“Dying for the love of God”: the exemplary life of Dona Thomázia, a literate and devout woman who died in Lisbon in the year of the earthquake (1755)

• Autor(a) principal: Fleck, Eliane Cristina Deckmann
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Dillmann, Mauro
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Históricos (Rio de Janeiro)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/reh/article/view/41974
• topic: Dona Thomázia; sanctity; virtues; writing; reading; João Franco; Dona Thomázia; santidade; virtudes; escrita; leitura; João Franco

In this article, we analyze the work Vida portentosa da serva de Deus D. Thomázia de Jesus, written by Dominican João Franco and published in 1757. Belonging to the biographical genre, the work describes the physical and psychological characteristics, the chaste life and the extreme devotion of a religious and literate portuguese woman, presenting her as a model of virtue and sanctity. The work written by the Dominican becomes even more singular, not only because the woman who was the subject of the biography died in the same year in which Lisbon would be hit by an earthquake, but also because its author – and also her confessor and spiritual director – found himself forced to rewrite a large part of the text, due to, precisely, the loss of the originals as a consequence of the cataclysm.