The Practice and Pretense of Religion in Eça de Queiroz’s “O Crime do Padre Amaro”

Abstract

As its title suggests, recalling that of a French counterpart erroneously supposed at one time to have been its model, O Crime do Padre Amaro deals with a crime — the immoral behavior of a clergyman with a young girl.1 Eca de Queiroz’s novel involves more, however, than the misconduct of a single member of the clergy or the implied thesis that some men are not fit by temperament to become priests. The work, viewed in a larger perspective, shows the general corruption of Portuguese priesthood in the second half of the nineteenth century in a society where material values have substantially undermined spiritual ones and where the appearance of religion, the rituals of religious observance, have come to mean more than the intrinsic, immaterial dedication to the faith.