The administration of the sacrament of holy orders to blacks in Portuguese America: practices, regulations and policies episcopalians (1702-1745)

Abstract

The article presents a reflection on the process of ordination of blacks in America in the first half of the 18th century. The reflection is proposed considering the following aspects: the trajectory of candidates for the priesthood and their strategies to obtain the call remission “color defect”; the standards and practices that guided the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the granting of such exemption; the relationship of policies pursued by the bishops and the ordering of the so-called “men of color”. Given these variants, think about the complexity of the process in question and its interface with the constitution of a social history of the sacraments in modern Catholicism.