Materialidades e práticas devocionais: um estudo sobre Santa Lôla

Abstract

This thesis falls within the field of studies on the religious phenomenon grounded in the perspective of materiality, based on the assumption that religions are constituted not only through discourses, doctrines, and scriptures, but also through objects, practices, sensations, and embodied experiences. The research analyzes the devotion surrounding Floripes Dornelas de Jesus, known as Lôla, a popular Brazilian saint. The central objective of the investigation is to understand the processes through which Lôla’s sanctity is constructed, actualized, and contested, considering a complex set of materialities, devotional practices, and social relations, highlighting the agency of objects in the constitution of religious experience and the devotional community. The hypothesis guiding this research posits that materiality serves as a structuring element in the construction of Lola’s sanctity, functioning not merely as a symbolic support but as an active agent in the creation of networks of devotion, memory, and belonging. To this end, we analyzed devotional letters and notes, objects from the room of the candidate for sainthood, her tomb, photographic records, religious groups that center their devotion on her, and the annual Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Furthermore, the study investigated the production of new materialities that extend beyond the strictly religious sphere, such as the municipal holiday, the naming of streets, real estate developments, documentaries, and the media’s renewed focus on the saint, demonstrating how devotion impacts the social, political, economic, and media spheres of the municipality of Rio Pomba and the surrounding region. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study grounded in a literature review on materiality, the anthropology of devotion, and devotional Catholicism, combined with fieldwork and analysis of documentary collections (both physical and online). By analyzing devotion to Lôla, this thesis contributes to the expansion of studies on materiality, highlighting the centrality of objects in the constitution of popular sanctities and in the symbolic and institutional disputes surrounding the sacred.