Dilemmas and hardships in the transition to modernity: Sociability network, religious and political culture (Barão do Rio Branco, Oliveira Lima and Gilberto Freyre)

Abstract

The following article considers the dilemmas and hardships experienced by the intellectual field during Brazil’s transition to modernity by analyzing the sociability network between José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior (Baron of Rio Branco, 1845-1912), Manoel de Oliveira Lima (1867-1928), and Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987). We highlight the long-term historical permanence of echoes of the Protestant Reform in the sixteenth century and the Council of Trent (1545-1563), as well as the Catholic Church’s reactions to the Reforms and their historic reworkings at the turn of the twentieth century. We also discuss the political and intellectual activities of the Baron of Rio Branco, Oliveira Lima, and Gilberto Freyre as ramifications of this debate and the field of dispute. Our starting point of interpretation within this perspective is the ambivalence and the contradictions inherent to these historical figures’ thoughts, feelings, and actions, spurring an analysis of the complex nature of the theological, ideological, political, and psychological split provoked by the ‘schism”. The subject proposed will be handled according to an interdisciplinary interpretation guided by the Social Sciences, particularly Political Sociology, and History in the defining of ‘subjectified history”. This entails a close consideration of the often-unconscious emotions involved in the social sphere, which may produce traumatic effects and psychological suffering.