As visitas diocesanas nas minas setecentistas: poder episcopal e sociabilidades na Comarca do Rio das Mortes durante a primeira metade do século XVIII

Abstract

The present work analyzes the role played by pastoral visits that took place during the first half of the eighteenth century at Minas Gerais, Brazil, through the appreciation of various normative instruments and ecclesiastical regiments that displayed religious life at the lusoamerican world, as well as some documents produced after the visits at Rio das Mortes Judicial District. In addition, this work evokes a debate with historiography and raises questions concerning the period when those norms were used; the role played by pastoral visits and how did they work; some particular processes of the Minas Gerais visits and, especially, the existing relations between episcopal power – represented by those pastoral visits – and the Court of Portuguese Inquisition.