Jesuítas e Tupi: o encontro sacramental e ritual dos séculos XVI-XVII

Abstract

In translating post-Trentian dogmas to Amerindian peoples, missionaries sought to translate a Western religious tradition to a culture completely unfamiliar with this doctrine. The cultural codes belonging to that "alien" culture were to serve as a medium for inscribing the Western religious tradition among indigenous peoples. In order to do so, missionaries adopted a "reduction" strategy to correct excesses (in customs) and absences (in beliefs) among the Amerindian neophytes. Excesses demanded discipline, while absences called for doctrine. In this process, the ritual reinterpretation of the doctrinal and sacramental encounter resulted in a form of cultural hybridism, which reformatted relations with the sacred according to a new, typically colonial structure.