O Espiritismo em Ponte do Cosme, Barbacena: exceção kardecista em uma região católica de MG, um estudo de caso

Abstract

The objective of this research is to understand how Spiritism, a foreign religious doctrine born in the midst of modernity, managed to break with the Catholic hegemony of Barbacena-MG and establish itself in Ponte do Cosme, a rural district of this city. For that, we seek to reveal the processes of insertion, diffusion and legitimation of Spiritism in Ponte do Cosme, having as object of study the Spiritist Center Amor à Verdade and its agents, thus investigating the continuities, ruptures and new arrangements that our object develops in relation to the formation process of Spiritism in Brazil. The research takes a period between the 1920s, when the first movements of spiritual phenomena appeared in the district, and goes until the first half of the 1940s, with the construction of the first headquarters of the local Spiritist Center. Methodologically, we start from a bibliographic review on the subject, seeking to frame our object in a scenario of general development of the Brazilian Spiritist movement. To survey the sources of the research, we resorted to participant observation, the use of a field notebook, the application of semi-structured interviews and a careful investigation of the historical records of the agents and institutions that encompass the object of this research. It was noted that the insertion of Spiritism in the Ponte do Cosme district is due to the spiritual healing of Pati and Alexandrino and that through this healing event, both adopt the spiritist religious identity and begin to disseminate the Doctrine in a rural environment. There is a strong link with regulatory and unifying institutions of the Spiritist movement at the municipal, state and national level, so that our object counted not only with guidance, but with institutional interference on the part of these entities in a period of consolidation of a hegemonic model of Spiritist Center. Finally, we consider that, more than simply not presenting a rupture with Catholicism, the case studied shows the assimilation of certain elements of Catholic culture, such as the performance of “catechism”, “weddings” and “baptisms”, bringing an original arrangement between the Doctrine born in the midst of modernity and classic elements of the dominant religion.