The Context of Modernizing Reforms of Teaching in Portugal in the Second half of the 18th Century: the Educational Project of Franciscan Dom Frei Manuel do Cenáculo

This text is a synthesis of the content of a thesis defended in the PPE-UEM. The study aimed to analyze the articulation of the educational project of Dom Frei Manuel do Cenáculo Villas Boas (1724-1814). Franciscan Friar, Bishop of Beja (1770-1802) and Archbishop of Évora (1803-1814), 18th century Portuguese intellectual. He played an outstanding role in the educational and political field during the period of Pombaline studies reforms. The research is justified by the importance of analyzing the articulation that the prelate made of the principles of the Enlightenment with the need to modernize Portuguese education for scientific and cultural development. We selected for the study the pedagogical manual written by him in 1791 Literary Care. It is a collection of his pedagogical thinking and gives guidance on the organization of the relations between teaching and learning in order to make teaching useful and in connection with the current social order. The analysis took place in relation to the context of political and economic changes in the Pombaline period, in which its political and pedagogical performance stands out.