Ad limina visits reports of the bishopric of Pernambuco: the secular clergy and the indian population (1680-1746)

• Grant number: 12/07859-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2012
• End date: November 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Bruno Guilherme Feitler
• Grantee: Patrícia Moreira Nogueira
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, I used as a source the ad limina visit reports of the bishopric of Pernambuco written between 1680 and 1746 from the Archivio Secreto Vaticano (Vatican Secret Archive), fonds of the Congregazione del Concilio, Relationes Dioecesium - 596 (Olinden). The aim of this paper is, firstly, to transcribe the documentation and then analyze it in the light of the specific bibliography on the subject. This paper is intended to present the collected data on the villages managed by the bishopric from a perspective that conceives religious history beyond institutional limits and, by deeply discussing the History of the Catholic Church in Portuguese America, draw attention to the process of secularization of the ecclesiastical parishes and to the connection between the secular clergy and the indigenous peoples whose villages composed the bishopric of Pernambuco.(AU)