The study of sacred oratory in colonial Brazil is a heuristic field of great interest to cultural history, being that sermons were a very important source of doctrine transmission and of behavior modeling in a society in which speech was the main mode of knowledge diffusion. The course traced in this article points to clear evidence of the importance, frequency, and the broad scope of preaching activities in the context of Brazil in the 16th to 17th century. The article also enlightens the functions taken by these activities: catechism, indoctrination of the listeners, and the reform of customs that approached the personal, social, and political reality of emitters and receivers.
luso-brazilian religious history; preaching, cultural history