Ascetic tropics: Franciscans, missionary knowledge and visions of Empire in the Portuguese Atlantic at the turn of the eighteenth century

Abstract

This essay focuses on the study of Franciscan written and intellectual culture in Portuguese America. Specifically, it analyzes the role the Franciscans played, through their writings, in the shaping of the Portuguese- American world, of the way that world was thought about, and of contemporary understandings of the place Brazil should occupy within the Portuguese monarchy. It examines the visions of the Empire which the so-called Seraphic Order developed in the Brazilian colonial context, the written strategies they used, and the missionary and colonial knowledge which they employed when constructing their perceptions of the American world. To that end, it looks in detail at the Franciscan friar Antonio do Rosario and his text Frutas do Brasil (Lisbon, 1702), in which he used his knowledge of the natural world to construct a complex plant-based allegory with clear political connotations about Brazil.