In the final remarks we make an attempt to determine the nature and extent of the relations in which the contents coming from different sources were, constituting the religious and mental groundwork of the discussed movements. Whence millenarianism and messianism in the Brazilian backlands? An evolution of answers. The appearance of the wave of the Brazilian folk messianism has been interpreted in several ways. These phenomena were also interpreted in terms belonging to the medicine, to the anthropology and the geography of the population and to its economy and politics.
Nevertheless, in the s, such interpretations, in which it became evident that the specific religiousness of the interior of Brazil was the result of the overlap of the indigenous, Indian mythology and evangelical Catholicism began to appear.
The penitentiary and apocalyptic contents dominated in these explications Bastide The development of this idea, as well as the orientation of the research and interpretations in the perspective marked by it, occurred in the s.
A decisive shift in this direction was made under the impact of publications of Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz According to her, these kinds of movements were aimed at preserving the social order, threatened by anomie due to the ongoing conflict between the landowners and the representatives of local political authorities.
Studies in this period were dominated by interpretations interested almost exclusively in the social meaning of these phenomena, while their religious symbolic and eschatological aspects were omitted as irrelevant, as being merely the external form of social and political matters.
Brazilian messianisms were also interpreted as the archaic, pre-political manifestations of social revolution. From the Marxist perspective, they were perceived as forms of false consciousness that reflected the economic structure of society in a distorted way. The interpretations of these anthropologists and sociologists, who in the s acknowledged theirs researches as the carrier of the ethical and political attitudes in relation to decolonization were also biased.
An example of this kind of interpretation may be the work of the Italian ethnologist Vittorio Lanternari In addition, he assumed that these 19th and 20th-century Brazilian religious movements were based on the pre-Columbian corps of soteriological and messianic ideas of Tupi and Guarani tribes, untouched by the changes, which this culture was subjected to in the context of colonization.
Apriorism sometimes ideological in that interpretations to a great extent was due to the fact that until the mids little attention was paid to the historiography. In later studies this aspect was overlooked definitely less often. It is now the prevailing conviction that, regardless of the adopted theoretical-methodological framework sociology, anthropology, etc. In the s research on Brazilian folk religiosity was still dominated by the methodologies and interpretations that reduced it to the political and social content.
At this time, for some researchers, they have already been unsatisfactory. Some of them noticed that they overlooked important, perhaps even essential, aspects of religious movements. One of them was Alba Zaluar, who advocated to the development of a research method that would incorporate the expressions of the folk religiousness in its symbolic layer that, as she claimed, is the universal order on which the social order is based Zaluar, For the few last decades, the most promising interpretative perspective for the discussed phenomena has been developing, which draw attention to their essential aspect: to their religious content, understood as a symbolic universe, their driving force, also when they occur in the form of social, political or economic movements Gomes Filho, ; Lima Rodrigues, These categories seem to aptly describe the relationships between the two symbolic systems that were met or collided and interacted with each other for over four hundred years.
Constant movement of change and mutual adaptation of the symbolic systems of both sides were done in this way so that they can continue to make sense in a world that is no longer the same as this in which that systems have been shaped. This mutual translation referred primarily to redefining the time and space categories of Indians. However, it created a new space, new time and a new way of being for the missionaries and the indigenous people of Brazil. Some authors claimed that the result of this interpretation was also a new religion, not only of the Indians, but also of all Brazilian ethnic groups, including white colonizers.
In these processes and circumstances in which they ran, we expect to find an answer to the question about the causes and sources of the Brazilian messianic and millenarian revival. This area is covered with bushy vegetation called caatinga. They have a tropical climate, with two seasons: one very dry, the other moderately rainy. Agriculture is developing on the damp zones that occur there in the form of the enclaves scattered among the dry territories.
It meant a place which is distant, uninhabited, isolated, unfriendly, unknown, wild, uncivilized, and delayed in development. Some researchers derive this word from the Tupi Indian language, the tribe inhabiting the coastal areas, in which it means their enemies, the inhabitants of the interior. The formation of these communities was associated with migration and crossbreeding, which also affected the formation of their mentality. This was the beginning of the formation of the population known as the caboclo and its specific culture cultura cabocla.
Although ethnicity was important in understanding the word caboclo, more important was the association of the people named by this word with the rural world Rodrigues, In colloquial terms, this word means a person originating from the rural areas, uneducated, uncivilized and unproductive, contrasted with the white inhabitants of the city, a representative of civilization. Caboclos began to be perceived better in the 70s of the previous century.
The Brazilian intelligentsia idealized this social group then. It is they who were the dominant political force in these areas. This system is known as the coronelismo from the Portuguese word coronel — the colonel. Originally, colonels commanded the National Guard; subsequently this term was used for naming all landowners and rich persons, who held an informal, but real, political power in the region Symanski, In the context of the previously discussed social and religious movements, the proclamation of the Land Law Lei de Terras by the Brazilian Government in was significant.
Until the proclamation of this act, there were lands without specified owners without a document confirming the right of ownership , so the access to free lands, which was the main source of livelihoods often even of the survival for many families, was not difficult. Lei de Terras was to prevent the occupying of free lands by the immigrants, because if it happened, it would not be possible, as intended, to use their work in the great estates.
Under this act, the free lands became the property of respective states, controlled by the regional oligarchies, which then handed them over to the owners of the great estates. This status was lawfully authorized by the Constitution. In the dry lands of north-eastern Brazil, there usually lived more people than production required the natural increment in this region is still the largest in the Americas , which caused the mass unemployment of those who did not possess cultivated land.
For those deprived of lands, the Republic has become synonymous with misery, hunger and death Domingues, Studied communities and religious movements functioned at the turn of the 19th century, in a society that earlier was an object of the conquest of Portuguese conquerors, of the colonization and Christianization, the scene of migrations and ethnic and cultural mixing, and under these influences underwent a significant metamorphosis.
These factors have formed a peculiar Brazilian folk Catholicism. The missionary activity of the Christian religious orders, which led to the evangelization of the local people of Brazil can be understood as the interpretation and translation transfer of the Christian beliefs onto the languages of the local people.
In , mainly the Society of Jesus led the evangelization of the local peoples of Brazil. One of the evangelization strategies of this religious order was the catechesis in the local languages. The problem of translation was complex because, besides the fact that those indigenous languages in many respects were distinct from European ones, they contained a load of ethnic notions that did not necessarily correspond to their meanings in Western cultures.
The situation of catechesis in the local language was such that the Jesuits, speaking to the Indians in their own tongue, used such grammatical, rhetorical, theological, political and metaphysical terms, which did not exist in that language[ 4 ]. Under the influence of those translations, the Catholic theological matter underwent significant changes, just as the language, into which it was translated, as well as the mentality of those who used it. The new representation of the sacrum thus produced was no longer either Christian theology or the Tupi beliefs, but some third symbolic sphere, some kind of the parallel mythology, which was only made possible by the colonial situation Bosi, There were few priests and monks, the parishes were extensive, and the religious teaching was not carried out systematically, reduced only for the children from higher social spheres and lasted several months preceding the first communion.
The religious instruction of children of the lower layers of society was led by the parents, a majority of whom were illiterate, who received religious knowledge in the same way, so the vast majority of Brazilian Catholics inherited it without real knowledge of the doctrine Pereira de Queiroz, ; Siuda-Ambroziak, The folk religiosity of caboclos was pluralistic, fluid, dynamic, with a strong propensity for autonomy, which caused tensions with institutional Catholicism in various aspects, such as prayer, singing, the manner of the celebrate the rites, the cult of saints and double domestic and ecclesiastical baptism.
It was the religiousness without institutional framework, coordinated by secular leaders, the religiosity which appreciated the persons and groups socially excluded, discarded the values unfamiliar to the local culture, and was respectful for such values as honor, solidarity, reciprocity, justice and freedom Welter, Martins, They were the persons advocated the most fervently for the moral and religious values of folk Catholicism, most definitely turned away from the vision of the centralized, bureaucratic and hierarchical Christianity advocated by the Catholic Church.
What was the source of the messianic and millenarian ideas that belonged to this form of Brazilian religiosity? They had a double origin: Christian and indigenous. Christian messianism was an important message, transmitted to the people of America in the process of their evangelization. It was inscribed in the work of the conquest, playing the important role of its legitimacy as the fulfillment of the prediction of the establishment of the Kingdom of God on the earth, among the pristine peoples.
That conviction is brightly visible, for example, in Christopher Columbus, whose mentality was influenced by the Iberian Franciscan thought, strongly saturated by the millenarian and prophetic visions first of all, of Joachim of Fiore , but also in the first missionaries of America, who were Franciscans.
Indeed, social banditry and millenarianism - the most primitive forms of reform and revolution - "go together historically. The example is not very appropriate, to the extent that Father Cicero was far from being a revolutionary and was a poor millenarian; most interesting was the case of Canudos, a village formed by outlaws and poor peasants, followers of the millenarian prophet Antonio Conselheiro Antonio the Counselor , who at the end of the nineteenth century fought like lions against the army of the Brazilian Republic, an invention of the devil.
It is true that the doctrines of Conselheiro are more closely related to what Hobsbawm calls "revolutionary traditionalism", but it was still a socially subversive movement of poor peasants and "social bandits".
Of all the forms of 'primitive' revolt, the millenarian movements seem to the historian the most likely to become revolutionary. The essence of millenarianism, the hope of a complete and radical change in the world which will be reflected in the millennium, a world shorn of all its present deficiencies, is not confined to primitivism.
It is present, almost by definition, in all revolutionary movements of whatever kind, and "'millenarian" elements may therefore be discovered in any of them, insofar as they have ideals. And he adds that archaic millenarian movements in Europe have three characteristic features: 1- a revolutionary aspect, for instance deep and total rejection of the existing evil world and a passionate aspiration to another, better one; 2 - a "chiliastic" type of ideology, usually of messianic Judeo-Christian origin; 3 - a fundamental vagueness as to the means of bringing about the new society Hobsbawm, , p.
The hypothesis is debatable Hobsbawm's research falls on three types of peasant millenarianisms: those that seem to be, first of all, religious, those who are both religious and sociopolitical, and those that seem purely secular. Despite these differences, they nevertheless belong to a kind of common socio-cultural matrix. All the examples studied concern southern Europe - Italy and Spain. Thompson, was not interested in the millenarian movements in England. However, this movement led by the mythical "Captain Swing" had no millenarian features; anyway the authors make no reference to that in their study.
In another study devoted to the issue of the role of Methodism in the revolutionary upheaval in England in the late eighteenth century, Hobsbawm concludes that the so-called 'primitive' Methodists and some other dissident movements may have favored the radical upheaval in some popular milieu miners, weavers without, however, having played a decisive role.
Revolutionary millenarianism dates back, according to Hobsbawm, to Joachim of Flora , the inventor of the doctrine of the three Ages of the World: the Age of the Father Law , the Age of the Son Faith , and the future age, that of the Holy Ghost. Hobsbawm, , p. As we shall see, some of the millenarian movements of the nineteenth century he will study are the distant heirs of Joachimism. Reading the works of Eric Hobsbawm, it becomes evident that millenarianism exerts a real fascination upon him - which does not preclude, of course, the critical distance.
It is, he writes, a phenomenon that "will always be intensely exciting for all those whom the luck of men does not leave indifferent" ibid, p. Although he makes a careful distinction between primitive millenarianisms and modern revolutionisms, Hobsbawm nevertheless emphasizes their elective relationship or affinity : "Even the least millenarian modern revolutionaries have in them a streak of 'impossibilism' which makes them cousins to the Taborites and Anabaptists, a kinship which they have never denied" ibid, p.
When he talked with us on 20 March , he suggested three possible explanations: "Perhaps it's because I belonged to a revolutionary movement. Then it was the moment of the 20 th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and we felt we needed to sum up, ask some basic questions. And finally I was influenced by anthropologists who had worked on that topic, in particular Max Glucksmann and his followers, such as Peter Worsley, who was a fellow-comrade in the party at the time.
Curiously, Eric Hobsbawm does not seem to be interested in the Jewish, prophetic and messianic, veteran-testamentary sources of millenarianism. This does not mean that "all" revolutionary movements are millenarian in the strict sense or that they are connected to a primitive type of chiliasm. And vice versa: not every millenarian movement is necessarily revolutionary. However, the distinction is easy. According to several Italian researchers, e.
Barzelotti, that movement would have been purely religious, with no political implications. Eric Hobsbawm , p. The kinds of community which produced millenarian heresies are not the ones in which clear distinctions between religious and secular things can be drawn.
To argue about whether such a sect is religious or social is meaningless, for it will automatically and always be both in some manner. In the example of Tuscany, moreover, this mixture is hardly disputable: the prophet and his disciples, the Lazzarettists were passionately interested in politics: the slogan of their flag "the Republic is the Kingdom of God," was quite subversive, Italy being a monarchy at that time.
As they marched in procession they sang:. Davide Lazzaretti preached in favor of the "Republic of Christ," which, in the eyes of the authorities of the kingdom was totally unacceptable ibid, p. Eric Hobsbawm begins with a sociological, economic and historical analysis of the Lazzarettist social base: it is the poor, especially the peasants, in the region of Mount Amiata, one of the most backward, both economically and culturally massive illiteracy in Tuscany.
With the unification of the country, the laws of Piedmont were imposed as the standard laws of Italy, in the form of a ruthless liberal economic code that had disastrous social consequences in regions like that. For example, the forest law which abrogated customary rights of common pastures and firewood collecting for heating. In addition, new taxes enacted by Parliament led to increases in food prices, causing hunger riots and uprisings throughout Italy: in , people were killed, 1, wounded and 3, arrested in the country ibid, p.
Born in , Davide Lazzaretti was a waggoner who converted in and began to introduce himself as a new prophet, a new shepherd of the Sinai, a reformer, a legislator ready to freed the people who moaned, 'submitted by despotism to slavery'. His task was to reconcile the Church with the people and form a militia of young Italians, 'the militia of the Holly Ghost' to accomplish the moral and civil regeneration. At the beginning he enjoyed some protection from the Catholic Church, which was hostile to the monarchy, an ungodly government, and to the secular and liberal ideas.
This did not reduce but rather increased his influence on the peasants of Mount Amiata, who abandoned the churches to join the new prophet. On August 18, he descended from the mountain on the town of Arcidosso, followed by 3, of his supporters, singing hymns and carrying the flag of the Republic of God, some wearing the uniform of 'the Militia of the Holy Ghost', but all of them unarmed.
To the guards who ordered them to turn back, Davide Lazzaretti answered: "If you want peace, I bring you peace Throughout the twentieth century, even those who still considered themselves his disciples sided with the communist movement, which respected him as its precursor.
When in an attempt was made to assassinate Palmiro Togliatti, as spontaneous popular uprising occurred in Arcidosso and, according to Hobsbawm's comment it was "a second, revised and corrected edition of the descent from the Mount Amiata" ibid , p. Lazzarettism reveals, in its own way, that the affinity between millenarianism and rebellion is a basic fact in the history of peasant revolts against capitalist modernization. It seems to me that this is one of the most interesting research hypotheses outlined by Hobsbawm in his work of that period.
He illustrated his idea in two utterly enthralling case studies: one that is at the same and one time religious and social - the Sicilian peasant leagues - and another that is in principle antireligious - rural anarchism in Andalusia: both starting at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth.
The Andalusian agrarian anarchism developed over periodic revolts during the years , with a final event in , when the Republic was proclaimed in Spain. It will come to everybody. This is neither cancer nor AIDS ; we are faced with a very different disease. The soul is rotting inside of us. The plot loosely follows the story of Christ — the protagonist, who does not participate in the debauched life of the community, is killed by his own people ; he then rises from the dead as a Voice showing his tortures a divine image in the sky and calling them to follow him ; enlightened by his miracle, people enter into the raging fire asking God for forgiveness.
Yet, in contrast to other representatives of the urban native intelligentsia, Nerkagi has since the late s spent substantial amounts of time in the near-Ural tundra in the trading post faktoria of Laborovaia. And it is there that she run her private reindeer-herding farm krestiansko-fermerskoe hoziaistvo and shop.
Eleven were her adopted children from orphanage background. The children of the nomadic tundra dwellers went to boarding schools in larger settlements. Children were taught how to read, write, and count, but their spirit was not cultivated through practice. In my school one learns how to appreciate labour and simple human life.
It is worth quoting it at length :. God is one, and that is how I bring up our children. My children are Christians and we would not start a meal without a prayer. It is not possible to explain the feelings that I am experiencing and that our children are experiencing by something like Christianity or paganism. I am not into different religious movements or sects. My ethno-education is about the cultivation of the one faith — our own faith [ sobstvennaia vera ].
There is one God and there are gods, masters [ hoziaeva ] of the land. There are sacred sites and each site has its own master. There are small sites and big sites. That is what the children have to learn and how I explain it to the people. They should know about all the sacred sites on their native land [ rodnaia zemlia and how to do the rituals.
Like there is a Governor and a Vice-Governor. The gods of our land are real. In the Urals we have a Goddess-Hada [ grandmother ] and she has the same task as all other gods and God, to protect our people and guide them morally. She is as real as you and me. Christianity was deployed as a cultural resource for the purpose of articulating an alternative perspective on the meaning of adherence to the Orthodox Church. Rather than viewing her religious innovation as yet another case of religious syncretism, whereby Christian symbols, saints, and practices are seen as co-opted into the native worldview cf.
Balzer , her design should be acknowledged for its reference to recent, Soviet experience of political order. The power of native gods was postulated as being as significant and powerful in their own realms e. Her chapel in Laborovaia was reportedly busy during some Orthodox religious holidays, with people making offerings and praying. In societies as different as West Siberian natives and Amazonian Indians, anthropologists often emphasise the resistance potential of such movements.
Their multivocal millenarianism was concomitant with the feelings, or aspirations, of belonging to larger whole s that drove their new religious visions and understandings more generally. The mission, on the other hand, provided an opportunity for people to pray for order in their community and country and, in so doing, to feel involved in public life in the here and now.
Both Orthodox Christian and Baptist converts simultaneously partook in imagistic and doctrinal modes of religiosity and both drew on semantic memory acquired during the previous epoch. In so doing they reproduced in new, religious guises conceptual power structures and ideas that were forged by the Soviet order. Balzer, M. Bazanov, A.
Bartenev, V. Dnevnik, in N. Lukina ed. Comaroff, J. Dvorkin, A. Kniazia Aleksandra Nevskogo. Elkner, J. Humphrey, C. Humphrey eds. Watson ed. Kan, S. Kharkhordin, O. Khodarkovsky, M. Khodarkovsky eds. Petersburg, Russkii Dvor. Lindquist, G. Nerkagi, A. Nerkagi ed. Paxson, M. Pesmen, D. Robbins, J.
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