Política missionária e secular em escritos jesuíticos sobre a Baixa Califórnia no século XVIII

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the coexistence of spiritual and temporal preoccupations in the Mexican Jesuit writings on the Low California missions by the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Society of Jesus were facing the Bourbon Reforms. It takes as examples the writings of two Jesuits: a missionary (Miguel Venegas) and an educator (F.X. Clavijero). Venegas was a missionary in Low California and author of Notícia de la California y de su conquista temporal y espiritual hasta el tiempo presente (1739). Clavijero was mainly an educator, but involved with the performance of the missions as can be seen in his Historia de la Antigua or Baja California (1790). Both are here considered as representatives of a generation of Mexican Jesuits who, few decades before the expelling of the Society of Jesus from New Spain, combined their spiritual with their temporal works, whose result was a successful missionary enterprise and a rich intellectual production.