The Jesuits in Brazil
In 1549, Portuguese King João III sent the first Jesuit mission to Brazil, under the leadership of Father Manuel da Nóbrega, during the first governor-generalship in Bahia of Governor Tomé de Souza. Catholicism was an inherent element of Portuguese settlement in Brazil, but the church as an organization was weak. “The institution barely existed in Brazil… The church had little need to mobilize support and deep commitments, develop its own structures, or define autonomy from the state and local society.”
In this initial effort to colonize and develop Brazil, the Society of Jesus, a Catholic order that traveled the world in their mission of education and evangelization, proved enormously useful to the crown. Their strategy to pacify and subjugate the indigenous population included the forced recruitment of indigenous labor and the instruction and conversion of native people in Jesuit-controlled Indian villages, called aldeias. The church was a physical presence. With the establishment of Portuguese towns and cities, construction of churches and the cathedral of the seat of a diocese was a priority. Although the first church buildings were made with materials at hand, the construction of more opulent edifices soon followed, with decorative tiles and even some stone were imported. During Brazil’s first export boom of cane sugar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese settlements grew and the churches were a locus of local pride.
As a way of facilitating communication between different native peoples and the Portuguese, the Jesuits established a standard form of Tupi, the main language of the indigenous groups living in the initial areas conquered by Europeans. Finally, the Jesuits inaugurated missions throughout the interior of the vast territory, thus providing nascent infrastructure to the Amazon Basin region. The success of the Jesuits in converting the indigenous peoples to Catholicism was linked to their capacity to understand the native culture, especially the language. The first grammar of the Tupi language was compiled by José de Anchieta and printed in Coimbra in 1595. The Jesuits often gathered the aborigines in communities (the Jesuit Reductions) where the natives worked for the community and were evangelised. Anchieta was one of the founders of São Paulo in 1554 and of Rio de Janeiro in 1565. He is the first playwright, the first grammarian and the first poet born in the Canary Islands, and the father of Brazilian literature. Anchieta was also involved in the religious instruction and conversion to the Catholic faith of the Indian population. His efforts along with those of another Jesuit missionary, Manuel da Nóbrega, at Indian pacification were crucial to the establishment of stable colonial settlements in the colony.
In the two hundred years following their arrival in Brazil, the Jesuits monopolized indigenous labor and organized hugely productive agricultural endeavors, including cattle ranches and sugar and cotton plantations. Due to a special privileged status as a religious order granted by the pope, the Jesuits enjoyed complete autonomy from the Crown, and therefore circumvented royal controls on their earnings. Increasingly, such privileges provoked animosity among local landowners and government officials, who perceived the Jesuits as monopolizing labour and resources. Relations between the Jesuits and royal authorities soured throughout the 1750s, culminating in the religious order’s expulsion from the Portuguese Empire.
