We all die

attitudes towards death (São Paulo, 17th century)

Abstract

The history outlined here aims to analyze the attitudes towards a moment essentially hard to the lives of seventeenth-century Christian men – death. These behaviors will be investigated based on documentation in which individuals, by their own hands, proposed to take action about themselves and their own when close to the last moment. It's about the wills. We will examine the text of the last wishes of São Paulo characters seeking to ascertain what was once identified by the French historian, Philippe Ariès, a marked change from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age: the notion of the individual responsibility to be saved. Moreover, we will focus on the contours of the incipient modern family feeling, present in 17th century Portuguese America in shy, but continuous, hardening.