Religious Literature and the Indigenous Massacre: An Analysis of José de Anchieta's Auto de São Lourenço
José de Anchieta, Catholic Church, Auto de São Lourenço, culture, indidenous, catechization.
This dissertation analyses critically and contextually the work of the priest José de Anchieta ‘O Auto de São Lourenço’, considering the sociocultural relevance of the Catholic Church at that time and its role in the attempt to westernize the native people from the new discovered land. Under this perspective, this work resumes artistic characteristics of that time, as well as the colonizing role of the Ignatians, into a reflection on the patterns that can be observed in the priest’s text and its practical meanings to the attempt of acculturation of the Brazilian Indigenous. Besides, it also analyses the possible reception of concepts previously unknown by the natives (e. g., ‘sin’), to identify the process of religious syncretism that happened at that moment. The textual interpretation on this work was done mainly using ‘close reading’, to have a more precise microtextual outlook, and analysis of contemporary to the priest and modern bibliographies.