Escrevendo cartas, produzindo tipos e edificando o todo. A escrita na Companhia de Jesus, entre seus membros: uma escritura que seja edificante1

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the practice of the writing of Pedro Lozano, a Jesuit who served as a historiographer in the Society of Jesus, in the mid-eighteenth century. The reflection was made from a letter that he sent to the Attorney General, Father Bruno Morales. It is known that the documentation produced by the Ignatians possesses a recognized historical and ethnographic value, being, therefore, explored by researchers in a recurrent way, as well as by writers alien to the academic milieu of history. An analysis of this type of documentation also allows to consider as an object the practice of the writing of those individuals, above all, from the reflection of their “place of production”, as well as that “historiographical operation” employed in it, as suggested by Michel de Certeau. Thus, not ignoring the existence of an individuality in the writing of Lozano was defined –to circumscribe the place from where he writes as well as to delimit the writing activity itself– delineate the limits imposed by the Order on writing from an examination of the Rules of the Society of Jesus, of the Constitutions and of the autobiography of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Simultaneously with the story of real events, and making use of a representation whose constant was social tension, a discourse developed from repeated orientations on writing was organized. These, expressed in the Letters, and supposedly obeyed, by becoming a practice of reading and writing, at the same time as they informed, also conformed an accurate idea about what was described and about the author of the writing. They built an institutional image although it also resulted in a construction of the author’s own. At the same time that the Letters were building, the authors were also identified, thus being able to know the Order by the individual as well as by the practices of the same.