Mysterious ductus and prudence in Padre Antônio Vieira’s sermons

Abstract

This article aims to present “mysterious ductus” as a distinctive factor in the way Padre Antônio Vieira devises the progress of some of his sermons. To this end, it begins with a brief analysis of the category of prudence as incorporated in Jesuit belle lettres and, more specifically, in Vieira’s sermons, aiming to highlight the moral dimension assumed therein. Integral to the Idea of decorum that regulated literary production, it serves as a basis for advancing a discussion about the importance of the practical dimension for preachers, mainly recovering discussions by Aristotle and Cicero. Entering the discussion on ductus, we present a brief survey of this category as classically understood, as well as analysis of this element of discourse in Vieira’s texts carried out by contemporary researchers. By propounding the existence of a mysterious ductus, we  propound that it is a rhetorical-poetic objetification of the Jesuit’s concern with action, its material effects, the very material means of expression of the sermon and, above all, that it depends on a counter-reformist understanding of the world that takes that everything that exists is sacramentalized by the Presence of the creator. This understanding authorizes a figural interpretation, to use Auerbach’s (1997) terminology, of the biblical text and of the things of the world themselves as signs of this presence, demanding from the authorized preacher a hermeneutical skill that directs the public to the absolute Good.  From this, Vieira builds sermons in which the order of propositions becomes in itself an agudeza,