Modernity, Secularization and Ultramontanism: A study of historical semantics from the Catholic press in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Abstract

The present project is part of the critical reflections on the classical theories of modernity and secularization, which, when interpreting these thematic complexes from a teleological and generalizing bias - associated to the decline and privatization of the religious - and in doing so a prescriptive use of both terms, have led scholars to disregard the different ways that societies have taken in the course of these processes. Such a critical formulation demands and justifies the elaboration of historical approaches capable of lending concrete and empirical content to a theory that has traditionally has dispensed them. Considering the relevance of this debate to the scope of the History of Religions and based on a systematic and documented inquiry, this project proposes the theoretical and methodological challenge of approaching the experiences of modernity and secularization recorded in the ultramontane discourse of the Catholic press in Brazil during the second half of the 19th century, in the light of the dialogue between History of Religions and History of Concepts. Specifically, it aims at a study of historical semantics regarding the relations between religion and politics, in the depicted situation. In these terms, it shares the problems and concerns faced by its institutional insertion area - the Sciences of Religion -, built from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. Internationally, the project is linked to the general objectives of the international network of researchers of Iberoconceptos, which includes the "Religion and Politics" Group, which analyzes the semantic trajectories of some central concepts for understanding the relationship between religion and politics, as well as the links between these trajectories throughout the nineteenth century, valuing their national and / or regional specificities, as well as the weight of the common semantics proper to the Catholic world. (AU)