A governança da igreja escrita entre o nacional e o global

A presença das congregações romanas em manuais brasileiros de direito eclesiástico (século XIX)

Abstract

This article seeks to verify how Roman congregations were represented in the legal culture of imperial Brazil (1822-1889), questioning a nationalist, isolationist view of how ecclesiastical administration was portrayed in the legal literature of the time. The material chosen for this exploratory study were the manuals of ecclesiastical law produced by Brazilian jurists - clerics and laymen - of the empire. The preference for legal books is due to the central role that this genre played in teaching and in legal practice in Brazil during the 19th century. It is analyzed how the country's jurists described the Roman dicasteries, how they inserted them in the exposition of legal doctrine, which specific debates were considered relevant, and how the decrees of congregations were viewed in terms of normative authority. Manuals are examined from a perspective of double transnationality: on one hand, it is taken into account that these works portray transnational dynamics of governance; after all, Roman congregations acted beyond national borders; on the other hand, it is considered that, while doing so, these books made use of the intense transatlantic circulation of ideas, norms and practices during the nineteenth century, being, themselves, transnational objects.