Biographies of Jesuits made by Jesuits. The edition of William Furlong of “Ladislao Orosz and his "Nicolas del Techo"

Abstract

Ladislao Orosz completed in 1759 the Decades of illustrious males, wichthat Nicolás del Techo had begun to write in the 17th century, with biographies of Jesuit of the Jesuit province of Paraguay. Techo´s Decades meet between eight an ten biographies of distinguished missionaries during the 17th century. Orosz resumed this work in the following century and expanded extended with four new biographies decades starting with the same Nicolás del Techo. In this opportunity, we intend to observe the treatment of the biography of a jesuit, Nicolás del Techo, by another jesuit Nicolás Orosz in the middle of the 18th century, which in turn was recovered by Furlong and was edited during the 20th century. Our purpose is to analyze the construction of a biography by a Jesuit priest elected to outline the experiences of the missionaries of the 18th century, who despite being contemporary historians appointed by the province, is dedicated to complete the biographies begun by Techo. Likewise weput forward this study fitting us in the field of a social history of the historiography, which proposes opening the historiographical approach to a universe of broader issues than those provided by the idealistic historicist tradition and in recent times the approaches from the cultural history and the narrative.