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Abstract
This article looks at how historical consciousness has been constructed and sustained through the Holy Week celebrations in Campanha, a small former gold mining town in southern Minas Gerais, Brazil. By drawing on ethnographic and archival material, it argues that ritual experiences play a critical role in shaping conceptions of the past. In Campanha, as in other former mining towns of the region, Holy Week is structured around a highly theatrical, “baroque” template and accompanied by a colonial musical repertoire. The celebration provides the local population with a context for a direct encounter with the town's glorious golden past, and for this reason it has become a major emblem of local identity. Yet in its efforts to implement the directives of Vatican II, the church is striving to eradicate “elitist” practices of the past and this is threatening the continuity of the Holy Week festivities. The confrontations between church officials and the faithful that this situation has generated have heightened local historical consciousness, but they have also drawn attention to the distinct conceptions of history held within the town. Ultimately, these differences rest upon disparate orientations to religiosity itself: while the clergy struggle to instate a “modern”, “popular” church, the local population engage in Holy Week as a source for “baroque experiences” that renew their links with the past.
Acknowledgments
The fieldwork and archival research for this project were undertaken thanks to generous research funding provided by the ESRC and the British Academy. I am also grateful to Queen's University Belfast for granting me study leave to allow me to undertake the research. My thanks to Almir Junqueira Ferreira Lopes for permission to use the photographs in and . I would also like to thank Caroline Bithell for inviting me to contribute to this volume and for her helpful comments throughout its preparation.
Notes
1. This paper is a companion piece to an article that appeared a few years ago on the Festival of Our Lady of the Rosary, which takes place in Campanha in October, involving a predominately black population: see Reily (Citation2001).
2. A mineiro is a person from the state of Minas Gerais.
3. A carioca is a person from the city of Rio de Janeiro.
4. The historiography of Campanha has been the focus of numerous works by local historians, including Carvalho (Citation1982), Casadei and Casadei (Citation1989), Lefort (Citation1972), Vilhena de Morais (Citation1988) and Valladão (Citation1937, Citation1940).
5. For a detailed stylistic analysis of Brazilian colonial music, see Crespo Filho (Citation1989).
6. There are no organized communities linked to African-Brazilian possession cults in Campanha, though one Spiritist temple does exist.
7. It is worth noting that Campanha, unlike many former mining towns, is not a major tourist centre, although there are those who would like to see a growth in local tourism. During Holy Week, however, large numbers of people originally from the town return for the festivities.
8. Edésio de Lara Melo (Citation2001, 42–4), who conducted research on the Holy Week celebrations in the Campos das Vertentes region of Minas Gerais, noted that the traditional celebrations in this region are supported by the local clergy despite Vatican II, because most of them are from the region and therefore understand its importance to their parishioners.
9. For further reading on the “Protestant baroque”, see Martz (Citation1991, 218–45).
10. On confraternities in the mining regions, see Boschi (Citation1986), Boxer (Citation1964), Volpe (Citation1997) among others.
11. Although the link between the church and the state was officially severed in Brazil only in 1889, in the latter part of the 19th century the clergy were already making some headway in affirming their authority within the church (Maués Citation1995, 46–9). In Minas Gerais, an important tactic in this process was the effort to reduce the power of the confraternities.
12. In his small booklet, Subsídios para a História da Música da Campanha, Marcello Pompeu makes the following claim: “[Pompeu da Silva] brought a vast repertoire from his native town which we still conserve. … Of these works the Campanha Choir performs the Motets of the Stations and of the Pains, Vernonica's song, the trio of the Three Marys and the Pupili quartet, as well as other pieces” (Citation1977, 5).
13. This is the earliest document I have been able to locate that provides concrete information about the composers of music used in a Holy Week celebration in Campanha.
14. It is worth noting, however, that some of the manuscripts attributed to Jerônimo de Souza in Campanha collections were actually composed by Manoel Dias de Oliveira.
15. A manuscript of a Tractus and Alleluia by Manoel Dias de Oliveira was copied in Campanha in 1850, and also belonged to Coelho Netto.
16. It has not yet been possible to determine the date and place of birth of Coelho Netto, but there is no record of it having been in Campanha. He may be related to the Coelho Nettos from Ouro Preto, as they were a renowned family of musicians.
17. They were also used in São João del-Rey (Anon Citation1997, 201) until Martiniano Ribeiro Bastos (1835–1912) composed new sets, which were then adopted in the town.
18. Since the colonial era, and even up to the present, musicians in the mining regions have been predominantly of mulatto origin (Lange Citation1966) and generally of the labouring classes, drawing their income from such craft-based activities as carpentry, tailoring or shoe making and repair.
19. Pompeu da Silva was one of the leaders of a separatist movement that aimed to create the State of Southern Minas, with Campanha as its capital.
20. A website providing photos, moving images and mp3 recordings to accompany the description that follows can be located at: http://www.qub.ac.uk/sa-old/resources/HolyWeek/index.html.
21. Local history has it that the image was purchased from an artist in São João del-Rei in the early 19th century. This was the story provided by the local paper, Sul de Minas, on 6 April Citation1941.
22. Our Lady of Pains is commonly depicted with seven daggers in her chest, though such an image is not used in Campanha.
23. The ceremony derives from an early Christian tradition in which 15 candles were slowly blown out one by one, until only one was left; all other lights in the church were extinguished to enhance the effect of the single candle. This was meant to represent the life of Christ that was coming to an end. The last candle was then hidden from view and in this total darkness the congregation would begin to stamp their feet as loudly as possible, representing the chaos that reigned in the world in the absence of Christ. At this point light was restored to the church. For a full description of the ritual in São João del-Rei, one of the few places in which the ceremony still takes place, see Anon (Citation1997, 1, 32–99).
24. In short stories based on their memories of Campanha, Veiga Miranda (Citation1930) and Padre Godinho (Citation1991) highlight their recollections of Veronica. Miranda writes: “And Veronica, a figure above all mysterious, who at the stops in the procession unrolls the cloth on which Christ's bloody face has been imprinted” (1930, 28); while Padre Godinho writes: “But the great sensation of the night was Veronica, the most beautiful girl of the town and the one with the sweetest voice, who slowly unrolling a veil with Jesus's bloody face, sang a mournful melody: ‘Lo, all who pass this way, look and see if there is pain equal to my pain!’” (1991, 23).
25. Such a process was undertaken in 1978 in São João del-Rei, when parts of Rossini's Stabat Mater as well as pieces from Lehmann's Harpa de Sião were eliminated and substituted by pieces by local composers and other colonial composers from Minas Gerais (see Neves Citation1987, 188–9).