O clero secular a norte do rio Douro em finais de setecentos

Abstract

In 1794, following the decree of July 19, 1790 and the royal charter of January 7, 1792, provincial censuses were held in Minho and Tras-os-Montes, aiming at drawing up a new administrative and judiciary division and to determine the population of those provinces. In addition to the careful and systematic enumeration of the population north of the Douro, these censuses also registered the secular and regular clergy of the two northern provinces – a territory encompassing the archdiocese of Braga, a significant part of the diocese of Porto and the entire diocese of Braganca and Miranda –, distributed by counties and judicial districts. Based on these and other documentary sources, this article aims to characterize the secular clergy of the mentioned region in 1794, quantifying the number of priests, identifying their geographical and social origin, their distribution by age groups and the nature and amount of their income, trying to compare, whenever possible, the results obtained with those of the south of Portugal – dioceses of Beja and Algarve.