The priest of law and religious colonial mentality

episcopal strategies of the conversion in Mariana in the eighteenth century

Abstract

In this study we analyze the complaints from the people to the Bishops of Mariana in the eighteenth century. The analysis of the priest of the Ecclesiastical justice denounces the contrast between the practices of the population reported by witnesses and the legal universe existing. The conflicts brought to the auditorium of bishops and the multiple strategies of the involved allow us to capture interfaces of the action of the priest of Law: supported by institutional power and at the same time, faced with the heterogeneous universe of deviant practices and challenging the official order that he represented.