Ewangelizacyjny projekt franciszkańskich redukcji w Paragwaju
Evangelisation project in the Franciscan reductions in Paraguay

Summary/Abstract: The article briefly describes little known story of the Franciscan reductions in Paraguay. Franciscan missionaries set up their first mission villages (reductions) there in 1580s, with the objective of the conversion of Indians into Christianity and their defence against enslavement by encomenderos and slave hunters. Franciscans were the pioneers of that ambitious evangelisation project in the New World, though their contribution into it is relatively little known and acknowledged. Missionaries from the Society of Jesus started their first reductions in Paraguay only thirty years later, following and perfecting the Franciscan model. That was why the structures of the Franciscan and Jesuit reductions were – to a certain extent – similar, though both groups differed significantly in everyday practice.

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