Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the Relação written by a Franciscan born in India that includes memorials and letters used to solve the jurisdictional problems of his Franciscan overseas province in the Iberian and Roman corridors of political decision

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I intend to analyse the travel of a Franciscan friar born in India that reclaimed to be of Portuguese origin, to Madrid and Rome. Friar Miguel da Purificação was sent to the capitals of the Hispanic Monarchy and of Respublica Christiana, in the decade of 1630, as a procurator of the Province of Saint-Thomas of India, in order to solve some jurisdictional problems that this Province faced during the first decades of the 17th century.

During his trip, friar Miguel da Purificação wrote a Relação where he describes his experience in the corridors of political decision relating religious matters of the empire of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Moreover, the Relação of friar Miguel is full of memorials and letters that he presented to Philip IV, to the Pope, and to other decision-makers, besides referring, as well, books and other writings that he would like to see published.

For all these reasons, this case allows us to discuss: a) questions related to the writing activity of Franciscans, their intelectual routines, and the ways writing was parto f their dayly lives, contributing to bring to light their experience and their role in the cultural constitution of the Portuguese empire; b) aspects of the inner life of political decision through the eyes of a "colonizer" that was not born in the metropolitan world, who faced dilemas that approximated his experience to the experience of a "colonized".