Marriage Records of the Freguesia de Santo Antônio do Urubu de baixo do Rio São Francisco (1719-1753): reading and writing according to the witnesses

Abstract

The main interest of this study is to analyze the social practices of the written culture, with special attention to the examination of the signatures of the witnesses of marriages, present in the first book of parish registers of the Freguesia de Santo Antônio do Urubu de baixo do Rio São Francisco, Capitania of Sergipe d'El Rey from the 18th century. As a theoretical-methodological basis, the perspective of the Social History of Written Culture (CASTILLO GÓMEZ, 1999; 2003; CASTLLO GÓMEZ; SÁEZ, 1994; PETRUCCI, 2000; 2002) and the necessary interfaces between Philology and Paleography (SPINA, 1977; CAMBRAIA, 2005; BERWANGER; LEAL, 2008). Thus, the present investigation is configured as a study of a diachronic corpus based on reading and paleographic transcription, description and analysis of the signatures of witnesses to marriages, produced by a dominant class and by people socially authorized to order relationships and social practices (CASTILLO GÓMEZ, 2003), reflecting past stages of reading and writing skills, allowing the realization of a study, according to the characterization of Magalhães (1996). The marriages records followed a form pre-established by the Ordenações do Sagrado Concílio Tridentino (1545-1563) and of the Constituições Primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia (1707) drawn up by the parish priests, who in the act of registration signed the document, together with the witnesses. In this sense, the questions proposed are: who knew how to write at that particular moment and what social relations are represented by the materiality of writing in that social microcosm of the sertão de baixo of the 18th century? For this question, the initial hypothesis is that the instruction was directly related to the classes of society and specific to each gender, and this would have been the reason why certain witnesses did not write their names on the document.