The prisons and fate of the Jesuits of the Grand-Pará and Maranhão: apologetic narrative, paradigm of resistance to anti-Jesuitism

Anti-Jesuitism constitutes a phenomenon and a religious, cultural, socio-political movement at the international level. One of the most inexorable pursuers of the Company was Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, who unleashed a fierce anti-Jesuit campaign with international influences. After their fal...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Luiz Fernando Medeiros Rodrigues
Format: Article
Language:Portuguese
Published: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco 2009-06-01
Series:Clio: Revista de Pesquisa Histórica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/revistaclio/article/view/24157/19599
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Summary:Anti-Jesuitism constitutes a phenomenon and a religious, cultural, socio-political movement at the international level. One of the most inexorable pursuers of the Company was Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, who unleashed a fierce anti-Jesuit campaign with international influences. After their fall, the surviving Jesuits, scattered throughout the various kingdoms, rehearsed a process of resistance to European anti-Jesuitism with writings. The purpose of this article is to examine one of these writings, "Relation of some causes that will succeed to the Religious of the Society of Jesus in the kingdom of Portugal, in their prisons, exiles and carceres, ... in the year 1759 athe year 1777, in the reign of King D. José I ... ", by Lourenço Kaulen, inserting it in the" process of resistance to anti-Jesuitism "(and its most violent expression, jesuóphophobia), as an attempt by the ex-Jesuits survivors of counterattacking the mythical imagery of the "Jesuit plot" and Jesuitism as being detrimental to society and the source of all kinds of evil. Kaulen inaugurates a new type of writing, the "apologetic-historical," model and paradigm for other filojenutic accounts and apologies. The rhetoric-apologetic style, with a strongly emotive-dramatic connotation, far from marginalizing critical intelligence and the sovereign discernment of the reader, will seek to recompose the dynamics of the mental scheme of feeling with the Exercises, leading it to the discernment of the just-unjust, loyal dishonest, coherent-incoherent. Discernment that will adhere to the emotional and will constitute the path par excellence of praxis and ethical action, that is, the need to repair the injustices done to the Jesuits. Through this dynamic, the author will stimulate the reader's discernible intelligence, encouraging him to stop being a mere passive and inoperative "listener", to be an agent of overcoming injustices and restoring justice, restoring the Company's honor and justice to the Jesuits.
ISSN:2525-5649
2525-5649