Os jesuítas no Maranhão e Grão-pará seiscentista: uma análise sobre os escritos dos protagonistas da missão

Abstract

Not without reason, when talking about Jesuits in the seventeenth-century Portuguese Amazon, what immediately comes to mind are the figures of Fathers Figueira, Vieira, and Bettendorff, widely recognized as the great protagonists of the Mission of Maranhão and Grão-Pará in that century, whether for their valuable written works, as well widely publicized, or for having actively collaborated, and under special circumstances, in establishing the Jesuit project in those parts of the Colony. Proceeding in that direction, I am attempting to include the unknown character, Father Manuel Gomes, among the key figures of that enterprise, placing him alongside Luís Figueira. Given the importance of writing among the members of the Society of Jesus as a privileged instrument of communication, action, and record keeping, the principal goal of this thesis is to analyze the epistolary corpus by Fathers Luís Figueira, Manuel Gomes, and Antônio Vieira, as well as the Crônica by Father João Felipe Bettendorff, in order to identify some of the principal aims of such texts related to the Mission of Maranhão and Grão-Pará during the seventeenth century, and to understand the discursive means employed by their authors to do so. And, in so doing, by placing in evidence the course and the achievements of these Ignatians, I strive to contribute to the historiography concerning the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese Amazon, calling attention to the fact that their abovementioned writings were constructed in order to fulfill strategic roles in attending to the interests and challenges of the Jesuit project in the Northern Region of the Colony, in specific contexts, throughout the 17th century.