{"id":60,"date":"2012-07-10T10:32:25","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T15:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.brown.edu\/fivecenturiesofchange\/?page_id=60"},"modified":"2021-11-12T16:56:51","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T21:56:51","slug":"the-jesuits","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/fivecenturiesofchange\/chapters\/chapter-2\/the-jesuits\/","title":{"rendered":"2.2 The Jesuit Order in Colonial Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

< 2.1 Gold Discovered<\/a> – 2.3 Slave Trade <\/a>> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

In 1549, Portuguese King Jo\u00e3o III sent the first Jesuit mission to Brazil, under the leadership of Father Manuel da N\u00f3brega, during the first governor-generalship in Bahia of Governor Tom\u00e9 de Souza. 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>. As a way of facilitating communication beween different native peoples and the Portuguese, the Jesuits established a standard form of Tupi<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

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“Steyger-Praetjen Tusscjem Jan Batavier en Maetroos” (1624). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library’s Archive of Early American Images.<\/p><\/div>\n

The image to the right shows a Jesuit standing before a group of clerics and soldiers in Salvador de Bahia.<\/p>\n