A Hagiografia por Eça de Queirós: religiosidade e revolução

Abstract

This paper discusses how the description of the lives of Santo Frei Gil, Santo Onofre and Santo Cristovão, from the book Vidas de Santos (Lives of Saints), constitutes the focus for the analysis of human weaknesses from a perspective more humanistic and distant from naturalistic precepts. Starting from the conclusion of the short story “O Mandarin” [1880] about man’s fragility,"creature improvised by God, evil work of poor clay" (Queiroz, 1995), our study discusses how Eça, through the image of the saint proposes a model of altruism opposed to the behavior of nineteenth-century Portuguese society and the problems it brings: the moral bankruptcy and the cultural stagnation. The recreation of medieval hagiographies, therefore, reveals an apparent duality. That is, revealing in one way, the author's inscription on exemplary moralistic tradition, and in the other, attending the revolutionary transformation appeals of society through literature defended by the Generation of 70’s, under new molds, though.