Os pecados da castidade em dois gêneros de discurso de Anchieta: cartas e manual de confissão (século XVI)

Abstract

The Anchietano manual of confession in Tupi (1992) presents the main concerns of the Jesuit regarding the evangelization of the Tupinambá Indians in the 16th century. The sixth commandment "Eporopotarumé - Do not desire people sensually" brings together the Tridentine discourse on the moralization of the bodies and on the Christian family project that the priests of the Society of Jesus intended to install in the colony. Lust, one of the seven capital sins, is subdivided into six species - adultery, incest, simple fornication, rape, abduction, sin against nature - and related to impure thoughts, touching, and words considered dishonest. The objective of this paper is to compare the way of treating sins against lust in two discourses: the Tupi confessional and letters to the European public. The questions contained in the Tupi confessional of José de Anchieta bring as main theme the sins against nature (masturbation and sodomy). The letters exchanged between Anchieta and his Jesuit peers, correspondence gathered by Serafim Leite in the Monumenta Brasiliae (1956-1960), highlights indigenous polygamy and courtship between Indian women and white men. We will try to outline the reasons for the differences between the sources in the way lust is treated. Our current hypothesis is that the valorization given to the sin against nature in the confessional and to the practices of adultery and polygamy in the letters, are due to the specificity of the interlocutors in each of the discourses: the manual of confession is addressed to the indigenous penitent and the letters are addressed to the religious in Europe with the objective of showing that the mission in Brazil was going well. The methodology used is the analysis of the anchietan sources and the reading of basic bibliography about confession, such as Jean Delumeau (1991) and Ângela Mendes de Almeida (1992).