1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910788314103321

Autore

Myscofski Carole A. <1954->

Titolo

Amazons, wives, nuns, and witches : women and the Catholic church in colonial Brazil, 1500-1822 / / by Carole A. Myscofski

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin : , : University of Texas Press, , [2013]

©2013

ISBN

0-292-74854-X

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (321 p.)

Collana

Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series

Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; ; book thirty-two

Disciplina

282/.81082

Soggetti

Catholic women - Brazil

Women and religion - Brazil

Women in the Catholic Church - Brazil

Women - Religious life - Brazil

Brazil Church history To 1822

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

""Acknowledgments""; ""Introduction. Amazons and Others""; ""1. Amazons and Cannibals: Imagining Brazilian Women in the Colonial Period""; ""2. The Body of Virtues: The Christian Ideal for Brazilian Women""; ""3. Reading, Writing, and Sewing: Education for Brazilian Women""; ""4. Before the Church Doors: Women as Wives and Concubines""; ""5. Freiras and Recolhidas: The Reclusive Life for Brazilian Women""; ""6. Women and Magic: Religious Dissidents in Colonial Brazil""; ""Conclusion. Closing the Colonial Era""; ""Notes""; ""Bibliography""; ""Index""

Sommario/riassunto

The Roman Catholic church played a dominant role in colonial Brazil, so that women’s lives in the colony were shaped and constrained by the Church’s ideals for pure women, as well as by parallel concepts in the Iberian honor code for women. Records left by Jesuit missionaries, Roman Catholic church officials, and Portuguese Inquisitors make clear that women’s daily lives and their opportunities for marriage, education, and religious practice were sharply circumscribed throughout the colonial period. Yet these same documents also provide



evocative glimpses of the religious beliefs and practices that were especially cherished or independently developed by women for their own use, constituting a separate world for wives, mothers, concubines, nuns, and witches. Drawing on extensive original research in primary manuscript and printed sources from Brazilian libraries and archives, as well as secondary Brazilian historical works, Carole Myscofski proposes to write Brazilian women back into history, to understand how they lived their lives within the society created by the Portuguese imperial government and Luso-Catholic ecclesiastical institutions. Myscofski offers detailed explorations of the Catholic colonial views of the ideal woman, the patterns in women’s education, the religious views on marriage and sexuality, the history of women’s convents and retreat houses, and the development of magical practices among women in that era. One of the few wide-ranging histories of women in colonial Latin America, this book makes a crucial contribution to our knowledge of the early modern Atlantic World.