O Corpo a serviço da fé : representações religiosas na Romaria do Bonfim de Natividade (TO)

Abstract

The present research aimed to study the representations of the body in religious celebrations in the territory of Tocantins, highlighting the specificities of one of the major manifestations of Southeastern Tocantins, the Romería do Senhor do Bonfim. With almost three centuries of existence, this religious manifestation happens in a rural town located 22 km from Natividade and more than 200 km from Palmas, capital of the State of Tocantins. At the site, religious culture strengthens the concept of faith and the miracle, leaving secular marks in the subjects' subjectivities. Our objective was to understand the ritualized body as a bearer of meanings in the Romaria in question, in order to interpret the meaning of the symbologies presented by the body in the event, explain the gestures and expressions explicit and implicit in the discourses of the bodies in the Pilgrimage and, finally, investigate as the corporeity, in the religious aspect, is perceived by the pilgrims. Thus, the central focus of inquiry is therefore the body as an elemental and essential part of religious festivities in order to understand its representations and its functionalities in the context of this religious cult. For that, the information collection was based on interviews, travel records (travelers' bibliography and Diário de Campo), publications in social networks and theoretical bibliographic apparatus. From this survey, we delimit the group of pilgrims essential to the research and we try to discover, through interviews and questionnaires, which conception it possesses of the corporal representations realized during the Nativitarian Pilgrimage. The dissertation is divided into three chapters. The first deals with the historiography of religious festivals in Brazil and Goiás, the historical aspects of the city of Natividade (TO), where the event is held, and the origins of the worship of Senhor Bonfim and his arrival in the territory of Tocantins. The second addresses the faces of the sacred and profane, brings the different looks of those who participate annually in the pilgrimage and the visibility conferred by the media to the event. In the third and final chapter, our focus was on the rituals of the body and its meanings, on how the body behaves in religious space, on how it expresses desires and feelings, and on the meaning of its representations in relation to the sacred.