The subject of this research is The Royal Patronage in Brazil and the ecclesiastical circumscriptions. It is part of the research activities of the Postgraduate Program in Theology at PUC-Rio, area of concentration Systematic-Pastoral Theology, research line Religion and Modernity, research project Church History and Modernity: Permanences and Changes. What is intended - as a main objective - is to investigate what was the Royal Patronage and what was its preponderance in Brazil in the process of creating ecclesiastical circumscriptions in the Brazilian colonial and imperial periods. In this sense, using primarily coeval official documentation, the investigation will focus, on the one hand, the origin of the overseas Royal Patronage of Portugal (Padroado Régio ultramarino de Portugal) and its impact on the circumscribed organization of the Catholic Church in Brazil. Then, once Brazilian independence was proclaimed, how the Empire of Brazil incorporated this Patronage transforming it into the so-called Imperial Patronage and how it was exercised regarding the expansion of the number of Brazilian ecclesiastical circumscriptions to promote greater pastoral effectiveness. It is also part of the scope of the research to identify elements that demystify the diachronic tendency regarding the understanding of the current Royal Patronage in part of modern historiography, establishing from the investigation of the official documents of the time a distinction between the essence and the nature of the referred Patronage and the contradictions related to its dynamics and its exercise manifested throughout history.