THE IMAGES OF DRESSING OF THE SANCTUARY OF THE MONTE SANTO, BAHIA, AND ITS SACRED DRAMATURGY

Abstract

The village of Monte Santo, founded in the 18th century by the Capuchin missionary Apolline of Todi, was transformed into a mystical city due to the great mountain with its Shrine of the Holy Cross, its Passos, res and relics, and mainly for its set of dress up images. The latter were largely responsible for the propagation, maintenance and consolidation of popular Catholicism in one of the driest corners of Northeast Bahia. The set of these images: “Senhor dos Passos” (Steps Lord), Nossa “Senhora das Dores” (Our Lady of Sorrows), “Nossa Senhora da Soledade” (Our Lady of Solemnity), “São João Evangelista” (St John the Evangelist) and the “Cristo Morto” (Dead Christ), represents, mainly, in Holy Week, the apotheosis of faith, in addition to evoking the reminiscences of a baroque mestizo filled with hybridism and popular contaminations. This set of images became so important in the dissemination of the Catholic faith, that the village, for more than two centuries, attracts Romeiros from various parts of Brazil, being, the images, the “apple of the eye” of the pilgrims and the community. Such a relationship caused these works also to arouse the iconoclastic fury of some segments of the population, making two of them almost totally devastated, in the year 2003. Such a fact provoked popular outrage and circulated news on the country’s media outlets that claimed they had been through the War of Canudos, the Attacks of the Prestes Column in the 1920s, the attacks of the Lampião’s gang a decade later, but would not resist the conflicts of the 21st century. Based on photographs, documents by chroniclers, letters and dissertations, this work tries to analyze the images of dressing Monte Santo in order to reveal and disseminate this artistic and religious patrimony of the Brazil.