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Relations of the Negro with Christianity in Portuguese America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

René Ribeiro*
Affiliation:
Instituto Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, fernambuco, Brazil

Extract

The African came to know Christianity, in this part of the New World, as a system of values (the Christian ideas), and as a normative structure (the Catholic Church). These two were interrelated, although frequently in conflict with other values and other structures emerging from the social system which was established as a consequence of Portuguese colonization. In his quality as slave he was integrated into an inter-relational combine which included new forms of ecologic adaptation, of economy, of inter-personal relationships and their regulation, on a rural basis, and of a slave-holding, latifundiarian and senhorial orientation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1958

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Footnotes

*

René Ribeiro is a council member of the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais of Recife, Pernambuco, and also a practicing medical psychiatrist. Among his more important works are the following: The Afrobrazilian cult-groups of Recife. A study in social adjustment (Evanston, 1949); “O Negro em Pernambuco,” Revista do Instituto Arqueológico e Histórico de Pernambuco, XLII (1948–1949), 7–25; Religião e relações raciais (Rio de Janeiro, 1956). Address: Rua Henrique Dias 281, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.

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