Amazons, Wives, Nuns, and Witches: Women and the Catholic Church in Colonial Brazil, 1500-1822 (Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture)

Synopsis

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 -- Amazons And Others -- Amazons And Cannibals : Imagining Brazilian Women In The Colonial Period -- The Body Of Virtues : The Christian Ideal For Brazilian Women -- Reading, Writing, And Sewing : Education For Brazilian Women -- Before The Church Doors : Women As Wives And Concubines -- Freiras And Recolhidas : The Reclusive Life For Brazilian Women -- Women And Magic : Religious Dissidents In Colonial Brazil -- Closing The Colonial Era. Carole A. Myscofski. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.