Passado perpétuo: os penitentes peregrinos públicos e o catolicismo penitencial em Juazeiro-CE (1970 -2016).

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to reconstruct the history of the group of Public Pilgrims Penitents, through narratives from the remaining women and men of this brotherhood. The group appears in the 1970’s, in the city of Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, through the initiative of the first leader of the brotherhood, master José Aves de Jesus, who had abandoned his "profane" life in the city of Caruaru, Pernambuco, to devote to a new lifestyle in the "land of the Mother of God". The preaching of this penitent was based on a strong asceticism that included the deprivation of material goods, formal work and the institution of begging as the group's penitential identity. Most of the rules proposed by the penitent were drawn from ancient Catholic manuals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the book Missão Abreviada (1859) (Abbreviated Mission) and the text Machadinha de Noé (1931) (Noah's Hatchet), both considered sacred by the brotherhood. With the death of Master José in the year 2000, the group underwent important changes that greatly transformed the organizational form of the group, as well as the own interpretations on the sacred elements of the brotherhood. One of the main marks of this period is the relation of these people to various elements of the "modern world": technology, money and work, for example. New narratives arise, old interpretations are revised, myths gain new contours, and the history of the Public Pilgrims Penitents reveals the complexity that exists in the ways traditions are lived through time.