Seraphic pedagogy and the franciscan iconography of instruction: novices formation structure and the Order’s medieval doctors’ representations in the Saint Anthony of Brazil province convents (Bahia and Pernambuco - 17th and 18th centuries)

Abstract

This paper intends to analyse the successive layers of meanings and the importance attributed to images by the seraphics, and the extent to which such representations are ingrained in the reinforcement of their practices of instructional and spiritual formation developed in the intramural space throughout the colonial period, especially at the height of their performance, that is, from the 1600s to the 1700s. The research developed so far has already shown the existence of a visual discourse made specifically for the faithful, and another, more intellectualized and personalized, but aimed at exalting the Order intellectuals and medieval theologians in convent spaces restricted to novices in formation and professed religious. The text discusses the permanence of pre-Tridentine structures and norms in Seraphic Pedagogy crystallized in the Provincial and General Statutes, comparing these documents with the collection of the libraries of the convents that received the novices, also analysing some images and representations of the medieval Franciscan theologians in the reading and teaching spaces frequented by the religious in formation. This paper discusses the relationship between such images – especially those of Scotus and Ockham – and the instructional norms in the Statutes of the Saint Francis of Brazil Custody/ Province and in higher legislation, such as the 1622 Barcelona Statutes and the 1501, 1598 and 1651 versions of the Statuta Generalia, as well as the scope of the permanence of scholastic precepts, even after the Tridentine prescriptions for changes in the educational formation of the Roman Catholic religious orders.