Feminine mystique and illustrated government in colonial São Paulo. The foundation of the "Convento de la Luz" (1774)

Abstract

t: In 1774, a mystical, poor woman, a friar architect and future Saint, and an illustrated governor form an unthinkable consortium to build a women’s convent in the small town of São Paulo, in the interior of Brazil, however, the city possessed another women’s convent. This history reveals a little of the survival strategies of poor women in colonial Brazil and about the transformations of Portuguese America in the period of Catholic Enlightenment on the government of the powerful minister Marquis of Pombal. In this paper we present the creation process of the convent of Luz, now the Museum of Sacred Art of São Paulo, and its insertion into the urban space of the city as well as the role of the religious mysticism in the life of some women of the Portuguese overseas.