Deviants and normalized in the Saint Anthony of Brazil Province: two homonyms between sin and virtue (Bahia - 18th century)

Abstract

The paper analyses the trajectories of two Franciscans, both named Friar Antônio de Sampaio, in the Saint Anthony of Brazil Province during the 18th century. Adopting a micro-historical approach, the study distinguishes between the paths of a Theology lecturer and a friar who confessed to sodomy. Based on sources from the Provincial Franciscan Archive of Recife (APFR), the Overseas Historical Archive (AHU), and the National Archive of Torre do Tombo (ANTT), practices of moral control and regulation within the Order and the Inquisition are examined. The findings reveal, on the one hand, how the cross-referencing of provincial, overseas, and inquisitorial sources makes it possible to resolve problems of individual identification in fragmentary documentary contexts and, on the other, how the distinction between the two namesakes clarifies mechanisms of discipline, reputation, and exclusion within the Province of Saint Anthony of Brazil. In this sense, the article seeks to contribute simultaneously to Franciscan historiography, by making explicit intellectual hierarchies and internal forms of normativisation, and to studies of the Inquisition in Portuguese America, by showing how qualifications, confessions, and local networks of inquisitorial agents affected concrete religious trajectories.