Secular nuptials, religiosities and power (Belém, 1916-1940)

Abstract

This article limited its attention to the city of Belém between 1916 and 1940. Its concerns focused on understanding certain secular-religious aspects attributed to civil marriage. In view of this, the study began to glimpse the meanings given by the Republic, the Catholic Church, the judges and the spouses to that form of conjugal union, which, if on the one hand, at no time broke with Catholic certainties (marital indissolubility , marriage as the basis of the collectivity), on the other hand, it offered society a so-called single celebration to legitimize the family, that is, in the absence of the notary consortium, the Catholic marriage or that of any religious denomination did not have legal validity and, therefore, did not regularized offspring and property, for example. Indeed, the foundation of these domains was seminal to establish a systematic crossing with different sources, namely: newspapers, divorce proceedings, paternity investigation action, Decrees of the Provisional Government of the Republic of 1890, Brazilian Civil Code of 1916 and fragments of the diary of a character named Laura Soares de Souza.