Between cattle and souls: questions about urbanization, architecture, and art of the jesuit missons in the hinterlands of the northern provinces

• Autor(a) principal: Arraes, Esdras
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Pós. Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo da FAUUSP (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.revistas.usp.br/posfau/article/view/90252
• topic: Jesuits. Urbanization. Architecture. Art. Cattle. Missionary settlements. Northern hinterlands; Jesuítas. Urbanização. Arquitetura. Arte. Pecuária. Aldeamentos missioneiros. Sertões do Norte.; Jesuítas. Urbanización. Arquitectura. Arte. Ganado. Pueblos misioneros. Interior del Norte.

Population growth and the establishment of towns in the countryside of the Brazilian Northern Provinces came as the result of the combined support of cattle ranchers and Jesuit missionaries as of the mid-17th century. Using physical evidence, this study investigates how the encounters – symbiotic and/or confrontational – between cattle and catechism structured urban, architectural, and artistic phenomena in a region considered by classical historiography as “peripheral” to the political interest of the Portuguese Crown. This study also discusses how the missionaries’ strategies of conversion of the indigenous population created a web of settlements. It also points out how the Jesuit buildings followed formal models found in the main European and colonial cultural centers. It is noteworthy that the priests adapted such architecture to the geographical, natural, and social realities found in those remote areas