The belief in Purgatory, the practice of indulgences and its application in Rio de Janeiro in the eighteenth century

Abstract

The present article intends to analyze the relation between the belief in Purgatory and the request of indulgences in Rio de Janeiro during the eighteenth century, in effort to indicate how they worked and who could request them. In Rio de Janeiro in the eighteenth century, it is possible to verify that certain brotherhoods, parishes and laity asked the Holy See to grant plenary indulgences which, according to the doctrine of Purgatory, would guarantee the complete remission of temporal punishments. To achieve this grace, cristians should visit certain churches or participate in liturgical festivities, duly confessed and communed. In certain cases, the Holy See granted an altar the privilege of such indulgence, where all the funeral masses prayed in that space would have the power to redeem the penaltys of those especially dead.