Liberty and indifference: the Jesuitical experience-model in letters of young Spanish indipetentes of 16th and 17th Centuries / Liberdade e indiferença: a "experiência-modelo" jesuítica em cartas de jovens indipetentes espanhóis dos séculos XVI e XVII

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2004

RESUMO

This research has for object the Spanish Litterae Indipetae. Indipetae are letters in which young Jesuits of 16th and 17th Centuries have requested the General Priest of the Society of Jesus the sending in mission to the called India (namely, mission territories that they were assigned). These letters were written from legal and rhetorical norms established by the Order and thus marked by diverse topoi culturally and institutionally determined. The general objective is to evidence the philosophical-rhetorical, spirituals, legal-institucional and psychological categories that support in the letters what we call a experience of liberty. Also it interests to locate the historical basis of the concepts of liberty and experience in the Jesuitical culture, in the period of the Govern of the General Priest Claudio Aquaviva (1581-1615), from the representative document study of the proper modus cogitandi of the Jesuits (basically the moral philosophy and the rhetoric of 16th and 17th Centuries), of the modus operandi (over all the norms institucional and spiritual) and of that one described as the prescription of a experience-model (the spiritual texts). It also interests to describe the experience of liberty from three identified groups of common-place in the letters: knowledge of itself, obedience and consolation. The used sources had been the following ones: Manual Conimbricense sobre a Ética a Nicômaco, writing in 1593, by the Jesuit Priest Manuel de Góis, with the intent of the education of moral philosophy in the Coimbra College of Arts and in the colleges of the Society in Brazil; Spirituals Exercises, Daily of Interior Motions and the The Story of the Pilgrim by Saint Ignatius of Loyola; text of the Jesuitical Constitutions, Documents of Fondation and some of the Letters by Ignatius; and, finally, some texts of spirituality, written by Jesuit priests between the years of 1583 and final one of the decade of 1630. The choice of the historical clipping the period of influence of the Govern of the General Priest Aquaviva is justified for the importance of this government related to the gradual establishment of a spirituality with properly Jesuitical traces, and an unifying legislation that intent to the maintenance of the authentic ideal and spirit of Ignatius of Loyola. The used method can thus be described: 1) transcription of the corpus of 26 Indipetae (all Spaniard, writings between 1583 and 1609), being 23 letters of different authors, distributed in the cited period, and 3 of one same author; 2) bibliographical and documentary survey in Brazil and the Europe; 3) reading and analysis of documents, in order to locate the references to the concepts of liberty and experience; 4) reading and analysis of the letters with the criteria Aristotelic-Thomists supplied by the same documents, describing the letters at a first moment structurally, after that dynamically. From the analysis of these documents, it can be said that the Jesuitical philosophical device supplies a concept of liberty that is brought up to date as indifference and considered as individual elaboration in the Indipetae letters. The reading of these letters allows to understand as the Jesuits used the instruments of ordinance of the interior life, as that, having appropriated from a tradition received through the texts of the literature of spirituality, they express it in an act as the one of writing the Indipeta letter. For beyond the institutional and rhetorical aspects, that controlled the act of writing, the Indipetae can be described as a mirror reflecting a subject that assumed for himself a particular modus vivendi. Also from the reading of these documents, it was possible to comprehend the concept of experience such as the Jesuitical tradition of 16th and 17th Centuries understands it and can be exemplified by the phrase of Ignatius: gustar de las cosas internamente, considering the man as a totality, that is, without broken of continuity between faith and reason, between psychological and spiritual condition.

ASSUNTO(S)

companhia de jesus company of jesus indipetae indipetae correspondência epistolar liberdade freedom experience experiência

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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