Descendentes de Eva: religiosidade colonial e condição feminina na Primeira Visitação do Santo Ofício à América portuguesa (1591-1595)

Abstract

The arrival of Hector Furtado de Mendonça in 1591 the Captaincy of Bahia inaugurated a context in which the presence of the Portuguese Court of the Holy Office would become more effective in the New World. Presence motivated mainly by the massive presence of Christians in this new space and the constant concern that these individuals, newly converted to Catholicism, could be returning to their former religion, Judaism. However, the other contours Visitation took during the five years that prevailed in America. Blasphemy, Bigamy, Sodomy, Bestiality, Lutheranism, Islam, deviations from the clerical body itself as well as any and all errors of doctrine were targets of the authorities. The deviations around witchcraft, in turn, also included investigations of the Visitor, with the considerable participation of women as related to the offense element. In this sense, this dissertation is to investigate interest - based on the notion of gender - the relationship between the female figure and the interest in magic-religious practices for supernatural intervention in the context in question, on the assumption that there was a influence of a pedagogy of fear as well as ownership of the current context on both misogynist active participation in this relationship - in search of social recognition - in the interest in intervening in destinations through, especially as mediators and by the act of denouncing witchcraft the same women who were once their targets that interest in the supernatural, contributing, including the construction of two facing this crime inquisitorial process: Felicia Tourinho and Maria Gonçalves.