Emblems and seraphic pedagogy: two worlds converging in the franciscan libraries at Saint Anthony of Brazil Province (Bahia, Pernambuco and Paraíba – 18th century)

Abstract

Since the 15th century the Emblem became one of the many themes of interest of the humanist culture cultivated between the nobility and the men of letters in Renaissance Europe and later, in the following centuries of the Baroque. Among the religious, especially with regard to the conventual and others orders that it were used for the instructional formation of their priests and friars, as among both Ignatians, Franciscans and others, the enormous possibilities of the use of the Emblems were perceived not only in the intellectual development of their novices, but also in the work of catechism to be done in the secular world, especially in the New World. The intention of this paper is to discuss the presence of some works of Emblematic in the collection of the convent libraries of the Franciscan Province of Saint Anthony of Brazil listed in the Book of Inventories of the Convents of the North [July 5, 1852] – elaborated by Friar Antônio da Rainha dos Anjos Machado, an existent document in the Franciscan Provincial Archives of Recife – analyzing this one from the perspective of the Seraphic Pedagogy crystallized in the Statutes of the Province of Saint Anthony of Brazil, published in Lisbon in 1709, and in the Provincial Chapter Acts (1649-1893), published in the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute Journal in 1970.