The Expulsion of a “Taputinga” Missionary from Pombal’s Amazon

The Annual Letter of father Lourenço Kaulen (1755-1756)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2019.149168

Keywords:

Society of Jesus, Colonial Amazon, Policy of Pombal, Missionari writing

Abstract

In 1756, one year after the promulgation of the first reforming laws of the future Marquis of Pombal for the Portuguese Amazon, the Jesuit Lourenço Kaulen wrote, as a missionary of the village of Piraguiri on the Xingu river, an annual letter. Beyond the regular pastoral activities, he described his violent expulsion from the mission. Member of the group of “tapuitinga”, or Central Europeans, who came at the beginning of the 1750s, Kaulen is one of the first religious to be accused of disobedience to the new legislation. The annual letter, in addition to reporting precarious everyday life in a remote mission in the Amazon, is one of the earliest references to an anti-Jesuit action that, by the way, had the direct implication of the indigenous neophytes.

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Author Biographies

  • Karl Heinz Arenz, Federal University of Para

    Doutor em História Moderna e Contemporânea, Université Paris 4-Sorbonne, Paris, França. Professor do Programa de Pós-graduação em História Social da Amazônia, da Faculdade de História, do Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, da Universidade Federal do Pará.

  • Gabriel de Cassio Pinheiro Prudente, Federal University of Para

    Mestre em História Social da Amazônia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em História Social da Amazônia, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Pará. Professor de História da rede particular.

References

Published

2019-10-21

Issue

Section

Dossier: Global Amazon: Spaces of Circulation and Representation of the Frontier

How to Cite

ARENZ, Karl Heinz; PRUDENTE, Gabriel de Cassio Pinheiro. The Expulsion of a “Taputinga” Missionary from Pombal’s Amazon: The Annual Letter of father Lourenço Kaulen (1755-1756). Revista de História, São Paulo, n. 178, p. 1–32, 2019. DOI: 10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2019.149168. Disponível em: https://revistas.usp.br/revhistoria/article/view/149168. Acesso em: 7 feb. 2026.