Fé e distinção : um estudo da dinâmica interna e do perfil de irmãos da Irmandade do Santíssimo Sacramento da Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora do Pilar do Ouro Preto (século XVIII)

Abstract

The Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament of the Church of Our Lady of Pilar of Ouro Preto, in the eighteenth century, was a religious school of lay people which, like the other coeval associations, should: administer the sacraments to the brothers, fulfill the details pertaining to the "good death", assist the brothers in poverty and illness, and perform the festivities registered in their liturgical calendar, Corpus Christi and the Holy Week. As a special feature, the construction of the parish church and administration of the Viaticum to the dying would be their responsibility to the local community in general. From the documentation bequeathed by the association and its members, this research seeks to understand the operation of the association, its organizational structure and the profiles of its brothers. Therefore, this thesis is divided into two parts: in the first part, it tries to describe how the Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament of Ouro Preto worked, based on its compromisso (statute), the internal regulations of the institution, besides analyzing the statutes of similar associations in the captaincy of Minas Gerais, in order to establish a comparative analysis of the operations of the brotherhood in different locations. The documents issued by the board of the brotherhood, which are decisions made on different topics, such as the construction and the improvements of the parish church, the festivities, the reforms of the statutes, among others, were also used. Besides that, the documentation issued by other institutions with matters relating to the Blessed Brotherhoods were analyzed in an attempt to identify which were the main demands of these institutions in the villages where they were installed, such as the requests made to the town council and the representations submitted to the Overseas Council in Lisbon. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to meeting the socioeconomic profile of members of the Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament of Ouro Preto, trying to understand and demonstrate how social networks were established inside the Brotherhood and also beyond it, based on the documentation related to the brothers of the Blessed Sacrament themselves. In order to analyze the history of the Brothers of the Sacrament in Vila Rica, the names of those who exercised official positions in the board were listed firstly, as follows: provider, clerk, treasurer and procurator; in addition to the names of the keepers of the basin, the people responsible for the public collection. 342 brothers were listed throughout the eighteenth century. From this list, information on documentary funds of various types was sought; funds such as: the requirements and petitions found in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino/ Minas Gerais (CDRom Projeto Resgate); inventories and wills, in the Arquivo Casa do Pilar – Museu da Inconfidência (Ouro Preto/ MG); Registro Geral de Mercês, Habilitações do Santo Ofício and Habilitações da Ordem de Cristo, in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisboa/ Portugal).