Between religiosity and insurgence: the indian sanctities in colonial Brazil

Abstract

This work aims to analyses the phenomenon of indigenous sanctities, observed during the Brazilian colonial period. We ther, at first, the term sanctity was used by the colonizers to refer to elements of the religiosity of the native peoples, throughout the 16th century that word also came to designate the indigenous uprisings that emerged against the colonial government, which contained elements that we can call it "religious" or "millennialists". Considering the double meaning assumed by the expression, the objective of this project is to understand why two elements, the native religiosity and the insurgency, apparently so different, received the same designation. Thus, through the analysis of primary sources, especially letters and Jesuit reports, both cases will be compared in search of elements in common that justify this equivalent designation. Because the indigenous uprisings were a wide phenomenon, of national scope, the Sanctity of Jaguaribe was chosen as a reference, one of the largest and best documented resistance movements, both warlike and cultural, of the natives against Portuguese colonization.