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The First Franciscans of Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Odulfo van der Vat
Odulfo van der Vat*
Affiliation:
Divinópolis, Minas Gerais, Brazil
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Extract

In the Year 1584, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Father Francisco Gonzaga, enjoined on Frei Melquior de Santa Catarina, a Portuguese Franciscan, the task of founding in the “Land of the Holy Cross,” the Custody of St. Anthony. Frei Melquior and his companions arrived in Brazil the following year, 1585, and the first friary established by them was that of Nossa Senhora das Neves in the city of Olinda, the capital of the Captaincy of Pernambuco.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , July 1948 , pp. 18 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1948

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References

1 A short resumé of this chronicle is to be found in the Archivo Ibero-Americano, Vol. I (Madrid, 1914), pp. 500–514.

2 Frei Jaboatão returns to the topic in the first book, chapters 30 and 31 (pp. 375 ff. of the modern edition, Rio de Janeiro, 1858).

3 Let us observe here that Jaboatão, abandoning the chronological order, gives the case of Frei Álvaro da Purificação in the last place.

4 To illustrate our assertion, let us cite the example of the Rio do Frade, the third of this name, near the city of Angra dos Reis, in the State of Rio. Frei Miguel de São Francisco, the chronicler of the Franciscan Convent of Angra and almost a contemporary of Jaboatão, wrote in the Book of Entries of his convent that “the river which rises there took the name Rio do Frade, because the Goinás (Indians) had killed, on one of its banks, a religious who had come from São Vicente in 1523, teaching them the truths of Christianity.” Nevertheless, it is absolutely certain, as the Benedictine chronicler Gaspar da Madre de Deus has observed, that the name takes its origin from a very high peak at whose foot the river runs. This peak is called O Frade, because, seen from a distance, it looks like a Franciscan with the capuche up over his head.

5 Another imagined case is that related in the Annales Minorum of Luke Wadding, under the year 1580, no. 50. There it is said that on October 4, the feast of St. Francis, 1580, some Franciscan friars were killed and devoured in Olinda, by the Indians. Wadding took the information from the Menologium of Frei Fortunato Hueber (Munich, 1698), who in turn claims to have found it in the Thesaurus rerum indicarum of the Jesuit, du Jarric (Cologne, 1615). But in the work of the said Jesuit we looked, with no success, to find the information, which, in any event, is not consonant with the historical atmosphere of Olinda, or with the better-informed sources.

6 Conceição, Frei Apolinário da, Claustro Franciscano erecto no Dominio da Coroa Portugueza (Lisbon, 1740), p. 19.Google Scholar

7 Gonzaga, Franciscus, De Origine Seraphicae Religionis (Rome, 1587), pp. 1361 Google Scholar f.

8 Romag, Frei Dagoberto (História dos Franciscanos no Brasil: 1500–1659, Curitiba, 1940, pp. 24 f.)Google Scholar states that Frei Francisco da Cruz belonged to the Province of St. Anthony, leaving a doubt as to whether Frei Manuel da Cruz did also. We do not know with what right, unless it be that of Homer who, according to the classical proverb, at times nods.

9 Jaboatâo, op. cit. (Rio de Janeiro edition, 1858), I, 2, p. 126.

10 Jaboatão, , ibid., 308 Google Scholar.