By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
The 16th century was one of the most troubled in world history, given that throughout its decades several events of great impact took place, since the establishment of the colonial system in the Americas until the endless religious civil wars sparked by the advent of the Reforms Protestants . Especially when dealing with these reforms, one must take into account the Catholic reaction to them and the paths that have been traced to this end. One of the faces of the Counter-Reformation , or Reform Catholic, was the creation of the Company of Jesus by St. Ignatius of Loyola .
St Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) was born in Spain and came to join the Spanish national army. With his turn to religious life after having visited Jerusalem (he met members of the Franciscan order there) and having studied in Paris, in 1534, with other religious, he founded the Society of Jesus. The purpose of creating the Society of Jesus was to develop disciplinary rules for religious life and, above all, for missions of evangelization.
The Society of Jesus was guided by the Ratio Studiorum , that is, the “Rule of Studies”, or “Order of Studies”, which took into account the knowledge of Latin, the sacred scriptures and texts of the Western tradition. This method was of essential importance in the atmosphere of the religious combat waged against the Protestants. In the first place, because the rigidity of the method preserved the members of the Society from being interested in the “news” of the Protestant theses and, secondly, it served them in their destiny as missionaries, especially in the so-called “New World”, the newly discovered American continent, as the researcher Gilberto Luiz Alves emphasizes:
[…] the material insertion of the Society of Jesus in the New World and the fight on the counter-reformist ideological front exposed the Jesuits to the new order that was being established and to the new ideas, which did not fail to influence the political behavior of the congregation. Whether out of pure political opportunism, the defense of material interests of the religious order or a glimpse of the importance of some new ideas, the priests of the Society of Jesus showed greater political tolerance towards opponents, which did not represent the dominant tone of the Counter-Reformation, especially of the Inquisition. [1]
Being, in part, flexible, the members of the Society of Jesus managed to articulate well among the settlers of America, including Brazil and, mainly, among the indigenous people, promoting the catechization and the teaching of Latin to the Gentiles. The most important texts written in the first centuries of American colonization came from the mothers of Jesuits, such as the Spanish Bartolomé de Las Casas and PortugueseFather António Vieira .
NOTES
[1] ALVES, Gilberto Luiz. Origins of the modern school in Brazil:the Jesuit contribution. Educ. Soc. , Campinas. v. 26, no. 91, p. 617-635, Aug. 2005. p. 662.