Health and spirituality in Brazil (17th and 18th centuries)

• Grant number: 19/06043-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2019
• End date: March 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Ana Carolina de Carvalho Viotti
• Grantee: Edson Tadeu Pereira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil from the XVII and XVIII centuries, the words of the religious were directed to catechism, the spiritual instruction and the amendment of the natives and settlement customs. Besides that, in sermons, prayers, devotional books, works of moral nature and spiritual exercises, the religious dealt with matters which were also related to the daily life of the tropics and to more "physical" matters, such as the sickness of bodies. As the clergy associated diseases with settlers' vices, regulating and moralizing their habits would have a direct effect not only on the destiny of their souls but also on their earthly lives. From this variety of pious texts - preaching in Holy Houses of Mercy, the healing celebrated in prayers and sermons, devotion to saints against diseases, among others -, that share a certain understanding of the manifestation of evils, the proposal is to investigate what was said by religious on the subject of diseases and cures, investigating the possibility of the moralizing effect of such pronouncements, especially, but not exclusively, in the circumstances of social crisis, such as the occurrence of epidemics, famine and conflicts with natives or foreigners. In few words, we will try to map out and question what diseases would affect the body and spirit, and their treatments, as well as which strategies were used by the religious, within, of course, the Catholic logic, concerning the healing of these two inseparable elements of the human being - the body and the soul. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

PEREIRA, Edson Tadeu. Health and Spirituality in Brazil (17th and 18th Centuries). 2021. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais. Franca Franca.