The hermit Manuel Correa, the Church of Our Lady of Desterro and the religious field of Rio de Janeiro in the colonial period

Abstract

The article intends to analyze the path of Manoel Correa hermit, responsible for the maintaining of Nossa Senhora do Desterro church, in Rio de Janeiro city, in the last decades of the 17^th century and begins of 18^th century. The text develops three objectives: help to suply the blank that exists in historiography about a religious lifestyle poorly known in Portuguese America; show how through the alms collecting, the hermit reached socioeconomic projection as a administrator of urban and rural properties, leading him to adopt nearby devotional practices of the colonial elites; and finally, when analyzing the conflicts involved in the will’s execution of Manoel Correa, to show there was no definition about the hermit’s status, sometimes approximated of laity devoteds, sometimes approximated of clergy.

Keywords
Hermits and hermitages; alms; wills