Corpo em conflito: discurso religioso e prática de vida das mulheres em Minas Gerais no século XVIII

Abstract

After the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the sacrament of marriage became an official pattern for sexual behaviour from this moment on, the new Catholic Church laws happened to be substantiated by the decisions of the Council, whose main target was to protect marriage as a sacrament and an institution as well. Within this understanding the main objective of this work is to reveal how women’s body turned into the principal victim off an endless conflict between religious speech, that struggled to keep it under obedience and submission, and the everyday life practices of women, who finally gave created to a rebel body, beyond the laws of the Church and the State, in order to search for different kinds of relationships seen as illicit by then. Our main source of studies was the documents known as “Devassas Eclesiásticas”, which can be found in the ecclesiastical archives of the Arquidiocese of Mariana - MG.