O clero paroquial de Rio Grande, Rio Pardo e Santo Amaro no século XVIII : composição, reprodução e trajetórias

Abstract

This work has as its object the parish priests in Rio Grande de São Pedro in the 18th century and seeks to analyze processes and operations that characterized the composition and reproduction of this group. In order to identify “who” made up the parish clergy and “why” these individuals were appointed parish priests, we investigated a group of twenty-nine (29) priests who were appointed to the parishes of São Pedro do Rio Grande, Nossa Senhora do Rosário do Rio Pardo and Santo Amaro, between 1738 and 1801. To meet the proposed objectives, we carried out an onomastic search in sources of different types and located in different collections, among which are legal-administrative documents of ecclesiastical and secular origin, and central and local instances. We defined, first, the biographical profile of these subjects, using the prosopography method, in order to, in continuity, identify and discuss the various instances - family, individual, local and central power, religious and secular power and legislation - that marked the trajectory of individuals until the moment they assumed the role of parish priest in Rio Grande de São Pedro. Finally, we pursued the name of some of these individuals, so that, through the analysis of their trajectories, we could uncover other realities and practices and justify and/or contest the trends found for the parish priests profile. This investigation, therefore, adopts the variation in scales of observation, combining a prosopography study with case studies, aiming at a more balanced analysis between trends, social and cultural structures and normative systems, revealed by macro-observation, and wills, intentions and projects of individual and/or family action, which emerge from microscopic observation. Therefore, it is a work that is theoretically based on Social History, in dialogue with the micro-historical methodology, activating concepts such as biographies and trajectories; social relationships; composition and reproduction of groups; individuals and structures. The identification and discussion of the profile of the parish priests assigned to work in the three parishes of Rio Grande de São Pedro, through the use of the variation of scales, allowed to unveil new social practices and aspects of the interrelation between individuals and institutions - State and Church -, above all attributing a greater action – evidenced in the strategies, negotiations, decisions and confrontations – to the social actors in the period in which the metropolitan power and the Church were consolidated in the southern end of Portuguese America.