In 1889, as the Brazilian empire was crumbling in Rio de Janeiro, Padre Cícero Romão Batista was the protagonist of a “miracle” in the remote hamlet of Joaseiro in the Cariry Valley of drought-ridden Ceará. Repeatedly, in the celebration of the mass the host was transformed into blood, allegedly that of the Christ, shed for a second time to redeem mankind. In due course the “remarkable events” were repudiated by the Holy Office and Padre Cícero was suspended from most of his clerical functions because of his energetic advocacy of their miraculous character. Thereafter, until his death at age ninety in 1934, his overriding concerns were to gain full restitution as a priest and to protect the interests of his town and of the pilgrims from throughout the backlands who flocked into the “New Jerusalem” each year to receive his blessing. As his fame and following grew, Padre Cícero became the strongest “coronel” in northeastern Brazil.
The story of Padre Cícero, who was revered by his admirers as a prophet and vilified by his adversaries as the leader of fanatics and bandits, has been told before, but never so well or so dispassionately as in Miracle at Joaseiro. Professor della Cava’s account is based in large part on previously unused documents of the Diocese of Crato and Padre Cícero’s private papers. With access to such materials he has succeeded in stripping away much of the myth surrounding Padre Cícero to reveal a simple, devout, strong-willed priest whose political acumen and ambition were less than his reputation would indicate. Della Cava portrays him as the often unwitting political modernizer of Joaseiro and the Cariry.
Miracle at Joaseiro is both less and more than the biography of a controversial individual who became a legend among his own people in his own time. The author appropriately describes the work as a political history, and has omitted much of a purely biographical nature while including a generous admixture of ecclesiastical, economic, local, regional, and social history of Joaseiro and the Northeast. Its great strength lies in della Cava’s ability to show the interrelationships between trends and events within and beyond Brazil after about 1870 and Padre Cícero’s career as priest, “patriarch,” and political boss.
The weakness of the book is an uneven quality that arises from the attempt to compress so much into two hundred pages of text. Padre Cícero the priest at odds with his bishop is etched much more sharply than Padre Cícero the political leader. The latter, in fact, so recedes into the background after 19x4 as to appear little more than a silent symbol of power, bullied by his housekeeper and exploited by his protégés. The illiterate pilgrims who were his power base remain a faceless mass throughout. The author is occasionally on weak ground in dealing with politics outside the Northeast, and the reader may be bewildered by the myriad realignments of political factions in Ceará.
These, however, are minor flaws in an excellent history. Della Cava’s clarification of the role of Padre Cícero, his insights into the nature of municipal government after 1889, and his assessment of the importance of the national government as a source of funds and patronage for local administrations after 1914 are sufficient to make Miracle at Joaseiro required reading for those who would understand the dynamics of Brazilian politics in the Old Republic.
