Abstract:
This research will try to comprehend the troubled and contradictory relations in the Apostolic
Roman Catholic Church in colonial Brazil, officially under the domain of the Portuguese state
under the regime of Régio s Patronage, but offering resistance through the Loyal Orders of
the pope, tied to the Propaganda Fide. The problem that will be confronted in this study is
what led Colonial Brazil to have in its territory two churches, one under the command of the
king, and the other that responded to the pope. Considering that conflicting and contradictory
relations, as well as alliances and convergences are constant in the Roman Church s history,
we will seek our comprehension not only in analyzing the period during the Portuguese
Patronage in Colonial Brazil, but we will try to find answers in historic periods previous to
this one, like in the Late Antiquity and in the Middle Age, where the relations between the
Church and the State also exchanged periods of tension, convergences and conflicts, and the
ideological formulations that gave the Church its mentality before the State had its origin and
development, way before the Conquest of America. We do not have the objective of rewriting
the ecclesiastic history, although some historical clippings will be used here to help us clarify
the proposed questions. We will start from the understanding that the verified conflicts aren t
only power disputes between Rome and Lisbon, but accommodate mentalities crystalized in
ideologies, which originated mental structures that were not totally abandoned by the whole
Church, and survived under a very long term perspective. So, the object of analysis in this
study is how these mentalities and structures were formed and how they got to Colonial
Brazil, what were the mentalities and structures and how they can be framed in the long term.
These mentalities and structures had their origin in Late Antiquity, before the Church allied
itself to the State s power, and had, with the due transformations, continuity and development
in the Middle Age, until it got to Brazil, Portugal s Colony.
