Churches orientations in the jesuits missions among Guarani people

GIMÉNEZ BENÍTEZ, SIXTO; LÓPEZ, ALEJANDRO MARTÍN; GAMBOA, MARTÍN; MUDRIK, ARMANDO

Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry

University of the Aegean

Lugar: Rhodes ; Año: 2018 vol. 18 p. 165 - 171

1108-9628

The Jesuit order had an intense missionary activity in America during the colonial period. In particular, from the  sixteenth  century  until  their  expulsion  in  1767  they  carried  out  an  extensive  and  well-known  work among the Guarani groups, in what became known as the Jesuit Province of Paraguay (now part of Argentina,  Paraguay  and  Brazil).  The  large  number  of  missions  founded  on  this  undertaking  (30  survived  the  last period),  were  establishments  with  a  well-studied urban  plan  one  of  whose  axes  was  that  of  the  church, which  differs  from  both  the  urbanism  proposed  by  the  "Leyes  de  Indias" and  the  most  classic  ecclesiastical arrangements. This urban plan is of great importance for South American urbanism since it is an alternative paradigm to the order proposed by the colonial legal framework and constitutes a particular reinterpretation of the Baroque, which integrates contributions of the Guarani conceptions. Although Jesuit urbanism in the region has been studied, it has not been done within the framework of cultural astronomy.In  general,  the  works  of  cultural  astronomy  dedicated  to  the  orientations  of  churches  have  divided  these studies by chronological periods, and by geographical areas. We believe that adding focused approaches to specific  religious  orders  can  be  very  fruitful  given  the  variety  of  methodologies  and  intentions.  With  this idea we undertook a joint study of the orientations of the Jesuit missions of the Guaraní region. During the fieldwork the sites ofthe 30 missionary villages in question were visited in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We have measured the twenty-one existing ruins and analyzed the old planes of the nine of which there are no recognizable material remains.The work deals with the results of this survey by putting in to dialogue with existing studies on Jesuit urban-ism and with the chronicles and writings of the Jesuits themselves. We seek to establish the relevance of as-tronomical observation for the ordering of these missions and their interaction with other criteria.One  of  the  first  results  shows  that  the  orientation  axes  of  the  churches  of  these  missions  do  not  follow  the arrangement  expected  in  general  in  Christian  churches,  associated  to  the  solar  range.  We  discuss  what  the orientations found can tell us about the methods used to bring them to practice and relate these evidences to the testimonies of the Jesuits themselves.