S. TOMÉ DE MELIAPOR NAS FONTES QUINHENTISTAS E SEISCENTISTAS十六世紀和十七世紀文献中的聖‧多美‧梅利亞波爾
The article investigates how the figure of St. Thomas of Mylapore (Mailapur) was constructed and narrated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources, both Portuguese and foreign, by articulating geographical location, circulation of information, and production of devotional knowledge. The analysi...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
April 2010
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40034/3538 |
| Summary: | The article investigates how the figure of St. Thomas of Mylapore (Mailapur) was constructed and narrated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources, both Portuguese and foreign, by articulating geographical location, circulation of information, and production of devotional knowledge. The analysis focuses on three main testimonies—Duarte Barbosa (c. 1516), Jan Huygen Linschoten (published in 1596), and António Bocarro (1635)—comparing how each author describes the city, its position on the Coromandel coast and its “Christian particularity,” as well as the versions of the legend associated with the apostle. Methodologically, a historiographical and intertextual reading is employed, privileging narrative divergences and strategies for legitimizing traditions: while Duarte Barbosa presents more succinct allusions, Bocarro offers a more explicit framework, with location and urban characteristics, and Linschoten reconfigures the devotional plot by introducing etiological episodes (river obstruction, intervention by means of elephants, Brahmanical opposition, and corporal punishments inflicted on descendants). It is concluded that the variations among the sources do not negate the persistence of the cult but reveal processes of adaptation of sacred memory to the objectives, presuppositions, and networks of each observer, offering relevant indicators for understanding the cultural transposition of Indo-Portuguese Christianity and the consolidation of a localized “St. Thomas.” |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |