“Espíritos de prodigioso valor”

The role of science in the intellectual project of the Academia Brasílica dos Esquecidos – Bahia, 1724

Abstract

By request of the Portuguese king John V, the Viceroy of Brazil, Vasco Fernandes César de Meneses, built an academy of historians, whose aim was to collect historical information about the Portuguese possessions in the Americas. The Academia Brasílica dos Esquecidos, founded in 1724 in Salvador, Bahia, was formed by important figures, intellectuals and politicians. Among them was the chauncelor of the High Court of Bahia, Caetano de Brito e Figueiredo, who was responsible for writing a dissertation about the Brazilian nature, where he disposed of new cultural principles which were probably transmitted by the Jesuits and their schools in Brazil. Through the study of the manuscript Dissertação de história natural written by this Portuguese magistrate, we observe the singularity and the novelty of the scientific culture present in that place of knowledge in eighteenth-century Bahia.