Missão imperial oitocentista: Frei Caetano de Messina e os capuchinhos italianos no processo civilizador em Pernambuco

Abstract

The Province of Pernambuco in the middle of the nineteenth century was immersed in the political tensions that reflected in popular uprisings like the War of the Marimbondos. Under pressure from the modern English state, the Brazilian Empire drew up a project to restructure the labor market, which did not include slave labor. These measures ended up reaching the poor free men, a considerable portion of the non-captive population, who, dissatisfied with the new determinations, resisted the Government's proposals. Added to this, the conjuncture of the country's territorial occupation, concentrated in the cities of the coast, while the "sertoes" were marginalized. For this scenario was called efficient mass containment force, the Catholic Church. Subsidizing the arrival and maintenance of Capuchins of the Sicilian island of Italy, D. Pedro II commissioned an effective mechanism for the Brazilian civilizing process of that century. The march of the Italian Capuchins through the interior of the Northeast, especially in Pernambuco, supplied the lack of State assistance to the population far from the urban centers of the coast. Observing the "Holy Missions", we sought to characterize the political role of missionaries, such as Fr. Caetano de Messina. Although formally submitted to the State, they did not always act together. Taken by the agreement of the documentation left by the Capuchins, associated with pertinent historiography, we seek to safeguard this civilizing project of the Italian missionaries and their relations with the free poor, as their use to the Emperor for the maintenance of territorial integrity and public order.