THE POMBALINE LEGISLATION AND THE MYTH OF THE
REFOUNDATION OF THE PORTUGUESE NATION
Introduction
The theme of the nation and of the national identities, in the last decades,
acquired a remarkable centrality in the academic production related to the humanities,
especially in the fields of history of education, as well as in the linguistic, literary and
cultural studies. What calls our attention in the emphasis on this theme, however, is its
discursive nature and its symbolic character, once the nations constitute and consolidate
themselves both in its juridical apparatus and in the collective imaginary, assuming
concrete forms in the Nation-States which give them support. Thus, studying the
strategies and discursive processes through which the national identities are constructed
is, in great measure, deconstruct the discourses which give them legitimacy, by means
of a critical and historical re-reading of their evidences, registers and documents.
Therefore, if modern history was conceived and developed as an instrument of
the European nationalism, it was transformed into a toxic trash impregnated by ethnical
nationalism, as Geary (2005: 27) says, attributing to the historians the intimidating
challenge of its cleansing. In this process, it was of fundamental importance the
institution of educational and linguistic policies for the uniformity of languages,
something that, to Hobsbawm (2008: 34), was very exceptional in the period of the
French Revolution. According to Geary (2005: 29), in strong States, like France and
Great Britain, governments and ideologues suppressed ruthlessly minoritary languages,
cultural traditions and varying memories of the past in favor of a unified national
history and homogeneous language and culture which supposedly have its origin in a
distant past.
To Anderson (2008: 73-75), three external factors marked the emergence of the
national conscience, contributing to the literary dignity of the vernacular languages: 1)
the change of character of Latin, which, from sacred language, due to its textual
condition, came to be considered an object of appreciation, becoming arcane because of
what was written, that is, of language in itself; 2) the impact of the religious
reformation, especially with the alliance between Protestantism and editorial capitalism;
3) the slow diffusion of some vernacular languages as instruments of administrative
centralization, because of some well positioned monarchs with absolutist intentions.
We must notice, however, the difference between the choice of a language as the
result of an unconscious development, as in the cases of English and French, and the
self conscious linguistic policy of some seventeenth and eighteenth century monarchs,
as it is the case of the educational and linguistic policy of D. Jose I, through his
minister, the Marquis of Pombal (cf. Andrade, 1978), against the popular oppositional
linguistic nationalisms. This is the very issue of this paper.
Origins of the paper
This work is one of the results of the research project entitled A LEGISLAÇÃO
POMBALINA SOBRE O ENSINO DE LÍNGUAS: suas implicações na educação
brasileira (1757-1827) [The Pombaline Legislation about the teaching of languages: its
implications on Brazilian education (1757-1827)], which, in turn, is inserted in a major
project, entitled A ESCOLA, O ESTADO E A NAÇÃO: para uma história do ensino
das línguas no Brasil (1757-1827) [The School, the State and the Nation: towards a
history of the teaching of languages in Brasil (1757-1827)], being also a result of the
studies and researches developed by the research group História do Ensino das Línguas
no Brasil [History of the Teaching of Languages in Brasil] – GPHELB
(http://sites.ufs.br/antigos/grupos/gphelb/), created in 2006 in the Letters Department of
the Federal University of Sergipe, Brasil, which congregates researchers of the fields of
History of Education and of linguistic and literary studies. Its main objective is to
identify and analyze the discursive strategies of the legislation promulgated by the
Marquis of Pombal, especially that which is related to the teaching of languages and
their respective literatures, which were mobilized by the legislator to construct the
Portuguese national identity.
It’s supposed, thus, that it is possible to write a history of the teaching of
languages in Brasil taking the legislation as its main source. So, the study of its process
of institutionalization, that is, of its officialization, through the educational policies of
the State, is closely related to the analysis of the legislation promulgated by this same
State, in order to apprehend its main objectives – which are, at the same time, political,
pedagogical and cultural –, the way they are shown in the final text of the law, which, in
turn, is the result of legislative practices of various agents, reverberating its political,
religious, economic and cultural factors.
However, electing the legislation as a source of research, especially in the Field
of cultural history, can provoke some suspicion, once all the aspects related to this
legislation need to be taken into account in the interpretive work of the historian, for
they effectively interfere in its process of construction of meaning, transcending its
explicit content, as well as its perceptive nature, which has the proposition of organizing
the relations of men in society.
The Portuguese case will be investigated here, and we will be concentrated on
the legislation promulgated by the Marquis of Pombal, which means all the legislative
pieces which were idealized, elaborated and published during the reign of D. José I,
which stretches from 1750 until 1777, a period during which Sebastião José de
Carvalho e Melo (1699-1782), who had been a diplomat in London from 1738 to 1744,
and in Vienna from 1745 to 1749, became Secretary of Foreign Affairs and of Wars
with the ascension of the new monarch and Secretary of Domestic Affairs in 1755,
exerting an almost absolute control over the matters related to the Portuguese
government. In 1759, Sebastião José received the title of Count of Oeiras and in 1769
was raised to Marquis of Pombal, as he came to be known in Portuguese history.
According to Maxwell (1996: 1), Pombal, in practical terms, really governed Portugal
between 1750 and 1777. His authority was consolidated after the earthquake occurred in
Lisbon in 1755, when he assumed the project of reconstruction of the city, giving it a
new architecture, and of the restoration of order, with an authoritarian and radical
policy.
Criticizing the available historiography produced by the time of the publication
of his pioneer work – in Brasil – about the educational reforms led by Pombal – As
reformas pombalinas da instrução pública (1952) –, Carvalho (1978: 186) laments the
fact that most of the historians of the period appreciated the political initiatives of the
reign of D. José I as the work of one only man, once “pombalism” – as he calls it – is in
fact the common result of current opinions, before and after the years of his
government, which were integrated in the protagonism of a minister who searched to
realize, in practice, through his legislative power, the political, economic, pedagogical
and cultural ideals and aspirations of many seventeenth century intellectuals, some of
them Portuguese, although “strangered”. The discourse of the legislation promulgated
by Pombal itself, which was written in the first person singular, in the name of El Rei
[the king], in its preambles, emphasizes the fact that the legislative pieces were only
elaborated after the consultation of intellectuals of his council, as it is shown in the
charter promulgated on March the 19th, in 1759, with which were published the Statutes
of the Commercial Class (cf. Portugal, 1830: 656).
The legislative pieces analyzed in this paper are:
1) The Law of May the 3rd, published in 1757, also known as Lei do Diretório
dos Índios [ Law of the Directory of the Indians];
2) The Charter of June the 28th, published in 1759, which reformulated the
teaching of Humanities, also known as Lei Geral dos Estudos Menores
[General Law of the Minor Studies];
3) The Law of March the 7th, published in 1761, with which were published the
Statutes of the Real Colégio dos Nobres [Royal College of the Noble Men];
4) The Charter of August the 28th, published in 1772, with which were
published the new Statutes of the University of Coimbra;
Law of the Directory of the Indians
The first legislative piece about the teaching of languages promulgated by
Pombal is the Law of the Directory of the Indians, published on May the 3rd, in 1757
and confirmed by the Charter of August the 27th, in 1758, which spread its effects,
restricted so far to the “State” of Grão Pará and Maranhão, to all the Portuguese
colonies. In this Charter, which is maybe the most important document of linguistic
policy to be published in the eighteenth century, for its extension, richness and great
variety of historical information, the main aspects of the Pombaline legislation are
present: the discursive construction of the notion of a polite and civilized Europe,
opposed to the supposed retardation of the jesuitic temporal administation and
pedagogy; regalism, which is presented as a paradoxical union which involves the Civil
Society, the Christian faith and Absolutism; modern pedagogy, of which one of the
main characteristics is the softness of the method, in contrast with the punishments and
rigors of the traditional way of teaching; and finally the historical self-consciousness,
which is developed into the invention of the tradition of the Portuguese people, turning
back, thus, to the time of the great navigations of the sixteenth century. This last aspect,
to this paper, is the most important one, for with it will be constructed the basis of the
formalization of the Portuguese nationalist discourse, taking as its landmark the idea of
nation and that of national identity (cf. Renan, 2007; Anderson, 2008).
The first objective of this charter is Christianization, which would be under the
responsibility of the clergyman of the bishopric, once this would be a purely spiritual
matter. The second one, the civilization of the Indians, would be under the exclusive
competence of the Directors, whose first step to be taken was the establishment of the
use of the “language of the Prince”.
We can notice, in this document1, two important movements. The first one is
related to the illuminist concept of “nation”, that is, of polite or civilized nation, once it
denounces, on the part of the legislator – the Portuguese State –, a will to be seen as a
nation, just like the “other polite nations of the world”. Therefore, the Nation-State
would have to be validated by a national language, the “language of the Prince”, in
order to assert itself in front of the Other – in this case, the other nations and the
colonized peoples –, building to itself a national identity.
According to Anderson (2008), the national identity is an imagined community,
once the differences among the nations consist in the different forms by which they are
imagined. Thus, the nation can be seen as a narration, as well as a narrative, something
which loses its origins in the myths of time (cf. Bhabha, 2006: 1), becoming, more than
a geopolitical or juridical delimitation, a “spiritual principle” of belonging to a
determined nationality, to use Renan’s words (cf. Renan, 2006: 18). Hall (2005: 52-56),
in turn, foregrounds, among the main representational strategies which are set in motion
to build our common sense of that “spiritual principle”, the invention of tradition and
the creation of foundational myths, by means of historical, literary and political
narratives, as well as of popular culture.
In the this case, the establishment of a language which could represent the
character of the Portuguese people was of fundamental importance, and the
representational strategy set in motion by the State was public education, something
which was under the exclusive competence of the church. Although the Pombaline
Reform had not injured seriously the interests of the Catholic faith, its implementation
depended on two prohibitions: that of the almost exclusive monopoly of the Jesuits in
1
Here is a fragment of the original text of the charter , written in eighteenth century Portuguese: “Sempre
foi maxima inalteravelmente praticada em todas as Nações, que conquistaram novos Dominios,
introduzir logo nos Povos conquistados o seu proprio idioma, por ser indisputavel, que este he hum dos
meios mais efficazes para desterrar dos Povos rusticos a barbaridade dos seus antigos costumes; e ter
mostrado a experiencia, que ao mesmo passo, que se introduz nelles o uso da Lingua do Principe.
Observando pois todas as Nações polidas do Mundo este prodente, e solido systema, nesta Conquista, se
praticou tanto pelo contrario, que só cuidaram os primeiros Conquistadores estabelecer nella o uso, da
Lingua, que chamarão geral; invenção verdadeiramente abominavel, e diabolica, para que privados os
Indios de todos aquelles meios, que se podião civilisar, permanecessem na rustica, e barbara sujeição,
em que até agora se conservarão. Para desterrar este perniciosissimo abuso, será hum dos principaes
cuidados dos Directores, estabelecer nas suas respectivas Povoações o uso da Lingua Portugueza, não
consentindo por modo algum, que os Meninos, e Meninas, que pertencerem ás Escolas, e todos aquelles
Índios, que forem capazes de instrucção nesta materia, usem da lingua propria das suas Nações, ou da
chamada Geral; mas unicamente da Portugueza, na forma que Sua Magestade tem recomendado em
repetidas Ordens, que até agora se não observarão com total ruina espiritual, e Temporal do Estado”
(Portugal, 1830: 508-509).
the matters related to education and of the many languages in use in Brasil, especially
the one called “general language”, a kind of lingua franca spoken along the coast of the
richest Portuguese domain by Indians of many different tribes, Portuguese settlers and
creoles. Thus, the institution of the teaching of the Portuguese language, in Portugal and
its colonies, operated in two different fronts: the reform of the teaching of Latin
grammar, which should be taught in the vernacular language, and the reform of literacy
teaching, that is, the reform of the schools of reading, writing and counting, which
began to have, from this time on, as their main content the teaching of the Portuguese
language, studied through Catechisms.
In this context, the institution of the teaching of Portuguese in Portugal and its
colonies coincides with the invention of a national language, once it is closely related to
the process of refoundation of the myth of nationality of the Portuguese State, which, in
turn, reverberated, in its own way, a greater movement of consolidation of the European
Nation-States. Therefore, if national identity, understood as an “imagined community”
(cf. Anderson, 2008), depends on historical, literary and political narratives to become
concrete, or at least to work as a “spiritual principle” of belonging to a determined
nation, the unification and establishment of a language, as well as its schooling, would
be the very first step towards the construction of a national literature – and consequently
of its canon – and culture.
As the “language of the Prince” was considered by the legislator the
fundamental basis of civilization, the charter determined the creation, in all the
settlements, of two public schools, one for the boys and the other one for the girls, in
which the masters should teach the Christian doctrine, reading, writing and counting, in
the same way the “civilized nations” used to do. In the schools for girls, the counting
would have to be replaced by weaving and sewing, which would be, according to the
chart, more appropriate to the girls. The masters – men and women – would have to be
persons of good conduct, prudence and capacity, being paid by the students’ parents or
tutors. In the settlements that there were not women able to teach, the girls could
frequent the schools for boys until they were ten years old (cf. Portugal, 1830: 509).
The General Law of Minor Studies
The General Law of Minor Studies (The Charter of June the 28th, published in
1759) is indisputably the most important legislative piece of the Pombaline period
about the teaching of languages. With this reform, which gave a new direction to the
teaching of Humanities, making the study of grammar and rhetoric more compatible to
the modern linguistic and pedagogical orientations of the Enlightenment, education
came to be officially administered by the State, which, in turn, became responsible for
controlling the selection and career of the teachers, institutionalizing, thus, the teaching
profession.
In this document, it is very evident one of the main characteristics of the
discourse of the Pombaline legislation, which is presented to the reader in the very
beginning of its preamble: the articulation of Christian faith, monarchy and the modern
State. To set out the relations of these apparently so contrasting terms, the necessary
discursive strategies for the imaginary construction of the Portuguese nation are
adopted: the foundational myths and the invention of tradition (cf. Hall, 2005). In the
Portuguese case, of a tradition in which ancient kings fomented public studies in the
name of the sciences, which, in turn, gave support to the monarchy and the church.
The first movement of the text of the charter is, at the same time, assertive and
self-celebrating, for it establishes the importance of the cultivation of science by the
Portuguese State, making reference to the work which had been done, in this sense, by
the kings who were D. José’s predecessors. The second one, in turn, is forbidding, once
it is devoted to the description of the situation of decadence of the Humanities in
Portugal, because of the damages caused by the Jesuits, who had despised the lesson of
the “civilized nations” and insisted upon the use of a dark and insidious method of the
teaching of the Greek and Latin languages, which tired the students with grammatical
details during more than nine years of study (cf. Portugal, 1830: 673-674).
But it is the third movement of the preamble which interests us most here, for in
it the already referred historical self-consciousness is intensified, being developed into a
chronological narrative which reinvents a tradition that was interrupted when the studies
were taken from the hands of the humanist Diogo de Teive, director of the Colégio das
Artes [College of the Arts] in the sixteenth century, and given to the Jesuits, who
obscured the ancient luster which had made the Portuguese famous in the “Republic of
Letters”. The evils brought by the Company of Jesus, both in the field of studies and in
the acquisition of temporal goods, according to the charter, had already been foreseen
and manifested by the wise men who were expert in those disciplines and had honored
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the congregation of the University of
Coimbra in 1555, the Congress of the Courts, in 1562, as well as the nobility and the
people of the city of Port, in 1600 (cf. Portugal, 1830: 674).
To imagine the nation, it was necessary not only that the religious and dynastic
communities passed through a period of decline, but also that a new way of
apprehending the world was configured. History, thus, was conceived as a chain of
causes and effects, something which implicated a radical separation between the notions
of past, present and future. It was then that a medieval conception of time – in which
past, present and future mingled together – gave way to a homogeneous and empty
time, in Benjamin’s words (apud ANDERSON, 2008: 54), what made possible the idea
of simultaneity. Such idea gave support to the two textual genres which provided, in the
nineteenth century, the technical means to represent – or “narrate”, in Bhabha’s terms
(cf. Bhabha, 2006) – the “imagined communities” correspondent to the nation: the
journal and the novel, in the English case. In the case of the Pombaline period, as we
can see, the narrative of the Portuguese nation was present also in the legislation about
the teaching of languages.
The fourth and last movement of the preamble of the General Law of the Minor
Studies, before the enactment of the “general reform”, refers to the condemnation of the
Jesuits, whose “Method” was leading the reign and domains of Portugal to the ruins,
and not only of the arts and sciences but also of monarchy and religion itself. Thus, the
charter suggested that the Jesuits had been the great causers of the calamitous state of
the Humanities, which were then considered the “basis of all the Sciences”, inventing,
at the same time, a Portuguese tradition of glorious height of studies, before they were
given to the disciples of Inácio de Loyola. Such anti-jesuitism, as Carvalho (1978: 41)
explains, was due to the conflicts between the ministry of D. José I and the Roman
Curia, more than to the supposed retardation of the pedagogical program of the Jesuits,
once, for a long time, the Portuguese intellectuals were convinced of the inconveniences
that the accumulation of temporal goods and other privileges of the religious orders
brought to the national economy.2
According to Falcon (1993: 424), the fight against the Jesuits was a manifestation
of the rejection that Pombal had in relation to the aristocratic dominance, which, in the
economic level, was in perfect harmony with which the Jesuits represented in an
ideological level. We must notice the rhetorical ability of the legislator, who, after
relating the Jesuits to a cultural and pedagogical delay which were in contrast with the
civilized nations of Europe, makes Portugal a kind of precursor of European modernity,
evoking a mythical time – the sixteenth century – in which the Portuguese nation,
retrospectively conceived, in the form of a chronological narrative, was respected in an
internationally known community: the Republic of Letters. It is in the name of this
invented tradition that the legislator demands, paradoxically, that the “ancient method”,
reduced to simple and clear terms, should be restored, as the civilized nations of Europe
were already doing (cf. Portugal, 1830: 674-675).
The Statutes of the Real Colégio dos Nobres [Royal College of the Noble Men] (The
Law of March the 7th, published in 1761)
It was under the Pombaline ministry that the modern languages were, for the
first time, object of legislation, being its study indicated and then demanded in the
institutions dedicated to the military instruction, as we can observe in the Law of March
the 7th, published in 1761, with which were published the Statutes of the Real Colégio
2
Here is a fragment of the original text of the charter , written in eighteenth century Portuguese: “E
attendendo ultimamente a que, ainda quando outro fosse o Methodo dos sobreditos Religiosos, de
nenhuma sorte se lhes deve confiar o ensino, e educação dos Meninos, e Moços, depois de haver
mostrado tão infaustamente a experiencia por factos decisivos, e exclusivos de todas a tergiversão, e
interpretação, ser a Doutrinha, que o Governo dos mesmos Religiosos faz dar aos Alumnos das suas
Classes, e Escolas, sinistramente ordenada á ruína não só das Artes, e Sciencias, mas até da mesma
Monarchia, e da Religião, que nos mesmos Reinos, e Dominios devo sustentar com a Minha Real, e
indefectivel protecção: Sou Servido privar inteira e absolutamente os mesmos Religiosos em todos os
Meus Reinos, e Dominios dos Estudos, de que os tinha mandado suspender: Para que do fia da
publicação deste em diante se hajão, como effectivamente Hei, por extinctas todas as Classes, e Escolas,
que com tão perniciosos, e funestos effeitos lhes forão confiadas aos oppostos fins da instrucção, e da
edificação dos Meus fieis Vassallos: abolindo até a memória das mesmas Classes, e Escolas, como se
nunca houvessem existido nos Meus Reinos, e Dominios, onde tem causado tão enormes lesões, e tão
graves escandalos. E para que os mesmos Vassallos pelo proporcionado meio de hum bem regulado
Methodo possão com a mesma facilidade, que hoje tem as outras Nações civilizadas, colher a falta da
direcção lhes fazia até agora, ou impossíveis, ou tão difficultosos, que vinha a ser quase o mesmo: Sou
Servido da mesma sorte ordenar, como por este Ordeno, que no ensino das Classes, e no estudo das
Letras Humanas haja huma geral reforma, mediante a qual se restitua o Methodo antigo, reduzido aos
termos símplices, claros, e de maior facilidade, que se pratica actualmente pelas Nações polidas da
Europa; conformando-Me, para assim o determinar, com o parecer dos Homens mais doutos, e
instruidos neste gênero de erudições. A qual reforma se praticará não só nestes Reinos, mas tambem em
todos os seus Dominios, á mesma imitação do que tenho mandado estabelecer na Minha Corte, e Cidade
de Lisboa; em tudo o que for applicavel aos lugares, em que os novos estabelecimentos se fizerem,
debaixo das Providencias, e Determinações seguintes” (cf. Portugal, 1830: 674-675).
.
dos Nobres [Royal College of the Noble Men] – the old Colégio das Artes directed by
the Jesuits –, open officially on March the 19th, in 1766 (cf. Oliveira, 2010: 108). The
program of studies of the new institution brought some novelty, once, besides the
matters usually given in the study of the Humanities (Latin, Greek, Rhetoric,
Philosophy and Theology), some elements of mathematics, astronomy and physics were
inserted, as well as the study of the French, Italian and English languages, which were
recommended3.
In the preamble of the law, all those characteristic elements of the Pombaline
legislation are present: the association between the “spiritual good” and the “Temporal
happiness of the States”, providing the propagation of faith and the increase of the
Catholic church, as well as to the service of the sovereigns and public utility of the
peoples; the historical self-consciousness, by means of the invention of a tradition of
great kings who used to protect the sciences and education, such as Dom Henrique,
Dom Manuel and D. João III, this last one responsible for the foundation, in Coimbra,
of the sumptuous College of the Languages and Arts, in which distinct professors had
taught, such as André de Gouveia, the brothers Marçal and Antonio de Sousa, Edmundo
Rosset, Vicente Fabricio, Antonio Caiado, Pedro Margalho, Ayres Barbosa, André de
Resende, Pedro Nunes and Diogo de Teive; the idea of nation, related to the myth of a
civilized and polite Europe; and the introduction of the Jesuits as the causers of the
economic and cultural decay of the Portuguese nation. About this specific topic, the
legislator narrates with details the episode of the capture of the College by the priests of
the Company of Jesus (cf. Portugal, 1830: 773-775).
The Statutes of the Real Colégio dos Nobres [Royal College of the Noble Men]
were received with enthusiasm, mainly because of the General Director of Studies, D.
Tomás de Almeida, who so much got involved with the project that in the same year of
its publication sent many copies to all the governors and commissioners in Brasil and
other colonies (cf. Andrade, 1978: 104-108). According to Braga (1898: 348-351),
Cartas sobre a educação da mocidade (1760) [Letters about the education of Youth],
by Ribeiro Sanches, originated from his correspondence with the General Director of
Studies, in which the Portuguese physician proposed the Royal Military School of Paris,
founded in 1751, as an ideal model which could be imitated in his own country.
Therefore, the Real Colégio dos Nobres would have been inspired by his ideas. Such a
hypothesis is also assumed by Carvalho (1978). However, the running of the institution,
at least until 1772, when, with the reformation of the University of Coimbra, the study
of mathematics was abolished from the college, seems to have been marked by failure,
being the teachers of French and English hired only in 1785. Among the causes
enumerated by Rômulo de Carvalho (1959: 173), are: the deficiency of administration;
the program of studies unsuitable to the age of the students; the teaching given by
foreign teachers in foreign languages; the social situation of the students, who, used to
3
Here is a fragment of the original text of the charter , written in eighteenth century Portuguese: “Não
sendo conveniente que os Collegiaes antes de acabarem a Rhetorica, e se acharem preparados com as
Noções que deixo ordenadas, se embaracem com differentes applicações; nem que sejam privados da
grande utilidade, que podem tirar dos muitos, e bons livros, que se achão escritos nas referidas Linguas:
Ordeno que o Collegio pague a tres Professores para as ensinarem: E que os Collegiaes depois de
haverem passado as Classes de Rhetorica, Lógica, e Historia, aprendão pelo menos as Linguas
Franceza, e Italiana; ainda que será muito mais util aos que forem mais capazes, e estudiosos
procurarem possuir tambem a Lingua Ingleza” (cf. Portugal, 1830: 781-782).
the liberties of their social status, had attitudes incompatible with the regime of
discipline of the institution, and the dislike of the teachers, who saw themselves obliged
to accumulate administrative functions. The college was abolished with a decree
published in 1838 (cf. Ribeiro, 1876: 322).
The new Statutes of the University of Coimbra
According to Carvalho (1978: 141-142), the reformation of the University of
Coimbra constitutes the crowning of the pedagogical enactments practiced by the
ministry of D. José I, since the secularization of the missions in Grão-Pará, resulted
from the Law of the Directory and confirmed by the charter of 1758. The task had been
attributed to the Junta de Providência Literária [Board of Literary Providence], created
in 1770 under the inspection of the Cardinal da Cunha of the Marquis of de Pombal
himself, and it was composed by the president of the Real Mesa Censória (Royal
Censorship Board), D. Manoel do Cenáculo, and by Francisco Antonio Marques
Giraldes, José de Seabra da Silva, José Ricaldi Pereira de Castro, Francisco de Lemos
de Faria Pereira Coutinho, Manoel Pereira da Silva and João Pereira Ramos de Azeredo
Coutinho.
In 1771, the Compendio histórico da Universidade de Coimbra [Historical
Compendium of the University of Coimbra] was published. It was a work sponsored
and supervised by the Marquis of Pombal himself and is considered one of the most
important historiographic monuments produced during the Pombaline period. In this
compendium all the supposed damages caused by the Jesuits to the Portuguese
education are minutely narrated. Such damages, according to the authors of the book,
had affected seriously both the major and minor studies.
The Charter of August the 28th, published in 1772, which narrates all the
episodes related to the creation of the Junta de Providência Literária and the
composition of the Compendio histórico, although not being a legislation piece
dedicated to the teaching of languages, has a fundamental importance to the
development and institutionalization of the teaching of modern languages in Portugal
and its colonies, once the new Statutes of the University of Coimbra, besides the
reformulation of the theological courses of theology, natural sciences and canonical and
civil law, created two new courses: that of philosophy, which replaced the arts, and of
the mathematics, to which the modern languages came to be recommended4.
Some considerations
4
Here is a fragment of the original text of the charter , written in eighteenth century Portuguese:
“Tambem he para desejar, que os Estudantes Medicos se instruam nas Linguas vivas da Europa;
principalmente na Ingleza, e Franceza, nas quaes estam escriptas e esse escrevem cada dia muitas Obras
importantes de Medicina. Porém não Obrigo a que o estudo destas Linguas preceda necessariamente á
matricula do Primeiro anno, nem que dellas se faça exame. Somente encarrego aos Lentes, que as
recommendem muito aos seus Ouvintes, dos quaes Espero, que, sem prejuizo das lições, a que são
obrigados, se instruam nelas por todo o tempo do Curso Medico, para se fazerem mais dignos da
estimação publica, e exercitarem melhor a sua Profissão” (cf. Portugal, 1772).
With these observations, it is possible to come to two fundamental conclusions.
First, we can only talk about a history of the teaching of languages in Portugal and its
colonies after the Pombaline reforms of public education, for from this time on the
teaching of languages was in fact institutionalized, that is, officialized, once it reached
the status of an educational policy of a Nation-State. This is the reason why we did not
studied the period during which the Jesuits exerted an almost absolute control over
education. Besides, only from 1759 on we can consider the teaching of languages in the
plural form – Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, English, Italian and Portuguese –, for, until
then, the Latin language was not only the language through which the professors used to
teach, but the only language really taught (cf. Bloch apud Anderson, 2008: 46).
Secondly, the main hypothesis of the research project from which this paper is
one of the results, related to its chronological delimitation (1757-1827), was confirmed.
When we chose this chronological delimitation, we assumed a conceptual position, in
opposition to the historiographic discourse produced by some historians who,
foregrounding the civilizing aspects of the pedagogical program of the Jesuits,
disqualify the innovative role played by the Pombaline reforms. Such adoption also
implied a specific positioning in relation to the contribution of the Pombaline reforms in
the history of the Portuguese education, especially that which is associated to the
conveyance of the control over education from the Company of Jesus to the Portuguese
State, once it searched to prove that the legislation promulgated by the Marquis of
Pombal was able to give a new direction to the Portuguese education, both in the
metropolis and in its colonies, in terms of methodological, content and organizing
renewal (cf. Hilsdorf, 2003: 15), inverting, therefore, the traditional historical
interpretation which describes the post-pombaline period as an age of transition and
decay.
Besides, the legislation pieces here selected and analyzed force us to revise what
some of the most important historians who dealt with the theme of the nation have
affirmed about the construction of the national identities – Hall (2005); Renan (2006);
Bhabha (2006); Anderson (2008) and Hobsbawm (2008) –, who are unanimous in
situating the emergence of the idea of the nation between the end of the eighteenth and
the middle of the nineteenth centuries. Anderson (2008) emphasizes the role played by
what he calls “creole pioneers”. Hobsbawm (2008), in turn, calls our attention to the
fact that the various nationalisms which appeared after the Treaty of Versailles and the
post-war, especially in the African States, are of a different order. Collectively
considered, however, such authors rarely make reference the Iberian case, not to
mention the Portuguese one, closing their eyes to the specificity of the American cases,
grossly divided between the United States and “Latin America”, what gives almost no
space for the reflection and comprehension of the development of the linguistic and
educational policy of Portugal in its most important colony, Brasil.
Thus, this paper took for granted the hypothesis that the legislation promulgated
by the Marquis of Pombal was a pioneer not only in the statization of education and in
the institutionalization of the teaching profession (cf. Cardoso, 2010), but also in the
formation of the Idea of nation, once the legislation which gave it support and
legitimacy, published between 1750 and 1777, even not reaching its effects in the short
run, affected the development of the post-pombaline linguistic and educational policies,
in Portugal and in its (ex)colonies and was very innovative when it adapted the
renowned “Quarrel between Ancients and Moderns” to the Lusitan context, opposing a
polite Europe, which was seen as a model of civilization and progress always longed
for, to the Jesuits, who represented a past to be rejected, to the point of denying its
contribution to the Portuguese tradition and history.
In this context, the discourse of the legislation promulgated by Pombal, uttered
and articulated by the Portuguese State, with the help and collaboration of the
intellectuals of the time, was able to mobilize the keywords of the illuminist lexicon to
its own purposes, presenting an elevated level of historical self consciousness and, most
important of all, developing it into true foundational discourses, which, in turn, were
concentrated on the invention of a glorious tradition of the Lusitan people, in the arts,
arms and letters, when, in the period of the great navigations, which was also the period
sung by Camões in his Lusíadas, Portugal had conquered America, Africa and India,
causing fear and envy in all the other European nations, including its Iberian rivals: the
Spanish.
Therefore, the legislation promulgated by Pombal is here seen as one of the
representational strategies used for the construction of a national culture and identity, to
borrow Hall’s argument (cf. Hall, 2005: 52-56), what leads us to put, taking into
account the chronology adopted by the authors mentioned above, Portugal – and, in
some cases, Brasil – in a central position – and no longer peripheral – in the process of
construction of the national identities, foregrounding the Pombaline legislation as the
main instrument for the creation of the myth of refoundation of the Portuguese nation.
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