State, Church and Inquisition: Incommunicability

“The Payer of Promises” and “The Holy Inquiry”, by Dias Gomes

Abstract

In the plays “O Pagador de Promessas” [1959] and “O Santo Inquérito” [1966], the playwright Dias Gomes, born in Salvador, reveals that the capacity for communication between human beings is relative and that language, instead of being a link between people, can become a terrible source of misunderstanding and destruction. Starting from a critical reflection on historical praxis, I researched incommunicability in Dias Gomes' theater. I defined a corpus: “O Pagador de Promessas” and “O Santo Inquérito”. In the theoretical-methodological itinerary, I chose qualitative research, with a bibliographical and documentary approach. In the plays investigated, Branca Dias and Zé-do-Burro reveal themselves to be two pure human beings fighting against a ruthless conspiracy that does not accept purity, taking advantage of it and, in the end, destroying it. In the trilogy, State, Church and Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition — currently, called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith —, the great weapon used against Branca Dias and Zé-do-Burro is the systematic and coherent exploitation of the protagonists’ words and actions to form concepts that are entirely different — in essence — from the characters’ intentions.