Law and religion in the literature of Eça de Queirós

Abstract

This article, through an evaluation of Eça de Queirós' The Crime of Father Amaro, seeks to uncover the role that religion, through its agents, and law, through its legal structures, play in the configuration and reconfiguration of social and political forms. Starting with the Portuguese example, the birthplace of Eça de Queirós' work, the aim is to understand how clerical agents acted in shaping Brazilian society, especially in the 19th century, unfolding the study through the ways in which these agents acted and how they, together with the law, were able to act in the sense of maintaining a social order or upholding declared rules. The research thus goes through the initial study of religious freedom in Brazil, with occasional notes on the Portuguese case, with the analysis of the development of Eça de Queirós' plot and the study of his characters gaining strength as explanatory signs of the social structures representative of the historical period. Based on this, the scientific work comes to the conclusion that the law and the Church gain ground as instruments for maintaining a social order, which is broken up by political and social manifestations supported by economic interests or the maintenance/expansion of power. In the latter area, law can serve as an instrument in the process of change. The historical method is adopted, with a bibliographical survey as the method of procedure.