Igreja, Estado e propriedade : a questão dos bens de mão-morta no Primeiro Reinado e Regência (1826-1824)

Abstract

Mortmain assets can be defined as a sort of land domain of the Ancien Régime, in which the obstruction of their circulation in trade was the main characteristic. Those assets, with emphasis on the belonging to religious orders, which possessed most of them, suffered, on several States, a confiscation process meant to insert them on trade, commercializing them and constituting them as private property. In most confiscation experiences, the event is also connected to the utilization of those assets by the Treasury in order to solve taxation issues. According to current Brazilin historiographical opinion there has not been a confiscation of mortmain national project; only a few local an punctual initiatives. In that sense, this study’s objective is to analyze the situation of mortmain assets in Brazil, as well as the debate about confiscation of them in the Chamber of Deputies in the first years of Empire of Brazil, in order to contribute to a better understanding of the matter, even in absence of a deep, wide national project that seeks to extinguish this type of property. Therefore, besides bibliographic review of national and foreign historiography, with emphasis on the Portuguese, a procedure of documentary analysis of “Annaes do Parlamento Brazileiro”, publication that duplicates the parliamentary debates on the Chamber of Deputies. The objective was to locate within the debates mentions and projects about mortmain assets regulation or even confiscation. In contrast to the current historiography, projects were found that aimed at the use of mortmain assets by the State. Specifically, a Bill was discovery, which was approved in the Chamber of Deputies, that authorized the Government to sell assets in possession of religious orders, naturally mortmain assets, in order to contain the monetary and tax crisis befalling the vertiginous emission of banknotes by “Banco do Brasil”, meant to comply with loans requested by the State. Furthermore, other projects and manifestations were found, expressing the will of several deputies to circulate the assets by means of selling them in public auction and even using them in benefit of civil power, even if for the long term. In that sense, the general conclusion of the study is that there was a significant debate about confiscation of mortmain in the first years of Empire of Brazil.