Uma sociedade de capelas

A society of chapels: the religious property in the formation of the territory of Vila de Casa Branca in the Province of São Paulo, 19th century

Abstract

In the territory of Casa Branca village, in the Province of São Paulo, in the mid-19th century, donations of chapels' property were the genesis of villages, later elevated to curated chapels and parishes. The article demonstrates the formation of the urban network, analyzing the relationship between the secular force and the Catholic Church in the territorial occupation, a process that involved the parishes of the region and instances of the civil and judiciary forces in the recognition and possession of chapels properties. The primary sources include the civil and ecclesiastical textual documentation of the region, spatialized in a Historical GIS that reconstitutes the territory of the application of the chapel of Rio do Peixe and its free and slave population. It allows analyzing the relationship between the farms, the network of paths, the chapels and the chapels' properties, revealing social hierarchies and patronage networks around the cured chapels, showing their relevance in the daily life of the 19th century contemporaries.