we are thinking at the moment [before the formation of the government] to allow a field of political maneuver for our party which will not necessarily tie us to a predictable fall of the government of Vasco Gonçalves.”51 In Álvaro Cunhal’s report to the Central Committee it can be seen that the party considered that the actual crisis was in risk of ending in armed confrontation in a civil war, which the PCP did not want. Cunhal stated that the crisis was reaching all levels of society: it was a political, economic, military and social crisis and in the middle of the decolonization process (this referred to the civil war in Angola). The leader of the PCP defined as priorities the creation of a political solution which essentially put back together the previous governmental coalition and its close coordination with the MFA. He asked activists to put an end to “sectarianism” and to “distinguish the principal enemy,” the “fascist and fascistic forces,” the “hesitant forces around the revolutionary process and the road to socialism.” The condition for a new government should be above all the willingness to “cooperate with the communists,” in other words the maintenance of the PCP in the coalition government and the end of violence against the PCP. The report asserted that there could not be a democratic regime without the PCP, but admitted that the PCP, “confident in its strength, does not overestimate it.” It demanded the purification of the state apparatus (in relation to the courts, diplomats, etc.) and the formation of a government that would be efficient and operative (these are defined as “the priority and urgent tasks”). The “other urgent tasks” included a policy of austerity, control of the deficit, the resolution of the problems of the industrial sectors in crisis, development of the production battalion, restriction of imports and the increase of exports; also defended was the process of nationalization and agrarian reform; in the international field the maintenance of good relations with the Common Market countries and Spain was proposed, and respect for the international treaties of which Portugal was a signatory, as well as good relations with the

June 2012 421 Raquel Varela

“third world countries;” in relation to decolonization, the PCP defended a government which could contribute to resolve the situation in Angola, supporting the MPLA. Finally, in the social areas Cunhal defended that within a policy of “acceptable demands,” what was most urgent was assisting the labor sectors where the crisis was greatest. Although without being publically hostile in the part of the report published in the Avante! it obviously contains messages for the military left not to try to take power through a coup, on the one hand, and the desire to put the governmental coalition with the socialists back together, on the other:

Under the pretext of respecting the will of the masses, basismo (the grass- roots) and democratism, the submission of the decision of the vanguard to ma- nipulated votes seeks to weaken, disorganize and finally liquidate the vanguard. This also involves a general situation, valid both for the working class and popular vanguard and for the military vanguard … All revolutions have an irregular and accidental process. Malleability, the capacity to reexamine and rectify, self- critical courage … are essential conditions in a truly revolutionary process.

For its part, the PCP was ready to examine the situation and forms of cooperation with all those part of the revolutionary process and willing to cooperate with the communists. Under these basic conditions, “we will not make any discrimination.”52 In the report the communist leader admitted that although the military question was still unresolved, the V Government was a failed government from the beginning and would weaken the PCP:

The aim of the conservative and reactionary forces was to show this government to be the government of the communists, without military support and to let it fall afterwards. The failure of this government was to be the failure of the Communist Party, which was to be dragged down with this defeat and all its consequences.53

As we have mentioned above, this report, which would later be published in its entirety, omitted the passages where Álvaro Cunhal stated that he expected the government to fall (ibidem, p.127-166) and recognized the weakness of the MFA: “The make-up of the Directorate signifies at this moment that the MFA is decapitating itself and that it does not have a homogenous leadership …” (ibidem). Cunhal made great efforts to convince the party that the Grupo dos Nove

422 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) was a force that “could be recovered for the revolutionary process” (ibidem, p.162), that it should not support the military left and that there was a risk that this sector could turn against the party:

The military left was very excited (in our view without reason) with the decision taken by the Directorate that the signatories of the Melo Antunes Document be removed from the Revolutionary Council … While the problems were already serious at the political level, due to the position of the Socialist Party and PPD against the revolutionary process, while it was already serious for this reason, its gravity is now even greater due to the internal situation of the MFA in which the military left and the Grupo dos Nove are in conflict and where there exists an ul- tra-left and anarchistic faction which hinders the unity of the progressive forces. This signifies the hypothesis, whose necessity may not be confirmed, but it is a hypothesis that bridges may be built with forces or elements which are presently in a sector against the process. This is at the civil and military level. The same happens when a certain military group, which we see as progressive, turns against the party and leaves the party isolated. (ibidem, p.127-166)

Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves believed that he headed a weak government, stating when the ministers of V Government were being sworn it that was not “clinging to power” and that, “not even if this government were for just one minute, not even for this would its members not form it,” (Gonçalves, 1977, p.377). However, his posterior overview clashes with the official history of the PCP. Vasco Gonçalves is not a man grown bitter with the PCP, or someone who feels abandoned by the Communist Party, but rather someone who believed in the a project a la Nasser which was feasible for Portugal and that the correlation of forces did not allow this in that Summer of 1975. A soldier who believed that he had done his duty of leading a government so that the country would not be paralyzed.54 Nor would the PCP confront the military left without trying to attenuate the damage of rupturing with this sector. Although it could not to continue draw support from the military left, or at least part of it, for its policies, the PCP wanted to maintain a margin of maneuver in the negotiations for the formation of the VI Government and, as far as possible, in the institutional and political drafting of the future regime. In public rallies during the two weeks following the creation of the V Government, the PCP, stating that it was determined to recompose the government, also stating that it “supported and continue to support the V Government” (Lisboa, 14 ago. 1975) and that “the

June 2012 423 Raquel Varela government would continue to govern” (Évora, 24 ago. 1975).55 The party participated in demonstrations of support for the V Government and for Vasco Gonçalves, though the greatest enthusiasts were some of the sectors of the extreme left. However, on 10 August the outcome was determined. Cunhal asked the central committee to give the executive organs space to decide and “preserve a margin of initiative, including negotiations” in a possible military coup coming from moderate sectors of the MFA and the PS or in a situation in which this sector gained the political initiative.56 On 20 August Cunhal declared in a press conference that a coalition government of MFA and the principal political parties was considered the system of alliance most adapted to the correlation and arrangement of class forces.57 He would go even further, stating that the documents for various military fractions could be combined. In the press conference at 11pm on 29 August, Álvaro Cunhal said that he was willing to meet with the PS, the Grupo dos Nove and Copcon, to find a governmental solution.

Concluding notes

On 5 September 1975, the Grupo dos Nove succeeded in removing Vasco Gonçalves and isolating the military left in the MFA Assembly – which would become known as the Assembly of Tancos – and in the Revolutionary Council, inverting in these structures – but not in the barracks – the correlation of forces in favor of the Grupo dos Nove. The Assembly restructured the Revolutionary Council: Gonçalves’ supporters and the military left, which until then had been in the majority, had three members, while the Grupo dos Nove had seven. Also part of it were Pinheiro de Azevedo and Morais da Silva, increasingly on the side of the Grupo dos Nove (Rezola, 2006, p.399), and Otelo and Costa Gomes, the former in a tottering position, while the latter was the arbitrator of various fractions which also politically ended up on the side of the Nove. It was the beginning of a process of the re-composition of the hierarchy of the Armed Forces. In August 1975 the pillar which had supported the state during the revolution, the MFA, collapsed, bringing down with it the stability – which it had maintained despite the crises – of the Armed Forces, opening space for the intensification of military indiscipline. The revolution definitely exploded in the barracks with the progressive organization of soldiers in committees by Soldados Unidos Vencerão (SUV – Soldiers United Will Triumph), and the

424 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA)

Military Police, popular assemblies, and demonstrations against the purges being carried out by the Grupo dos Nove. Saramago would write in October 1975 about the rupture of this policy:

Let us look, for example, at our case: unconditional supporters of MFA (and not rarely insulted for this), over time we came to realize that this MFA had entered into a type of reproduction by scissiparity, in such a way that where once there had been one, we began to see two, three, if not four …58

Effectively the political removal of the military left would result in a rear- rangement of forces throughout the MFA, which would split into three groups. One, which emerged from an alliance of the PS, the Grupo dos Nove and the entire right which sought to create a solid leadership (the Revolutionary Council after Tancos) which would carry out hundreds of purges and transfers/replacements in the army to eliminate indiscipline in the barracks, a leadership which would organize and prepare a military coup, which would take place on 25 November 1975, initiating the consolidation of the liberal democratic regime in Portugal; a second group which emerged from the military left who had stayed with the PCP until the V Government, a group of officers clearly enamored of third world theories and who preached a path to ‘reach socialism’ via a putsch and who supported themselves with a more or less spontaneous formula of the duality of powers in the Armed Forces, which resulted from the crisis of the MFA and the movement of the military left towards the PCP; and finally a third group, which resulted from officers sympa- thetic to the leadership policy of the PCP who sought to reconstruct the MFA with the pre-Tancos division of forces. The following three months, between Tancos and 25 November, were marked by the struggle between these military and political forces. It is a consensus in Portuguese historiography that during the VI Government the country experienced a politico-military crisis and that the outcome of the revolution was approaching (Ferreira, 1993; Maxwell, 1999; Rezola, 2006). Reserved about the structuring of the explanatory theoretical models, many works focus on the empirical data of the process, which all considered unquestionable: the crisis in the MFA, military indiscipline, VI Government with strong social opposition, the multiplication of events which predicted a rapid outcome of the revolution (soldiers’ demonstrations, generalization of land occupations, an assassination attempt on the prime minister, occupation of radio and television broadcasters by the government, siege of

June 2012 425 Raquel Varela the Assembly of the Republic, paralyzation of government), events which were delimited by what is conventionally ‘the psychosis of coups,’ in other words the existence of permanent rumor and threats about a coup d’état, which would take place in November. On 12 November 1975 a large demonstration of construction workers, many thousands strong, surrounded Palácio de São Bento in Lisbon where the Constituent Assembly was meeting. The siege lasted two days. The demonstration which began with the labor demands of construction workers was radicalized by the refusal of the Ministry of Labor to meet the workers and rapidly became a demonstration against the VI Government. It was a demonstration of the strength of workers who questioned the Constituent Assembly itself, by besieging the place it was meeting and holding prisoner the deputies meeting there. In response the government decided to suspend its functions on 20 November 1975. Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, the prime-minister, in his blatant and indiscrete style answered a journalist who had asked about the military situation: “The situation as far as I know is the same: first the meetings are held, then the orders are obeyed!”59 Five days later a coup, at the civilian level, led by the PS, the Grupo dos Nove and by the military right, with the support of the Church, and the acceptance of non-resistance to the coup on the part of the PCP (Varela, 2011), would put an end to military indiscipline in the barracks. Thy aimed to bring an end of the revolutionary process underway, and in the words of Manuela Cruzeiro, to replace it with a “ongoing constitutional process.”60

NOTES

1 VARELA, Raquel. História do Partido Comunista Português na Revolução dos Cravos. Lisboa: Bertrand, 2011. 2 FERREIRA, António Medeiros. Portugal em transe (1974-1985). In: MATTOSO, José (Dir.) História de Portugal. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1993. p.21-24. 3 ROSAS, Fernando. Pensamento e acção política: Portugal século XX (1890-1976). Lisboa: Ed. Notícias, 2004. p.136. 4 “The adaptation of the regime to these aspirations [diversification of production, association of foreign capital, modern technology, clashed with the lack of labor, low productivity and the political deadlock], ‘liberalization’ and the reconversion of the classical colonial relationship into a neocolonial one were, nonetheless, blocked in the 1970s, principally due

426 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) to the strict limits imposed by the colonial war (against the liberation movements) and by the groups most rigidly linked to colonial interests (for example Espírito Santo) and sec- ondarily by the persistence of ideological and/or reactionary forces (linked to land, traditional commerce and classical conditionings).” SANTOS, Maria de Lurdes; LIMA, Marinús Pires de; FERREIRA, Vítor Matias. O 25 de Abril e as lutas sociais nas empresas. Porto: Afrontamento, 1976. 3v. p.16. 5 MAXWELL, Kenneth. A construção da democracia em Portugal. Lisboa: Presença, 1999. 6 “Proclamação lida ao país pelo general Spínola”. In: 25 DE ABRIL. DOCUMENTO. Lisboa: Casa Viva. 2.ed., s.d., p.180. 7 Programa do Movimento das Forças Armadas. In: 25 DE ABRIL. DOCUMENTO, p.181. 8 GOMES, Bernardino; SÁ, Tiago Moreira de. Carlucci vs. Kissinger: os EUA e a Revolução Portuguesa. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2008. 9 “Exortação ao Povo Português”, 28 jul. 1974. Avante!, série VII, 29 jul. 1974, p.1. 10 Polícia de Segurança Pública (Pe Guarda Nacional Republicana. Ver: CEREZALES, Diego Palacios. O poder caiu na rua. Lisboa: ICS, 2003. 11 REZOLA, Maria Inácia. Os militares na Revolução de Abril: o Conselho da Revolução e a transição para a democracia em Portugal. Lisboa: Campo da Comunicação, 2006. 12 SCHMITTER, Philip. Portugal: do autoritarismo à democracia. Lisboa: ICS, 1999. p.211. 13 “Regresso do exílio de Álvaro Cunhal”. Available at: www.cm-odivelas.pt/Extras/MFA/ cronologia.asp?canal=7; Accessed on 29 Jan. 2008. 14 “Resolução sobre a situação política”, 4 maio 1974. In: COMUNICADOS DO CC DO PCP, Abril/Dezembro de 1974. Lisboa: Avante!, 1975. p.21-25. 15 “Os Comunistas e o 25 de Abril”. Avante!, série VII, 17 maio 1974, p.2. 16 “Os Comunistas no Governo Provisório”. Avante!, série VII, 17 maio 1974, p.2. 17 CUNHAL, Álvaro. Discursos (4). Lisboa: Avante!, 1975, p.45. 18 República, 3 mar. 1975, p.24. 19 MDP (Movimento Democrático Popular – Popular Democratic Movement, the electoral front of the PCP); FSP (Frente Socialista Popular – Popular Socialist Front, a split from the PS), CDS (Centro Democrático e Social – Democratic and Social Center, conservative and Christian Democratic). 20 Aliança Operário Camponesa (Peasant Worker Alliance), a Maoist organization. 21 “1ª Plataforma de Acordo Constitucional”. Available at: app.parlamento.pt/LivrosOnLine/ Vozes_Constituinte/med01100000j.html. 22 CUNHAL, Álvaro. Discursos (4). Lisboa: Avante!, 1975. p.67.

June 2012 427 Raquel Varela

23 SOLANO, José; FURTADO, Joaquim. Portugal 74-75. In: 25 DE ABRIL: 30 anos. DVD n.4. Lisboa: Público, 2004. 24 Avante!, série VII, 11 mar. 1975. 25 MUÑOZ, Duran. Contención y Transgresión: las movilizaciones sociales y el Estado en las transiciones española y portuguesa. Madrid: CPPC, 2000. p.107. 26 AFONSO, A.; COSTA, B. apud SECCO, Lincoln. A Revolução dos Cravos. São Paulo: Alameda, 2004. p.156-157. 27 “Surto Grevista”. Diário de Lisboa, 5 maio 1975, p.1; “A TAP disse não à greve”. Diário de Lisboa, 6 maio 1975, p.1. 28 TREFFAULT, Sérgio. Um outro país. Lisboa: Público, 2004. 29 DOWS, Chip. Os moradores à conquista da cidade. Lisboa: Armazém das Letras, 1978. p.59. 30 “Medidas Revolucionárias. Avanço da revolução”. Avante!, série VII, 24 abr. 1975, p.8. 31 NEVAS, Orlando (Org.) Textos históricos da Revolução. Lisboa: Diabril, 1976. p.50-51, cit. por REZOLA, Inácia. Os militares na Revolução de Abril. Lisboa: Campo de Comunicação, 2006. p.276; CUNHAL, Álvaro. A Revolução Portuguesa: passado e futuro. Lisboa: Avante!, 1994. p.177; “Nota sobre a assembleia do MFA de 8 de Julho”. Comissão Política do CC do PCP, 9 jul. 1975. In: DOCUMENTOS DO CC DO PCP. v.3, jul.-dez. 1975. Lisboa: Avante!, 1975. 32 NEVAS, 1976, p.50-51, cit. por REZOLA, 2006, p.276. 33 “Sobre o Controlo Operário na Sociedade Central de Cervejas”. In: PATRIARCA, Fátima. Controle Operário em Portugal (I). Análise Social, v.XII (3º), n.47, p.765-816, 1976. 34 LOPES, José da Silva. A economia portuguesa desde 1960. Lisboa: Gradiva, 1999. 35 Records of the Prime Ministers Office: Correspondence and Papers PREM 16/602. Visit to UK by Portuguese Foreign Minister, Major Melo Antunes: meeting with Prime Minister on 27 June 1975. PORTUGAL Records of the Prime Ministers. Date: 1975. Source: The Catalogue of the National Archives. Available at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/ displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=8535762&j=1. 36 “O caso do jornal Republica”, Avante!, série VII, 22 maio 1975, p.5. 37 Records of the Prime Minister’s Office: Correspondence and Papers PREM 16/602... 38 “Mário Soares com a Imprensa”. Diário de Lisboa, 7 maio 1975, p.1. 39 “The structuring of anti-communist terror was based on four components: the support of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, whose epicenter was the episcopate of Braga; the operational, technical and economic aid of Spain, which moreover also provided a secure rearguard; collaboration with military opposed to 25 April, who provided a backbone to the movement, making it effective; and finally the agreement of all the political forces from the so-

428 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 “One, two, three MFA”: the rise and fall of Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (MFA) cialists to the right, in the majority in the constituencies in the center and north of the country.” CERVELLÓ, Josep Sánchez. A Revolução Portuguesa e a sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961-1976). Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 1993. p.237. 40 “Nota sobre o momento político”. Comissão Política do CC do PCP, 11 jul. 1975. In: DOCUMENTOS DO CC DO PCP. v.3, jul.-dez. 1975. Lisboa: Avante!, 1976. p.31-34. 41 “Nota da Comissão Política”, de 27 jul. 1975. Avante!, série VII, 31 jul. 1975, p.4. 42 Cronologia Pulsar da Revolução, jul. 1975, Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril. Available at: www1.ci.uc.pt/cd25a/wikka.php?wakka=PulsarJulho75; Accessed on 12 Nov. 2009. 43 “Discurso na tomada de posse do V Government Provisório”. GONÇALVES, Vasco. Discursos. Conferências. Entrevistas. Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1977. p.357-359. 44 CUNHAL, Álvaro. Do 25 de Novembro às eleições para a Assembleia Constituinte. Discursos Políticos 6. Lisboa: Avante!, 1976. p.9-35. 45 “Comunicado sobre a formação do V Government Provisório”. Comissão Política do CC do PCP, 8 ago. 1975. In: DOCUMENTOS POLÍTICOS DO CC DO PCP. v.3, jul.-dez. 1975. Lisboa: Avante!, 1976. p.70-74. 46 “Discurso no comício do PCP na Praça do Campo Pequeno”, 28 jun. 1975. In: CUNHAL, Álvaro. A Crise Político Militar. Discursos Políticos 5. Lisboa: Avante!, 1976. p.94-95. 47 “Comunicado sobre a formação do V Government Provisório”. Comissão Política do CC do PCP, 8 ago. 1975. In: DOCUMENTOS POLÍTICOS DO CC DO PCP. v.3, jul.-dez. 1975. Lisboa: Avante!, 1976. p.70-74. 48 Avante!, série VII, 7 ago. 1975, p.1. 49 Avante!, série VII, 14 ago. 1975, p.1. 50 Avante!, série VII, 11 ago. 1975, n. especial, p.1. 51 “Intervenção na reunião plenária do CC do PCP”, 10 ago. 1975. In: CUNHAL, Discursos Políticos 5, 1976, p.139. 52 Avante!, série VII, 11 ago. 1975, n. especial, p.2. 53 “Intervenção na reunião plenária do Comité Central do PCP”, 10 ago. 1975. In: CUNHAL, Discursos Políticos 5, 1976, p.139. 54 CRUZEIRO, Maria Manuela. Vasco Gonçalves: um general na Revolução. Lisboa: Ed. Notícias, 2002. 55 “Discurso no comício do PCP em Évora”, 24 ago. 1975. In: CUNHAL, Discursos Políticos 5, 1976, p.189. 56 “Intervenção na reunião plenária do Comité Central do PCP”, 10 ago. 1975. In: CUNHAL, Discursos Políticos 5, 1976, p.156-157.

June 2012 429 Raquel Varela

57 “Declaração sobre a crise política actual”, 20 ago. 1975. In: DOCUMENTOS POLÍTICOS DO COMITÉ CENTRAL DO PCP. v.3, jul.-dez. 1975, 1976. p.87-98. 58 “A Distância como Política”, 8 out. 1975. In: SARAMAGO, José. Os Apontamentos. Lisboa: Caminho, 1990. p.314. 59 Arquivo da RTP. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DB42QUJYSM; Accessed on 19 Jan. 2009. 60 CRUZEIRO, Maria Manuela. “25 de Novembro: Quantos Golpes Afinal?”. Comunicação apresentada no Colóquio sobre o 25 de Novembro, realizado no Museu República e Resistência, 2005. Available at: www1.ci.uc.pt/cd25a/wikka.php?wakka=th10; Accessed on 28 Nov. 2010. p.1.

Article received on 17 August 2011. Approved on 19 April 2012.

430 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63

Ferreira, Jorge. João Goulart : uma biografia Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta*

Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2011. 714p.

João Goulart, or Jango, is one of the most controversial figures in Brazilian history and also one of the most tragic. He presided over a government which raised the hopes of thousands of people with the promise of reforming the country and mitigating its social ills, projects that caused fear and insecurity in other social groups – notably the ones that overthrew him in 1964. Owner of an inevitably controversial image, which evoked as much admiration as contempt, the importance of Goulart in the context which led to the coup is unquestionable, because his actions and projects, and especially the way they were interpreted, played a key role in the process. The book, João Goulart: uma biografia, written by Professor Jorge Ferreira, is an extensive and careful analysis of the former president and makes an invaluable contribution to the study of this controversial leader, as well as the political context in which he worked. It is a wide-ranging work, based on comprehensive research including interviews, memoirs, personal documents, press records and the consultation of large bibliography, resulting in a work with over seven hundred pages. In view of the scope of the work, reviewing it properly in a few lines becomes a challenge. Being realistic, I would rather highlight here some of its strong points, as an invitation to the reader to read the book and make their own judgment. Motivated by the perception that Jango’s memory is tied to the events of 1964, Ferreira tried to focus on other points of the former president’s political career, to allow a broader picture emerge. In addition, the author also wanted to go beyond the critical assessments of the Gaúcho politician that are dominant in the literature and memoirs. Ferreira, thus, tries to reveal the positive qualities of the leader which can also explain his rise. The intention was to produce a more balanced analysis on Jango, escaping from the criticism that labeled him as a populist and weak, or accused him of being responsible for

* History Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Avenida Antônio Carlos, 6627, Pampulha. 31270-901 Belo Horizonte – MG – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 433-436 - 2012 Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta the crisis that led to the coup. This does not mean that the author has con- cealed criticisms of Goulart, rather he mentions mistakes made by the former president, especially in 1964, but he tends to highlight more positive traits such as loyalty (to Varguismo in particular), a talent for negotiation and social sensitivity. Goulart was indeed a skillful politician, true to the style of his master, and therefore able to rapidly build a career for himself in the Varguista and trabalhista fields, with the added detail of defending a social project much more advanced in comparison with those of Getúlio. The book offers an excellent analysis of Goulart’s initial trajectory, essentially because this is the least well known stage of his life, beginning with his first contacts with Vargas, who was his neighbor in San Borja, and continuing with the alliances built by Jango with the unions and the left. Noteworthy is the analysis of the construction of relations between Goulart and trade unionists in the early 1950s, thanks to his role as Minister of Labor in stormy second half of Vargas’ constitutional mandate, as well as the analysis of his activities as president of the Party Brazilian Labor (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro – PTB) in the same period, which laid the foundations for his entire political career. Naturally, the biography contains personal data about Goulart’s life, such as the explanation for the defect in his leg, as well as his love affairs with women. Incidentally, the two events were related, the sexual adventures and the physical problem. However, Ferreira does not let himself get carried away by the easy attraction of scandal and spectacle, and, although he does not omit useful information for understanding Jango`s character, he treats his private life with sobriety. Another aspect of Jango’s private life that Ferreira analyzes properly was the former’s entrepreneurial talent. Goulart inherited his father’s rural business, but considerably expanded the family’s fortune, developing remarkable talent for making money, a characteristic that would be very useful in his future life as an exile. However, the biography focuses more on aspects of Goulart’s public life, his role as a leader who began as the political godson of Vargas and ended in exile, where he met his death after an inconclusive and tumultuous period as president. Along this way, Ferreira analyzes the major events and political processes experienced by Jango in the 1950s and 1960s, a decisive phase in Brazilian history. In the book, we can find careful narratives of some important moments, such as Goulart`s time in the Ministry of Labor, the crisis of Vargas’ government and his suicide, Quadros’ resignation and the ‘legality’ movement (in other words, for the inauguration of Vice President João Goulart), the rally of March 13, 1964 and other events on the eve of the coup. The book of-

434 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Ferreira, Jorge. João Goulart: uma biografia fers essential information and analysis for the understanding of our recent political history, which, incidentally, is little known by the general public. In relation to the period between the aftermath of 1964 and Goulart’s death in late 1976, the biography shows us the sufferings of life in exile, both his own of and his family, who saw the bitterness of exile join the anguish of uncertainty, since Uruguay and Argentina, countries chosen by Goulart because of their proximity to Brazil, would soon be convulsed by violent politics similar to what had been experienced in Brazil. The author demonstrates some sympathy/empathy for his subject, which allows him to analyze the political objectives of Jango in a comprehensive way, though not in an indulgent manner. Even though he does point to some authoritarian attitudes on the part of the president, especially the control of PTB, and does not overlook the Gaúcho politician’s personal project for power, Jorge Ferreira shows us a Goulart sincerely committed to the causes announced in his speeches. He wanted to improve the lives of the poor people and reduce foreign dependence (or emancipate the nation, in terms of that time), and intended to achieve this it through negotiations and agreements, in order to avoid revolutionary disruptions. He did not want to question the foundations of the capitalist system, after all he was a large farmer and merchant, but wanted instead to build an economic model that was less unfair and more ‘national.’ The author’s analysis is convincing in showing that the principal impulse of Goulart’s political projects was to implement reforms, and not to use them to become a dictator or overthrow institutions. Indeed, there are very few indications that Jango wanted or had planned to establish an authoritarian regime. Nevertheless, the president accepted and adopted a strategy of pressur- ing Congress for reforms, using rallies and other forms of pressure, tactics that contributed to create doubt and insecurity about his real intentions and sowed confusion and unrest in the political field. His leftwing allies made stronger movements in that direction, especially Brizola with his aggressive speeches to the Congress which could be interpreted as a threat to the liberal institutions. Personally, Goulart rejected suggestions of closing Congress, however, among his allies not everyone thought that way. In Jorge Ferreira`s correct evaluation, Goulart`s major errors were committed in relation to the military, and were decisive in his downfall. He trusted in less than capable officers whom he brought into his inner circle, and, in the episode of the Sailors` Revolt (March 1964), he imposed a solution to the crisis entirely favorable to the rebels, a decision that was even considered a

June 2012 435 Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta mistake by communist officers linked to the government. With the release of the sailors, the president allowed the officers imagine that he was favorable to breaking the military hierarchy, and this threw the majority of the military against the government, officers who until then had been neutral towards the government, waiting to see what would happen. Another serious mistake by the president in the military and political field was his attitude in the episode of the request of a state of emergency in October 1963. He accepted the sug- gestion of the military ministers to ask the Congress to allow this extreme measure, a decision still incomprehensible today and surprising in view of the president’s political savvy. How could he agree to a measure that had no support from any significant political force, and that left him isolated on both sides, the left and the right, by leaving insecurity and anxiety everywhere? Finally, it is worth mentioning Jorge Ferreira’s analysis of the reasons why Goulart abdicated from armed resistance to the coup, which resulted in many accusations and much criticism. Rather than weakness, the author saw in episode a manifestation of the Jango’s care to preserve the country from a civil war, which could possibly have resulted in U.S. intervention. The collapse of military support and the weak capacity of the leftist groups to rally against the coup, albeit with honorable and courageous exceptions, showed that the chances of victory in the event of a civil war were low, so Goulart`s decision may well have saved the country from even greater violence. However, it is also possible that, more than the violence of the civil war, the president wanted to avoid another split: armed resistance could have created a leftist radicalization far beyond his political project. In short, this is a book, supported by solid research and consistent analysis, which constitutes an essential text for researchers, and also for the wider public. It is a mature product of an experienced historian who has entered the list of required reading on the recent political history of Brazil.

Review received on 1 November 2011. Approved on 3 December 2011.

436 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 De Luca, Tania R. Leituras, projetos e (Re)vista(s) do Brasil (1916-1944) Livia Lopes Neves*

São Paulo: Ed. Unesp, 2011. 357p.

The author of this work, Tania Regina de Luca, a well known researcher both nationally and internationally, graduated in History from the University of São Paulo, an institution where she obtained a Master’s and Ph.D. in Social History. Her career is strongly intertwined with debates about the history of Republican Brazil, while her professional activities have concentrated on Historiography, History of the Press, Social History of Culture and Intellectual History. The press in the Vargas Era is the focus of her current research, a topic covered in part by her new book, the subject of this review. While her studies often refer to Revista do Brasil, as in Leituras, projetos e (Re)vista(s) do Brasil, she nonetheless continues her previous work on Brazilian cultural periodicals, noted for its strong methodological content. What actually adds to the debate is the study of other cultural publications, which provides a broad understanding of the intellectual production of the time in this type of publication. This addition also allows for discussion of readings and projects from and for Brazil, both political and cultural, that added part of the intellectuality involved in these editorial ventures. Throughout the text the author stresses the importance of perceiving the methodological approach that guides her analysis, which, she says, represents a contribution to the construction of a specific way of approaching printed materials. In this way, the contributions result from some methodological aspects, for example, paying attention to the dynamics of intellectual groups, in relation to support, and also to the presentation of a material and typograph- ic nature (cover, paper, illustrations, advertising, pagination). All these elements, in general, have already been the object of reflection by the author, and are among the important contributions to studies of this nature in the field of

* Master’s Student, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC). CNPq Grantee. UFSC – Campus Trindade. Caixa Postal 476, Trindade. 88040-900 Florianópolis – SC – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 437-440 - 2012 Livia Lopes Neves history. In addition to what has already been mentioned, what gains promi- nence in her analysis are sources which can contribute to the understanding of relations and actions of mentors and editors of publications: correspondence, memoirs and autobiographical productions. The sum of these areas of research, as stated in the introduction to the book, demonstrates beforehand the breadth of the author’s proposal, someone who has established meaningful dialogue with authors concerned with discussing intellectual sociability, the intellectual field (Brazilian and foreign), and relation which bring intellectuals and the state closer together, or drive them further apart, such as Sirinelli (1990), Pluet-Despatin (1992), Bomeny (2001), Miceli (2001) and Candido (2001), or authors who, like her, have offered contributions to the analysis of newspapers and magazines, such as Doyle (1976), and Capelato Prado (1980), and also those who have studied specific publications such as Bonaventure (1975), Caccese (1971), Guelfi (1987), Lara (1972), Leonel (1976), Napoli (1970) and Romanelli (1981), amongst others. Divided into four chapters that chronologically follow the most significant phases of its publication, the book compares Revista do Brasil with other contemporary Brazilian magazines. This seems a good way of approximating an editorial panorama – though one largely based on an examination of the leading journals of the time, certainly those most studied nowadays – consisting of a long bibliographic review of each of these publications and the consultation of various periodical sources guided by a perspective alert to new concerns. In the studies of the sources cited here, De Luca presents us with an enriched and mature work, which highlights the importance of being attentive to the networks of intellectual sociability and to the fluidity of the intellectual field, as well for the impact of one element on another. In the first chapter, “Revista do Brasil (first and second phases) and modernist periodicals,” the author sought to link the initial phases of the journal with modernist publications founded through Klaxon, with her analysis having a dual perspective: synchrony and diachrony, with the first being responsible for the time of publication of each phase of Revista do Brasil and for the dialogue with contemporary counterparts. The second perspective is concerned with the different phases and their possible connections. In relation to this, the author presents a graph (reproduced in the book on p.69-70), which features a selection of literary and cultural magazines in circulation between the launch of Revista do Brasil in January 1916, and mid-1940, at the conclusion of its fourth phase. Highlighted in this chapter are: Novíssima, Estética, A Revista and Terra Roxa e outras terras.

438 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 De Luca, Tania R. Leituras, projetos e (Re)vista(s) do Brasil (1916-1944)

In the second chapter, Cultural and Literary Magazines (1927-1938), de Luca presents us with a panoramic perspective noting that, in terms of longev- ity, until the beginning of the 1930s short-lived magazines continued to be founded – with the exception of Revista Nova, which circulated for more than a year – Verde, Festa, Revista da Antropofagia, Movimento Brasileiro, Boletim de Ariel, Revista Acadêmica, Lanterna Verde, Dom Casmurro, Diretrizes, Cultura Política and Movimento Brasileiro are given an analysis which is not very detailed, as De Luca stated in the title of the chapter. Discussed here are aspects such as the alignment of editorial projects with political tendencies and elements of the publishing world in the post-1930s scenario, concluding with discussions about the conditions of the exercise of intellectual activity and the proliferation of publishers in Brazil. In a relevant fashion, De Luca stresses the debate about press censorship and the alignment of periodicals with the government during the Estado Novo and defends a historiographical analysis that prioritizes the dynamic of positioning at the expense of one-dimensional labels, which as a rule nullifies a lot of complexities involving editorial ventures. “Revista do Brasil (3rd phase): insertion in the literate world, objectives, characteristics and content” is the title of the third chapter, which deals with the resumption of publication of the Revista do Brasil in July 1938, with its diversity of subjects and its concerns with national problems, despite having an explicitly elitist cultural project. In the fourth and final chapter, titled “Revista do Brasil and the defense of the spirit,” De Luca portrays the moment when the publication began to circulate again, a period marked by the rise of authoritarian forces in Europe and the Estado Novo in Brazil, resulting in limitations imposed on freedom of expression by the Department of Press and Propaganda (DIP). Noting that the liberal practices, individualism and democracy, were defended by several aspects of the journal`s writers, De Luca highlights the specificity of the publication, a scenario which was altered in 1942 with Brazilian adhesion to Pan- American politics. What is presented in Leituras, projetos e (Re)vista(s) do Brasil is a new and fruitful method of analysis, able to clarify the role played by the publication in the history of the press, especially based on some dialogues with contemporary counterparts, which demands, according to De Luca, that systematic consultations be allied to collections cited for reading and studying other sources, especially those that coming from the what is conventionally called ‘self-writing.’ The absence of images related to the theme and to the repeatedly cited journals is certainly felt. This would have enriched the work and perhaps could

June 2012 439 Livia Lopes Neves have reached a wider readership than the academic one. The initiative of making the reading more dynamic by providing on the publisher’s website a series of tables produced during the research, as stated in the note from the editors in the book, proved ineffective due to the difficulty of actually finding them. It would be more interesting for these tables to appear in the book and to accompany the line of thought developed, clarifying many of the knots related to the subject matter of the book. In my view the contribution of this work lies in the plural methodological approach which proposes the aggregation of contributions dealing with the study of journals as a source and object, since the first general studies of journals – carried out under the coordination of Professor José Aderaldo Castello, whose research was most concerned with the collection of the of the Brazilian Studies Institute, University of São Paulo (USP-IEB) – those obtained from the renewal of historiographic practices, which glimpsed the importance of studying cultural periodicals collated with other sources, such as iconographic, epistolary, memoirs and autobiographical accounts.

Review received on 19 December 2011. Approved on 24 May 2012.

440 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Souza, Laura de Mello e. Cláudio Manuel da Costa: o letrado dividido Cristina Ferreira*

São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011. 240p.

The biography of Cláudio Manuel da Costa, written by the historian Laura de Mello e Souza, is part of the “Brazilian Profiles” Collection, published by Companhia das Letras under the coordination of the journalist Elio Gaspari and the anthropologist Lilia Moritz Schwarcz. It thus has to be examined in light of these editorial assumptions, otherwise, there would be a risk of incurring a mistaken isolation and ignoring the symbiosis between the editorial profile and methodological choices made by the author. The collection is aimed at the both general readers and specialists, covering the lives of important Brazilians, notably statesmen, artists and intellectuals. Most of the biographers are historians or professionals linked to the human sciences, and present the history of their subject in a concise text and diversified documentary research. These parameters define the editorial line, the format of the work, and the decision of the historian to write a text with the minimum possible interruptions and quotations. Laura de Mello e Souza has produced a work based on a vast biography and some unpublished documentary data. The citation of the sources appears in one of the final items in the book, called “Indications and comments on the bibliography and primary sources,” with a brief description of the application and use of the sources, systematized into themes in the book. It contains images which portray places – Rio de Janeiro and the countryside of Minas Gerais – and portraits attributed to the subject of the biography, as well as ‘illustrious’ persons who were his contemporaries, his signature and reproduction of extracts from the principal original document used by the author – the inventory of João Gonçalves da Costa, father of Cláudio Manuel da Costa. All the images have titles and are referenced, giving the collections of origin, but kept together in the center of the book, an editorial characteristic which does not allow their integration in the text.

* Doctoral student in Social History, Unicamp. Departamento de História – Universidade Regional de Blumenau. Rua Antônio da Veiga, 140. 89012-900 Blumenau – SC – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 441-444 - 2012 Cristina Ferreira

Cláudio Manuel da Costa, poet and lawyer, a man of great prestige, lived between 1729 and 1789, most of the time in Ouro Preto, then called Vila Rica, the capital of Minas Gerais. His formal education was in the Jesuit college in Rio de Janeiro, while he obtained degree from the Coimbra University. He died single, but lived for 30 years with Francisca Arcângela de Sousa, who was born a slave but emancipated when she gave birth to Cláudio’s first child. She was his lifelong companion and mother of his five children, an indelible indication that custom supplants legislation, but not fully, because according to the letter of the law, graduates in service of the Empire could not marry women from ‘the land.’ Cláudio Manuel da Costa was not Portuguese, but rather Luso- Brazilian, and was unable to overcome his Jesuit and scholastic education, which to a certain extent imprisoned him within the law, to develop enough courage to publically assume his relationship with a black woman. His dual activities as a man of the law and of the government allowed Cláudio Manuel da Costa to become a typical example of what social ascension was in Minas, around 25 to 30 years after the beginning of mining, because it was different from coastal regions. Minas was a new region, opened at the end of the seventeenth century, and the consolidation of local elites only occurred during the eighteenth century. Poetry made him a man of letters, who “never abandoned the books and the muses of history,” but his internal conflicts di- lacerated him and divided him between political rights and illegal commerce, liberty and values of the Ancien Regime, corrupted by the accusations he made against his friends and shrouded in a conflicted and controversial death. Laura de Mello e Souza makes use of this figure to define various elements which compose the biography, from themes and periodization to the definition of spaces of analysis. One aspect that is evident in the book is the option of the author to let her subject guarantee a tone of originality for the research, a situation which is exemplified by the division of chapters by themes such as: the significance of his name, parents, childhood, education, poetry, profession, friendships, imprisonment and death. Nevertheless, the author does not let herself fall into the trap of letting herself be ensnared by privileging the question of the Inconfidência, her decision as biographer and historian is originally based on the figure, his conflicts, his poetry and the meanings of his life. Laura de Mello e Souza actually dialogues with the vast historiographic tradition related to the Inconfidência Mineira, expanding the debate about the incongruencies and conflict of the individuals involved in this historic process and also investigates the problems related to documentation and the inconsis- tent reports which make of the records of the Devassa.

442 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Souza, Laura de Mello e. Cláudio Manuel da Costa: o letrado dividido

The concept of time adopted in the work is related to a type of fluidity, since the phases of life of the person whose biography is being written about are not buried in themselves, much less do they appear as rigid and immobile, thus they are constantly returned to at different moments, both in the past and the future of Cláudio Manuel da Costa. De Mello e Souza’s refusal of the traditional linear and factual form of biographic composition is clear, since time involves ruptures and there is no way of conceiving the constitution of models of rationality which establish stable or coherent personalities to human beings. The author demonstrates that the life of the subject of the biography does not end with his death, which leads to an interesting vision: writing about a life is an unfinished and endless work, because new paths will always open which can drag the researcher onto other epistemological paths, with a single certainty: it is hard for a biography to be free of uncertainties, no matter how much the research is based in sources and documents. Mello e Souza does not cite the specific readings she made about the ‘uses of biography,’ however, she refers to important texts on the subject from the historian Vavy Pacheco Borges, to whom the biographer dedicates the book. I would venture that her methodological choice is related to Giovanni Levi’s proposal, which relates Biography and Context in the sense of filling documentary gaps in relation to the person being written about, through comparisons with other figures with whom he interacted. Cláudio Manuel da Costa is looked at in general through a context which in turn elucidates aspects related to eighteenth century Minas Gerais. The author uses the biography to approximate the context, not with the purpose of reconstituting it, but with the intention of establishing a relationship of reciprocity between the person and his field of activity. Brazilian historiography about the colonial period Minas Gerais, both consolidated and in constant renewal, is the foundations of the author’s research and creates a combination which demonstrates her familiarity with the sources and archives related to the themes and historic period analyzed. The most emblematic problem with which the author deals in the research is the scarcity of documents which are directly related to the subject of the biography. Laura de Mello e Souza’s strategy to present novelties in the life of ‘her’ subject consists of the valorization of the Inventory of João Gonçalves da Costa (father of Cláudio); the qualification processes for the Habit of Christ of two of his bothers, and some documents signed by Cláudio Manuel da Costa. However, part of the task of the historian consists of living “grappling with the fluid limits between truth and lies, fact and fiction, narrative and science”

June 2012 443 Cristina Ferreira

(p.190) and letting oneself be dominated by the will to understand the subject in his conflicting and notable aspects. The poet was the subject of a biography due to some concerns of the author about aspects of his life directly related with the space and place being lived. Cláudio was considered an obsessive poet, someone who cultivated the perfect form, however, it is instigating that his poetry conquered little space among Brazilian lyric poetry, and although his sonnets are beautiful, they do not have a characteristic of universality, to the contrary, they have a language very marked by their epoch. The poet’s whole life was stigmatized by ambiguity and by contradiction, and his death remains today surrounded by uncertainty, having become one of the most controversial objects of Brazilian historiography, creating what can be seen as factions who defend that it was murder or sustain that it was suicide. Laura de Mello e Souza, in referring to the risks and needs which comprehension imposes on the historian, does not avoid to take a position: “if I understand the man who was Cláudio Manuel da Costa, I am led to believe that he decided to put an end to his life. It will never be known if this was done out of despair or due to excess of reason. Perhaps it was because he had lived divided and never found himself, or because as divided as he was, he finally decided to put the pieces together. In his manner” (p.190). This is a clear indication that the biographer is not obsessed by an irrevo- cable ‘true history’ about her subject, but rather is in search of an understanding integration between reality and possibility, plausible or credible. The natural impediments to resort to such a vast ‘direct’ documentation allows the author to legitimate the use of her conjectures and inferences. At various moments she carries out an exercise of historic imagination applied with the right dosage to a type of ‘controlled’ imagination, widely supported by the sources. This methodological option is the guarantee of an elegant and instigating narrative, for this reason the work deserves to be read and reread by all who are interested in discovering the subtleties and incongruencies of human life.

Review received on 28 February 2012. Approved on 22 May 2012.

444 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Nora, Pierre. Présent, nation, mémoire Luciana Fernandes Boeira*

Paris: Gallimard, 2011. 432p.

On 6 October 2011 the French historian and editor Pierre Nora simultaneously launched two books: Historien public and Présent, nation, mémoire, both published by the prestigious Gallimard, a publishing company he has directed since 1965. Both books consist of articles written by Nora during his long career. In the more than five hundred pages of the first book Nora present numerous manifestos, public interventions and positions adopted by him in more than fifty years of public life. Amongst various subjects, Nora looks at editorial work and makes observations on contemporary history and the French nation. He also speaks about the Algerian War and the important journal Le Débat, which he founded with Marcel Gauchet in 1980 which continues to be very successful in the intellectual world. Présent, nation, mémoire is part of the Bibliothèque des Histoires collection and includes more than thirty articles by Nora, all related to mutations between history and memory. This massive range of articles is the result of reflections which preceded, accompanied and succeeded the publication of Les lieux de mémoire, the monumental seven volume collective work written between 1984 and 1992, which was also the most important publishing venture Nora directed in his career. This career also included Faire de l’Histoire (organized in partner- ship with Jacques Le Goff in 1974), another outstanding success of the Bibliothèque des Histoires collection, consisting of three volumes in which numerous French historians presented their reflections on the new history in the 1970s. Everything in Présent, nation, mémoire is related to Les lieux de mémoire and it is, thus, inseparable from that work. What gives unity to its 32 articles, divided into three distinct parts – Present, Nation and Memory (which are also the three central axes which tie the articles together and which, according

* Doctoral Student in History, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Capes Grantee. PPGHIST – IFCH/UFRGS. Caixa Postal 15055, Agronomia. 91501-970 Porto Alegre – RS – Brasil. [email protected]

Revista Brasileira de História. São Paulo, v. 32, nº 63, p. 445-448 - 2012 Luciana Fernandes Boeira to Nora, constitute the three centers of contemporary historical conscience) –, is the intention to represent an introduction to Lieux de mémoire. Although the subjects of each of the articles are very different (what Nora explore ranges from the question of heritage to references to Michelet and Lavisse as models of national history, also including questions such as the end of the Gaullo- Communism in France, the appearance of the best-seller in the publishing market, and the trauma caused by the memory of Vichy), the three axes are used to guide reading of the material. Material which the author admits is presented in an unusual way, both due to the subject which the title of the book announces, and the content, which flees to the erudite canons of the discipline of history. However, as he himself underlines, his intention in proposing the collection, was not to provide a theoretical reflection on history, but rather to present a reflection which emerged from his practice as a historian. It is exactly this practice as a historian and the events which composed which Nora shows, providing a retrospective of the most important moments experienced by the discipline of history during the twentieth century, especially after the advent of the Annales and which culminated in the 1970s and 1980s, with the explosion of what he calls a ‘wave of memory,’ which swept over not just the France, but the Western world as a whole, and of which the pre- sentist moment dominated by heritagization would be the heir. Reflecting on the advent of this generalized memorial wave and, with it, the movement of the acceleration of history, which condemned the present to memory, is the main intention of the book. The same purpose, according to Nora, that he and more than a hundred historians had when they launched Les lieux de mémoire, trying to understand what were the principal places, both material and abstract, in which the memory of France had become incarnate. At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Nora’s ‘places of memory’ pointed to the rapid disappearance of French national memory, and at that moment, making an inventory of the places where it had effectively become incarnate and still remained as shinning symbols (parties, emblems, monuments, commemorations, funeral eulogies, dictionaries and museums) was a form of unraveling and dissecting the national memory, the nation and its relations. In 2011 Présent, nation, mémoire, which brought together articles written over a lifetime, has a dual function: to serve as basis for Les lieux de mémoire, but, independent of this, to show the public how Nora created his own path as a researcher and, concurrently, how a new field of study was built. A field, he states, which was delimited by these three words: present, memory and nation. According to Nora, these terms condition the form of contempo-

446 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63 Nora, Pierre. Présent, nation, mémoire rary historical consciousness and are words that also allowed him to regroup the articles according to a logic that he calls ‘retrospective’ and which, for him, have an effective ‘pedagogical meaning’ effective for his intention of demonstrating how he formed this field of study involving memory and history in present time. In the book, Nora has not updated the articles. At most, he subtly changes some of the titles. Nor does he present them in a chronological manner, but according to the subject being discussed in each section, so a text written in 1968 can be followed by one written in 1973, or a subject worked on in 2007 may be placed immediately after another article, related to it, but written in 1993. This feature is quite interesting because it enables the reader to perceive a coherency in the author trajectory in relation to the issues raised and for how long they have been part of his universe of concerns. With this retrospective look at his own work as a writer, Nora admits that each of the texts that form the collection could have been subject to further development and, perhaps, even have resulted in specific books, which did not actually happen. This is because, despite the large amount of articles published until now by Nora, his dedication, as a historian, to the writing of his own work, is very small. Before the publication of these two volumes which bring together some of his many scattered texts, Nora had participated only in collective works and published just one book: Les Français d’Algérie, in 1961. His interest in bringing these various texts together in a volume he called Présent, nation, mémoire resides, according to Nora, in reconstructing an intellectual route and a desire to show how during his career he built a ‘construction site’ consisted of several historiographical strata which he examined as a historian. However, looking at the content of articles included in the volume, what we notice is that Pierre Nora insists on pointing out the significance that his own work had in the renovation of historical studies in France. Just to cite one example, in the article “Une autre histoire de France,” originally published in Diccionnaire des sciences historiques by Andrew Burguière (1986), under the title of “Histoire national,” Nora highlights that the moment in question was that of historiographical renewal of national history, in which historians were interested in dissecting the inheritance of the past. For him, Les lieux de mé- moire perfectly fits into this perspective: learning traditions in their most significant and symbolic expressions, the ‘places of memory’ knew how to make a critical history of history-memory and produced a wide topology of the French symbolic. Here is demonstrated Nora’s somewhat subtle manner of

June 2012 447 Luciana Fernandes Boeira revering his own venture as a unique contribution to contemporary historiographical renewal. In the following article, “Les lieux de mémoire, mode d’emploi,” a preface written by the author for the American edition of the work, published between 1996 and 1998, Nora is much more emphatic in situating his work and, also, very more direct in reaffirming the importance that Les lieux de mémoire had in the ‘era of the historiographical discontinuity’ of the new French historiography. While Nora is a master at highlighting the importance of his work, he also knows how to defend it. The text chosen by him to close the volume, “L’histoire au second degré,” published in his magazine Le Débat in 2002, is a response to Paul Ricoeur’s criticism of the “unusual lieux de mémoire” in A memória, a história, o esquecimento (Memory, history, forgetting), published in the same year. In the article Nora, once again, denounces the current invasion of the field of history by memory to the point that we are immersed in a world where everything is ‘heritage’ and of history as celebration. He says that he shares the same analyses as Ricoeur about commemoration and his irrita- tions about the ‘duty of memory,’ but with one difference: for him, there is no possibility of escape from this situation, unlike what Ricoeur believed. According to Nora, the best way to deal with the tyranny of memory is to understand it and see it in its interior, as he proposes at the end of the day in his lieux de mémoire.

Review received on 31 March 2012. Approved on 21 May 2012.

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450 Revista Brasileira de História, vol. 32, no 63