Vieira em movimento: subjacências da distinção entre tapuias, tupis e negros

Abstract

The Christian Church was constituted in the context of an expanding Roman Empire, in which slavery was an important foundation. In spite of her redemptive discourse, she accepted and integrated slavery into her doctrine and institutions. It was on the basis of the Augustinian doctrine of slavery that the Roman Church adapted to a slavish situation in modern times, when compulsory labor became not only a central element in the reproduction of different Western societies, but the slave trade also became an element of articulation between these societies. In this article, we comment on some texts by Father Antonio Vieira who, working in the world’s largest slave center in the seventeenth century, collected the syntheses of theologians and jurists, distinguishing and qualifying their positions through contextual analysis.