Extraído do original : arte, ciência e técnica nos mapas da América portuguesa do Padre Cócleo.

Abstract

At the end of the seventeenth century, the French Jesuit Fr. Jacob Cocleo (Galo- Belgium 1628 – Bahia 1710) was commissioned by Governor-General Dom João Lencastre to produce a geographical map entitled Mapa da maior parte do Brasil com o caminho novamente achado para a comunicação do Maranhão (Map of the greatest part of Brazil with the newly found road for communication with Maranhão). This map has now disappeared. The intention of this thesis is to examine the production of this map, investigating Fr. Cocleo’s scientific education and geographic knowledge, as well as the later uses and appropriations of this knowledge. The temporal arc covers around a century, beginning in 1649, when Cocleo became a novice in Tournay, and continuing to the middle of the eighteenth century, date of the last additions registered on the remaining copy of the disappeared map, entitled Mapa da maior parte da Costa, e Sertão, do Brazil. Extraído do original do padre Cocleo (Map of the Greatest Part of the Coast and the Sertão of Brazil. Extracted from Fr. Cocleo’s original) it is now kept in the Brazilian Army Archive. Based on annual letters, researched in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu in Rome, administrative and cartographic documentation held in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, and the seventeenth century copy of the missing map, we analyze in a specific manner four aspects: the importance of science to the Jesuits and vice-versa; the life of Fr. Cocleo ― notably his education and missionary activity ―; his cartographic work; finally, the consumption of this work during the eighteenth century, especially the process of the production of the copy now in the archive in Rio de Janeiro. These choices permit, on the one hand, the analysis of the activities of Fr. Cocleo, and the Jesuits in general in colonial society, the conflicts and negotiations established among priests, natives, and Portuguese colonists; on the other hand, the comprehension of how much the spatial representation portrayed by Fr. Cocleo was in consonance both with the interests of the Jesuit Order and those of the Portuguese Crown.