O Livro das confissões de Martin Pérez e a disciplina corporal na Península Ibérica do século XIV

Abstract

Human societies are permeated by discursive codes that determine their bases and guide the behaviors of their members. Social relationships involve beliefs, values, and expectations. Thereby, the establishment of cultural signifiers and meanings are a sine qua non condition for the formation of society. These signifiers are almost always allied with the interests of the dominant social stratum. Based on these assumptions, we evaluate in this dissertation how the body and sex are objects of control exercised by the Church, configured as a way for the institution to obtain social domination. We analyze the relationships built on the clash between: nature and bodily impulses versus behavior seen as civilized or non-sinful, according to medieval religious discourse. We present the discourses about body and sex produced by the Iberian ecclesiastics in the fourteenth century, through the Book of Confessions of Martin Perez. Therefore, we highlight, from this work, the corporal discipline to which the Church proposes, and for that, we use the assumptions of Content Analysis as a method of analysis of the historical source in question. Through the studies presented here, we try to answer the following question: 'How does ecclesiastical discourse propose to serve the civilizing ideal by disciplining bodies and regulating sexual practice?', We understand that from the confession – technique by which Church was able to deepen its ideological domination–, the condemnation of pleasure, and the strict control of sexual practices, the Church is proposing an ever greater distance from the body to the state of nature, imprinting the socio-cultural ideal in daily life of the faithful