Comentário sobre leis dos bens de raiz das ordens religiosas no Brasil

Resumo

The portuguese legislation that was applied to Colonial Brazil, was based upon Philipine Ordinances, code published in 1603. There was a great number of extraordinary laws, completing or opposing the Ordinances. These laws tried to adapt the Code to the real situations, either in Portugal or in Brazil. The Philipine Code remained here for three centuries, from 1603 to 1917, when the Brazilian Civil Code was enforced. The reasons of this long permanency could be in the centralist and absolutist character of this code. One of the aspects of this legislation is examined here, the landed property belonging to the religious orders in Brazil. The text of the Ordinances was ratified and completed by means of extraordinary laws, since 1609, imposing limits upon the anlargement of these landed property of Religious Orders. This process reached at its maximum during Dom Joseph’s reign, in the second half of the eighteenth century. There are possibilities of a survey of the real estate of the religious orders during the Colonial Period, through the examination the official correspondence of the documents requested by the Metropolitan Government.