Читать книгу A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture - Группа авторов - Страница 53

Lúcia Helena Costigan

Owing to the fact that, unlike the Spanish American colonies, such as New Spain, Peru, and New Granada, Brazil did not have viceroys, printing presses, and universities during its first centuries, court culture took a long time to flourish in the Portuguese America. However, despite the absence of a court culture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, literary expressions related to Brazil emerged in Portugal right after Pedro Álvares Cabral accidentally landed in the newly “discovered” lands. Carta do achamento do Brasil, the letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha (ca. 1450–1501) in 1500 and first published in 1817, is often considered the birth certificate of Brazilian letters. After this, most of the literature produced in Brazil during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was written by either European-born Jesuits or by a few Creole intellectuals with Jesuit education.

The Jesuit Order, also known as the Company of Jesus, appeared in Europe a few decades after Martin Luther (1483–1546) started a religious reform that caused a split in Western Christendom. Luther opposed the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church and proposed a new theology that led to the appearance of Protestant denominations. The Jesuit Order was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and his followers, a group of students at the University of Paris. Wishing to defend the Spanish Counter-Reformation and moved by the spirit of the medieval crusades, they intended to march to the Holy Land to preach to the infidels. Soon after the Order was founded, the Jesuits started to become known in Europe and in European colonies throughout the world.

The Jesuits soon became known as excellent missionaries and educators owing to their superior education. Soon after the company was founded, Portugal granted the Jesuits the monopoly of the conversion of the infidels and gentiles in all of its Asian, African, and American colonies. The Portuguese King John III (1521–57) also directed the Jesuits to establish the educational system in Portugal and in the colonies. The University of Coimbra became one of the most important Jesuit educational centers.

In 1568 the Jesuits started the construction of a church in Rome. This Jesuit church, known as Del Gesù, is traditionally considered the first example of a new form of aesthetics. In the later part of the nineteenth century critics like Heinrich Wölfflin, who studied the artistic, literary, and musical production that emerged in Europe between the Renaissance and the Neoclassic periods, classified the new aesthetics as the Baroque. The Baroque emerged in Spain during the period of the Trent Concilium (1545–63).