“A ruína do Maranhão”: a construção do discurso antijesuítico na Amazônia portuguesa (1705-1759)

Abstract

Anti-jesuism is a historical movement considered as old as the Society of Jesus itself, once it was born with the Order. In this thesis we study the Amazonian anti-jesuit discourse constructed during the first half of the eighteenth century by one of the most staunch enemies the Jesuits had known, Paulo da Silva Nunes. This agent called himself Procurator of the Peoples of Maranhão and undertook a campaign against the Jesuits in the colony for more than sixteen years and in the Court (Lisbon) between 1724 and 1742, writing documents in which not only he listed denunciations against the Company of Jesus but presented a political project to prevent the total “ruin of Maranhão” (colony). However, we do not understand this movement as a local phenomenon but rather as an integral and important part of a global movement, since we defend the thesis that the anti-jesuitism created in the first half of the eighteenth century in the colonial Amazon region by Paulo da Silva Nunes influenced in a decisive way the anti-jesuit actions, policies and discourses of the campaign undertaken by Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, future Marquis of Pombal, at the Court, in Europe and in the colony during the second half of that same century, culminating in the expulsion of the Order of all lands belonging to the Portuguese Crown in 1759 and its extinction in 1773.