Espaço e distinção social: o catolicismo na Província de Sergipe

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the social distinctions incorporated in the Catholicism in the province of Sergipe Del Rey during the nineteenth century. The analysis will be centered in the criteria of admission of two active religious brotherhoods in the city of Estancia in Sergipe, Brazil. The research shows that there was a population divided between the brotherhoods of the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Rosary, reflections of a more diversified social hierarchy about the criteria of race, wealth and social prestige. The space presented meanings in so far as the city reproduced, symbolically, the society and its organization in social strata. In other words, we notice that the Catholic religious field in the population of Estancia followed the mechanisms of expression of the segregation and presented itself as representative of the oppositions between the social groups, which were characterized by associations which defined the social position and the tastes of their members.