A missão do Maranhão (1894-1922): acontecimento, particularidades e enredamento nos arquivos capuchinhos

Abstract

This thesis refers to the event of the Mission of Maranhão (1894-1922), its particularity and entanglement. The mission was undertaking by the Apostolate of the Lombardy capuchin missionaries. The missionaries endeavoured two mission fronts in the Maranhão territory: indigenous and popular. This work presents the relevance of a particular interference of a missionary about such mission. The research was based on the construction of this event using documents produced by The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin – OFMCap, highlighting the context of the Capuchin Missions in the North of Brazil. In the particularity of this mission, besides foundations, there was an OFMCap commitment to attend a Holy See convocation as long as the Holy See was attending to a Brazilian Government invitation of sending missionaries to develop indigenous catechesis in the Amazonas state, as soon as the Republic was inaugurated. In the entanglement of the Mission there was an interest of the Capuchin Province of Milan to undertake a mission in the North of Brazil, on purpose to reactivate their convents; because of the lack of preparation of the Italian missionaries for an indigenous mission, there were frustrated diplomatic mediations in the relations among the Capuchin Order of Friars Minor (Italy), the Capuchin Province of Milan and the Apostolic Prefecture of Pernambuco; and there was private mobilization of Fr. Carlos de San Martino Olearo for missionaries’s autonomy and freedom of action. The repercussion of his mobilization changed the destiny of this missionary company. Discourses that were analyzed: those produced by the Roman Catholic Church; by OFMCap; by the Capuchin Province of Milan; by the Capuchin missionaries; and by the Brazilian State. The discourses analyzed were unpublished primary sources, found in the Capuchin archives: the Convent of Our Lady of Carmo, in São Luís - MA; of the General House of the Capuchin Missionary Sisters, in Fortaleza - CE; of the Lombardy Capuchins, in Milan; and the General of the Order of Friars Minor, in Rome. This thesis shows that, although the existing historiography only highlights the Massacre of Alto Alegre that occurred in the Mission in 1901, there are many other possibilities in these primary sources for what occurred in this missionary enterprise and its deployment. In this way, the research aimed to understand the mobilization mechanisms of the Capuchins for: carrying out their missionary actions in this autonomous and free perspective, in the Maranhão territory; facing the difficulties encountered and generated; and the implantation of OFMCap in the hinterlands of the Maranhão state by the creation of the Prelacy of Grajaú - MA. It was also aimed to think about the Mission of Maranhão with other references, as an event, under a new look, a novelty that emerged from the particularity and the entanglem ent.