Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The article seeks to analyze, from a historical perspective, the discursive and institutional practices established by the so-called missionary pedagogies, led by one of the five congregations that worked in the coal complex of southern Santa Catarina: the Little Sisters of Divine Providence. We will focus on the broad educational processes developed by nuns with the sons and daughters of coal mine workers living in Vila Operária Próspera, in the city of Criciúma, Brazil, between the years 1950 and 1980. The nuns, when specializing in different activities for boys and girls, even with the contestation of gender norms in some spaces in Vila Operária, they contributed in some way to the construction of differences between masculine and feminine, reinforcing inequalities.

The work Science of the Cross, by Edith Stein – Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, name of Carmelite Religious – is, of all her works, the best known. For this success contributed the fact that it was her last work, before being deported to the concentration camps in 1942. The contours and circumstances that motivated and led Benedicta of the Cross to write Science of the Cross were always assumed as a request by Mother Antónia Engelmann, with the beginning of the process at the end of 1940. However, crossing her epistolary with the letters received by Edith Stein, and the situation in which she found herself, we are led to a different approach which we want to highlight here, where Edith’s own initiative in undertaking a work to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of St. John of the Cross stands out. Simultaneously, we will seek to demonstrate how Science of the Cross is a completed work, despite some contrary hypotheses raised.

This article intends to present a new historiographical reading of the inquisitorial phenomenon. Starting with a discussion of the historiographical and terminological considerations developed since the final decades of the twentieth century, we propose to address: the “medieval” character of the office of the inquisitio; the role played by the Papacy in the creation of this juridical institution and its later use in a “universalist” perspective; the development of modern inquisitorial systems and their relations and interactions. This will allow us to focus on analyzing the impact of the Inquisition(s) on the different societies of the Ancien Regime, from the European states to their colonial territories, including the complex relationships between the three inquisitorial systems. We stress the importance of integrated investigation of the various social frameworks, but also of the power groups that formed under the auspices of the institution and with attention to the varying degrees of relations as well as perceptions generated by the inquisitorial machine within societies.

Marked by rupture, the path of religious orders in Portugal between the Ancien Régime and the Contemporary Period has been marked by precise historical milestones, most prominently the liberal decrees of the 1930s. At the level of regular female communities, this divide seems to have been realized in the transition from contemplative to active life, in the replacement of monasteries by congregations. We do know, however, that in line with the long period of regalism and secularisation, a project to reform the regular institutes was outlined, preceding the suppression of the 19th century and making reservations about the perception of their univocity. The Junta do Exame do Estado Atual e Melhoramento Temporal das Ordens Religiosas (Board for the Examination of the Current State and Temporal Improvement of Religious Orders), set up in 1789 by queen Maria I, was responsible for promoting this reform, which is reflected in a corpus of documents whose richness has not yet been widely recognized. On the basis of these premises, and based on the aforementioned documentation, the aim of this article is to emphasize the importance of the Board and the historical-ideological biases it carries in the debate on the evolution of the paradigm of female consecrated life in Portugal at the dawn of Modernity.