You Jesuits were priests who belonged to Company of Jesus, a religious order linked to the Catholic Church that aimed to preach the gospel throughout the world. This religious order was created in 1534 by the priest Ignatius of Loyola and was officially recognized by the Church from the Pope Paul III in 1540.
The Jesuit priests' proposal for the dissemination of Christianity was based on the teaching of catechesis. They worked in different parts of the world and stood out in colonial Brazil. In Europe, the Jesuits emerged as part of the movement of counter-reform and therefore their important mission was to prevent the growth of Protestantism.
Jesuits in Brazil
The first Jesuits who came to Brazil arrived with the first governor-general of the colony, Tome de Sousa, in 1549. They were led by Manuel da Nóbrega and their main mission was to christianize the natives and watch over the Church installed in colonial Brazil. The Jesuits built places called missions, where they combined the catechesis of the natives with their use as labor for the production of everything the mission needed.
In order for them to carry out their work in the colony, initially, it was necessary to create communication with the natives, since they spoke Tupi and the Jesuits spoke Portuguese. So, the Father José de Anchieta developed a manual that helped the Jesuits communicate with the natives. In this period of Brazilian history, the most common language existing here was the general language, which mixed elements of Portuguese with native languages.
Furthermore, the Jesuits played an important educational role in Brazil, as, in addition to catechesis for the natives, they educated the children of the colonists. To make this possible, these priests created schools in different parts of Brazil, as happened in the city of Salvador and in São Paulo de Piratininga (now the city of São Paulo). Regarding Jesuit schools, historian Ronaldo Vainfas states:
Ignatian colleges spread across all continents, crossing the seven seas. They trained teachers, intellectuals and missionaries. They dominated teaching in several universities, such as Coimbra, consolidating neo-scholasticism, with an emphasis on philosophical and theological study.|1|.
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Another important function of the Jesuits was in pacification indigenous peoples, because, through their missions, they managed to have great contact with these peoples. Thus, the Jesuits performed the catechesis of native peoples, in addition to making an attempt at acculturation by trying to assimilate the native to a European way of life.
The Jesuits also faced countless conflicts with settlers that enslaved indigenous people during the 16th and 17th centuries. The action of the Jesuits in protecting the natives from enslavement led the Crown to determine laws that allowed the enslavement of the indigenous peoples only in cases of "just war", that is, when the natives attacked some Portuguese. About this, historian Ronaldo Vainfas states:
The greatest obstacle faced by the Company was the settlers' eagerness to enslave the natives. The Jesuits resisted everywhere, especially in the 17th century, wresting from the Crown laws prohibiting indigenous captivity. The settlers, in turn, always pressed for the right to imprison the Indians in a “just war”, that is, in supposed retaliation against hostile Indians.
In 1640, settlers from Rio de Janeiro surrounded the college on Morro do Castelo, accusing the Jesuits of mentoring a new law prohibiting captivity. It was the “Botada away from the priests”, who were not killed only thanks to the intervention of Governor Salvador Correia de Sá e Benevides. In the same year, they were expelled from São Paulo, only returning in 1653|2|.
Over time, the Jesuits' friction was not restricted to the colonists, as they soon came into conflict with the Crown after the Guaranitic War, where Jesuits and Guaraní Indians confronted Portuguese troops for mission control Seven Peoples of the Missions, in present-day Rio Grande do Sul. In addition, the great economic power of these religious aroused the greed of the Portuguese Crown and thus, in 1759, the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal and all its colonies.
|1| VAINFAS, Ronaldo. Christ soldiers. Journal of History of the National Library, Rio de Janeiro, nº 81, jun. 2012, p. 17.
|2| Idem, p. 16-17
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
