Portugal: Notable Organizations and Movements

1290 - University of Lisbon (All Facts)

1318 - Order of Christ (All Facts)

• Portuguese Catholic Military Order

1400s - 1500s - Navigation Schools (Facts)

• Founded in inspiration of the voyages of Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco de Gama

• They produced a new group of expertly trained mathematical and nautical technicians, which greatly influenced the standing of science in Europe

1536 - 1821 - Portuguese Inquisition (All Facts)

• Established during the reign of King John III

1540 - Jesuit Order / Society of Jesus (All Facts)

• Catholic Order established in Paris, France, by St. Ignatius Loyola of Spain and six of his companions

  • A papal bull of Pope Paul III confirmed its establishment

  • Order which began when St. Ignatius Loyola and his six companions took a vow to offer themselves to the pope to be sent wherever he wished to convert pagans and infidels, even the Ottoman Turks

• Its main object was “the propagation of the faith”

• It was they, above all, who had spearheaded the Catholic Counter-Reformation, to regain the religious ground from the Protestant Reformation

• Catholic Order which

  • does not require its members to say the daily office together, like monks, but only to pray silently

  • requires an essential vow of total obedience to the pope and to the Grand Superior (Loyola was the first Grand Superior)

  • requires one to prepare by training with, reading, and implementing St. Ignatius Loyola’s “Spiritual Exercises”

  • believed that subject themselves to this ascetic discipline will teach them to master the will and learn total obedience to their superior and to the church, being prepared to believe that what seems black to them is white if the church declares that it is

  • became a teaching order both at home and across Europe, establishing schools in the slums of Rome and providing education for the best families at their colleges and universities such as those in Rome and at Padua

  • was renown for their teaching methods

• Their Portuguese division (provincial)

  • went on a mission to the Kingdom of Kongo 8 years into the organization’s foundation

  • operated in Brazil, where they set new standards of treatment of natives there and throughout the Portuguese New World

    • They went out of their way to improve the situation of natives in Brazil, treating them as more than just slaves in contrast to the conquerors who had become notorious for their cruelty and exploitation of the natives there

  • lived alongside the natives, taking direct responsibility for their spiritual and economic welfare

  • could not stand in the way of the official Portuguese policy of slavery (and other exploitative systems of work), but tried to

    • curb the excesses of the Portuguese overseers

    • cut down on the regular slave raids into the interior