D. Antonio Rolim de Moura’s Journey to Mato Grosso (1751): From Manuscripts to Printed Editions

<jats:p>La relación de viaje de D. Antonio Rolim de Moura, gobernador de la capitanía de Mato Grosso, entre la ciudad de São Paulo y el pueblo de Cuiabá, entre 1750 y 1751, es una de las narrativas más citadas en la historiografía brasileña desde el siglo XIX. Sin embargo, nunca se ha estudiado la trayectoria histórica de su transmisión en los campos de la cultura escrita y la cultura material. Este artículo analizará las mediaciones editoriales involucradas en la reproducción manuscrita del documento y en las ediciones del material impreso. Por tanto, buscamos prestar atención a la materialidad de los manuscritos; señalar las disimilitudes entre las versiones que comprometen la aprehensión del contenido narrativo y resaltar la importancia de la autoridad intelectual e institucional del siglo XIX para la fijación del texto en el tiempo.</jats:p>

section_content: 1. Paulista Museum / University of São Paulo; maborrego@usp. br. ORCID: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-5234-6693 Translated by Tikinet Ltda. Acknowledgments to: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp) -Projects 2017/07366-1 and 2018/03118-6; Ana Cristina de Santana Silva, Carolina Dutra Carrijo, Iuri Azevedo Lapa e Silva, Jean Gomes de Souza, Maria Fernanda Nogueira, Nívia Pombo, Renata Malcher de Araújo, Thiago Alves Dias, Válter Rebelo and Virginia de Carvalho Ferraz. 

y en las ediciones del material impreso. Por tanto, buscamos prestar atención a la materialidad de los manuscritos; señalar las disimilitudes entre las versiones que comprometen la aprehensión del contenido narrativo y resaltar la importancia de la autoridad intelectual e institucional del siglo XIX para la fijación del texto en el tiempo.

section_content: In 1953, as part of the celebrations of the IV Centenary of the city of São Paulo, the historian Afonso d'Escragnolle Taunay organized a book entitled Relatos monçoeiros 2 [Monsoon accounts]. The work brings together narratives written by different historical agents about the monsoons, which were river expeditions between Araritaguaba (now Porto Feliz, São Paulo) and Cuiabá (Mato Grosso) in the 18 th century and early 19 th century. They occurred regularly in the 1720s, after discovering gold in the banks of the Coxipó river. 

Among the narratives, there is Relação da viagem, que fêz o Conde de Azambuja, D. Antonio Rolim, da cidade de S. Paulo para a vila de Cuiabá em 1751 [Account of the journey made by the Count of Azambuja, D. Antonio Rolim, from the city of S. Paulo to the villa of Cuiabá in 1751] 3. In it, the author reports the experiences he had in the natural and human landscape during his trips between the city of São Paulo and the villa of Parati and on the river route undertaken between the villas of Araritaguaba and Cuiabá throughout April 1750 and January 1751. 

Just below the title, there is the following information in parentheses: «Letter addressed to the Count of Val de Reis and the Brazilian Historical Institute, sent from Lisbon by F. A. de Varnhagen, Viscount of Pôrto Seguro 4. » This reference shows that Taunay had used the text first published in the Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 5 [Journal of Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute], in 1845, sent by the corresponding partner Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, based on the transcription of the document kept in the National Library of Portugal 6. A difference, however, immediately noticed between the prints of 1845 and 1953 was that in the first, there is no information secondary to the title that it was a letter and to whom it was intended. 

Understanding how this and other questions appear in manuscript and printed versions of the Relação da viagem requires investigating the historical trajectory of its transmission in the fields of written culture and material culture. While the narrative is one of the most cited in Brazilian historiography since the 19 th century, this aspect was not taken into account by specialists. The studies, in general, focused on the content of the document, disregarding the differences between the manuscript deposited at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP) [National Library of Portugal] and the two versions found at the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional [National Library Foundation], Rio de Janeiro 7. Furthermore, the handwritten texts were not compared to the resulting printed texts, and elementary data on Rolim de Moura's past life before his arrival in America lack accuracy. 

2. Taunay, 1953. 3. Moura, 1953: 183-202. 4. Ibid. : 183. 5. Therefore Revista do IHGB. 6. Moura, 1845: 469-497. 7. Henceforth, the National Library Foundation, located in Rio de Janeiro, will be abbreviated as BNB, referring to the Biblioteca Nacional, do Brasil, for better differentiation between the national libraries of Portugal and Brazil.
section_name: INTRODUCTION

section_content: In order to fill this gap this article will analyze the editorial mediations 8 involved in the handwritten reproduction of the document and in the printed material's editions. Therefore, we seek to pay attention to the materiality of the manuscripts; point out the dissimilarities between the versions that compromise, to a greater or lesser degree, the apprehension of the narrative content, and highlight the importance of the 19 th -century institutional and intellectual authority to fixate the text throughout the 20 th and 21 st centuries. 

The article will be divided into three parts to address the questions raised. Based on considerations about the author and content, the first suggests the reasons for the broad knowledge about the Relação da viagem and its use in Brazilian historiography. The second discusses the documental type of the manuscript, comparing the testimonies deposited at BNP and BNB and their respective catalogs in the custody institutions. The third examines the printed versions of the Relação da viagem, focusing on the editorial choices that engendered its publications.
section_name: MARIA APARECIDA DE MENEzES BORREGO

section_content: The known testimonies of the Relação da viagem are apocryphal. Written in the first person, they present no topical and chronological dating. In terms of instruction, the information is imprecise. According to José Antonio de Sá, D. Antonio Rolim de Moura had a solid cultural and scientific background, applied in Philosophy, Theology, History, Law, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Science, Music, Dance, Horsemanship, and Sword, being a scholar in the Liberal Arts 14. Jaime Cortesão states that he attended classes at the Military Academy, was an engineer, astronomer, and cartographer, including him among the royal officials appointed by D. John V in key positions overseas, notably for having this education 15. D. Antonio Rolim de Moura was appointed governor of the recently created captaincy of Mato Grosso in 1748 16. The idea of creating a new captaincy in the region, previously belonging to São Paulo, was linked to founding a town as the capital in the extreme west of Portuguese America and close to its Castilian neighbors 17. 

Such pretensions figured in the Instruções [Instructions] given by D. Maria Ana Josefa of Austria, wife of D. John V, to the new governor in January 1749 18. The fact that the sovereign asked Rolim de Moura to write to her when he reached his destination 19, and not before that, removes the Relação da viagem from being an official rendering of accounts and the sovereign being the recipient of the missive. 

On the one hand, D. John V already knew about the monsoons route, having sent to America, more than 20 years ago, the mathematical priests Diogo Soares and Domingos Capassi, in charge of drawing up maps of the territory 20. On the other hand, the king is mentioned in the third person in the Relação da viagem -«El Rey» [The King] -and the treatment addressed to the recipient is informal. Also, right at the document's beginning, the author advises the interlocutor of his intention that the content should serve him as «fun because of the novelty. »

In February 1749, D. Antonio Rolim de Moura sailed on the warship Lampadosa towards Portuguese America, disembarking in Recife. From the captaincy of Pernambuco, he went to the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he stayed for a few months and then moved to the city of São Paulo 21. He was there when he received a message from Gomes Freire de Andrada, governor of the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro, for a meeting in the villa of Parati 22. The Relação da viagem begins precisely in this context of departure for Parati on April 1, 1750, and ends on January 17, 1751, when he takes office in Cuiabá. 

Like other Europeans in hitherto unknown American territories, Rolim de Moura recounts the adventures and misadventures of the trip. He describes the land and river routes, the places he passes through, the inhabitants he meets along the way and their ways of life, the traveling companions and the composition of the expedition, 14. Sá, 1784: 17. 15. Cortesão, 1950: 291, 301, 320. 16. If we take into account the studies by Russel-Wood (1998: 169-182) and Monteiro (2005: 93-115) on the criteria for choosing royal agents overseas, the governor fulfilled the required requirements, even more in the context of delimiting the Iberian borders on American lands, which would come to be defined by the Treaty of Madrid in 175. 17. Araújo, 2015: 21-66. 18. Moura, 1982: 127-137. 19. AHU_ACL_CU_010, box 5, doc. 344AHU_ACL_CU_010, box 6, doc. 349; AHU_ACL_CU_010, box 6, doc. 361. 20. Almeida, (1999): 79-92. 21. Moura, 1982: 22-23. 22. AHU_ACL_CU_017, box 41, doc. 4248; Ribeiro, 2010: 205-236. According to Temístocles Cézar, the intention of the truth contained in the narrator's enunciation, which expresses what he has seen and lived, perhaps explains why historiography, since the 19 th century, has used travel narratives as historical documents, as they participate, thus, from the discourse of the evidence of history 24. 

When reporting facts communicated to him by navigators and backlanders, he valued the memory and work of these subjects and gave veracity to the information that circulated. Transposed from the oral record to the written one by a royal official, such information became more permanent because it was materialized on paper. Likewise, by repeating that he had seen with his own eyes several episodes, he gave the sense of vision -not that of a simple traveler, but instead of a governor -the primacy in the authenticity of the facts narrated 25. 

As he wanted to make known to his interlocutor the world that was unfolding on the monsoons route, Rolim de Moura compared and hierarchized the elements that reached his five senses based on references from the kingdom, drawing on the memories of his past life. Due to the eminently relational nature of the description 26, the recurrence to a cultural matrix common to the author and the interlocutor was essential for the communication to be effective and for the novelty presented to gain relevance amid a known universe 27. 

Perhaps precisely Rolim de Moura's ability to bring the New and the Old World together through the detailed comparisons between men, behaviors, and the natural world on both sides of the Atlantic favored the prodigal use of the account by historiography. Through his sociocultural repertoire and his position in the Empire's administration, Rolim de Moura was very successful in the task of ensuring the presential meaning of writing. His narrative gave opportunities to people who remained in Europe to participate in his official and adventurous journey through the interior of the colony and to historians to interpret aspects of past realities through written culture. 

Under this analytical perspective, the diffusion of the Relação de viagem can be understood primarily by the prominent place reserved for the author in the administration of the Portuguese Empire and the Brazilian colonial past. After 13 years in charge of the captaincy of Mato Grosso, already awarded the title of Count of Azambuja, Rolim de Moura governed the captaincy of Bahia from 1764 to 1767, when he was appointed viceroy of Brazil, remaining in office from 1767 to 1769. Upon returning to Portugal, he became president of the Council of Finance, lieutenant-general of the armies of His Majesty, Council of War, and governor of the Arms of the Court and Extremadura. He died, in Lisbon, on December 8, 1782. 

23. More detailed analyses of Rolim de Moura's descriptions were carried out by Canova, 2011. Chaves, 2014: 148-161. 24. Cezar, 2018: 82. 25. Souza, 2021: 97-98. 26. Ginzburg, 2007: 84-85. 27. Bonato, 2014: 127-157. 

In addition to the testimony's reliability deriving from the authorship, or precisely because of it, the Relação da viagem has won numerous Brazilian editions since the 19 th century, currently, even in digital format. However, as mentioned at the article's beginning, such studies were not concerned with discussing the documentary type of the narrative or its recipient. It was called account in the printed editions but structured in letter format. 

The three handwritten versions of the report will be compared, and the respective classifications in the custodial institutions will be examined to understand such ambiguities and inconsistencies. With such procedures, the intention is to unveil the genealogical relationships between the testimonies. Also, point out the crucial role of the handwritten annotations of librarians and archivists for the documental identification and the perception of catalogs' historicity in the custodial spaces.
section_name: THE AUTHOR AND THE NARRATIVE

section_content: In the Portuguese Empire, the letter was, at the same time, the name given to several types of documents that had a recipient and the privileged format used to give news. In the case of communication between the vassals and the sovereign, when the issues dealt with did not have a petitionary character, they were addressed to him through letters, which included the treatment pronoun «Lord» 28 in the initial protocol. 

When studying the set of practical news of São Paulo captaincy, Jean Gomes de Souza caught one of the news structured as a letter and a travel itinerary and the transformation of the content of the other one from the format of account to that of a letter to be sent to the king 29. According to Rafael Bluteau, the first meaning of the word account was the «narrative of something that happened» 30 and Thereza Presotti comments that, at the dawn of overseas conquests, such narration was developed based on a handbook with questions to be answered. It was gradually abandoned in the face of the diffusion of accounts with advancing colonization of the Iberian empires in several areas of the globe 31. 

Therefore, it would not be surprising that the Relação da viagem was written following the structure of a missive. However, the text is not organized to respond to the instructions received from the queen. It was only in an official letter dated August 8, 1751, that Rolim de Moura reported to Secretary Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real his journey from the villa of Araritaguaba to the villa of Cuiabá in a single paragraph 32. 

28. Bellotto, 2002: 52. 29. Souza, 2021: 165 and 157-158, respectively. 30. Bluteau, 1720: 214, vol. VII. 31. Presotti, 2008: 157. 32. AHU_ACL_CU_010, box 6, doc. 361. If the content and format of the Relação da viagem do not fit, in a more specific way, in the documental typology of an account, why is the narrative known and classified in this way? The answer can be found in material elements of the document. 

In the collection of Manuscripts of the National Library of Portugal, the Relação da viagem is classified as codex No. 546, entitled Relação da viagem que fez da cidade de S. Paulo para a vila do Cuyabá no anno de 1751: carta a um seu primo / Conde de Azambuja [manuscrito] [Account of the journey, made from the city of S. Paulo to villa of Cuyabá in the year 1751: letter to a cousin of his / by the Count of Azambuja [manuscript]]. Although both types of documents coexist in the codex entry, the preponderance of the account over the letter is evident. Therefore, the term letter ceases to appear in the document's title developed in the file itself. The cataloging record also reveals that it is a careful copy, made up of 39 folios, with stains caused by the action of iron gallic ink, sometimes hindering reading. 

This classification was likely based on the title page of the document commented on the beginning of the article that presents the same information, i. e., «Account of the Journey made by The Count of Azambuja From the City of S. Paulo To the Villa of Cuyabá In the year 1751. » The codex is bound and, on a strip of paper glued vertically on the inside of the hardcover, it still appears to be a period copy, fourth format. 

The material and intellectual authors are not the same as it is a copy. As we do not have the original testimony, this copy has immense relevance because it was the source text for its manuscript versions and some printed editions. It established the document as an account. The narrative was written in humanistic type, cursive ductus, tilt to the right, with few ligatures between the words and use of heavyweight in the title and lightweight in the body of the text, distributed on average 22 lines per folio, in regular writing and margins 33. Due to these characteristics, it appears that the scribe was familiar with the written record. 

The purpose of keeping and preserving this copy is remarkable, especially when considering the title page. Furthermore, its very existence may be indicative of the intention to expand the reading of the writing, which ceased to be related to the more personal communication of a letter to become a source of information for a wider audience interested in travel narratives, a flourishing literary genre during the early modern period. 

It is also worth mentioning that in 1754, i. e., 3 years after Rolim de Moura's trip, the Relação da chegada que teve a gente de Mato Groço, e agora se acha em companhia do Senhor D. Antonio Rolim desde o Porto de Araritaguaba, até a esta Villa Real do Senhor Bom Jesus do Cuyabá [Account of the arrival that people of Mato Groço had, and now they are in the company of D. Antonio Rolim from the Port of Araritaguaba, to this Royal Villa of Senhor Bom Jesus do Cuyabá] was published in Lisbon, in Officina Silva. 

Although the title contains the extreme ports of the monsoons route that Rolim de Moura had taken about five months to travel through, the anonymous author of the Relação da chegada narrates the episodes experienced by the expedition that accompanied the governor until August 29, 1750, circa two months after he departed 33. Contreras, 1994: 38-44. from Araritaguaba. In this case, the text does not follow the letter format and is intended for a non-specific audience 34. 

Therefore, it is valid to conjecture that the publication of the Relação da chegada has influenced the production of the title page for the Relação da viagem, as this is the same event shared by two members of the expedition. However, in the title of the Relação da chegada, the governor was named as D. Antonio Rolim because, at that time, he was just Lord of Azambuja. The fact that it appears on the title page of the Relação da viagem that the journey had been taken by the Count of Azambuja, a title received by the governor only in 1763, may indicate that the copy deposited at the BNP was drawn up after that date. 

While this is a hypothesis, it should be noted that it was raised when it became known that the document was not always classified as an Account by the librarians. In the oldest bibliographic record of the BNP, there is a record in 19 th -century handwriting, belonging to the topographical inventory of the Collection of Codex and Separate Manuscripts with the following data: «Azambuja, Count of. Letter to a cousin of his with the Account of the journey, which he made from the city of São Paulo to the villa [of] Cuyaba in [in the year] 1751. [Letter to a cousin of his]» 35. In other words, the manuscript was primarily classified as a letter that, at a certain point, was crossed out as a privileged documental species. In turn, in the Inventory of section XIII: manuscripts, by José António Moniz, published in 1896, the bibliographical information was changed to «Azambuja, Count of -Account of the trip he made from the city of S. Paulo to the villa of Cuyaba in 1751. Letter to his cousin and lord. . . (?). » As explained in the BNP file, it is the basis for the current cataloging. 

With this information in hand, it is concluded that the written record was a letter in its production context. It was initially defined as a letter that contained an account in the custodial context. Moreover, perhaps, due to the information on the title page, material, and visually appealing, it became an account. They were not different documentary species in the same record, but a species that ended up becoming another due to external elements to the content and its cataloging in the custody institution. 

Only by combining such information and following this line of reasoning it was possible to understand why one of the versions of the Relação da viagem, deposited at the National Library Foundation, in Rio de Janeiro, is entitled Carta do Ill. mo Although this manuscript and the BNP's one maintain the same textual structure, the comparison between them indicates there are additions, deletions, and substitutions in the Carta. It is evident that the copyist had not been on the monsoons route. He wrongly spelled several names of indigenous origin for animals, rivers, and localities, which rules out the possibility of this testimony being the source text. 

However, the most striking difference between the manuscripts is identifying the recipient already in the document's title. While in the Relação da viagem, there is a «letter to your cousin,» in the Carta, the interlocutor is appointed as Count of Val de Reis, therefore, the older brother of Rolim de Moura, D. Lourenço Filipe Nery Mendonça, which generated the change in the initial greeting of the missive to «My brother and Lord» instead of «My cousin and Lord» as in the BNP manuscript. 

Whether intended for a cousin or a brother, the author used the treatment pronoun «sir» and the personal pronoun «you» when addressing the receiver throughout the text, indicating an ascending relationship between the informants. Although the direction from inferior to superior was not common in epistolary exchanges between brothers 37, in the case of Rolim de Moura, the ascending relationship would be appropriate, given the social projection of the 5 th Count of Val de Reis in the kingdom in the first half of the 18 th century, conferring a good reputation on his younger brother when he was qualified for the Holy Office and royal appointment to the position of governor of Mato Grosso. 

If the reasons for the incongruity between the recipients of the two testimonies are unknown, the differences between the dates attributed to the Relação da viagem (1751) and the Carta ( 1750 ) are open to explanation. In the same bound codex of the BNB, there are 3 manuscripts of the same handwriting: the Carta, the Ordem da marcha [March order], and the Notícias relativas a viagem do mesmo Excelentíssimo, e a creação da Villa Bella do Mato Grosso [News regarding the journey of the same Excellency, and the creation of Villa Bella do Mato Grosso]. The Ordem da marcha is just a more detailed description of the one organized by Rolim de Moura on the Taquari River to face the Payaguá on his way to Cuiabá. The end of the Ordem da marcha presents the inscription «Tacoary December 10, 1750. » Thus, BNB librarians also attributed this data to the preceding document: «Letter from the Count of Azambuja to that of Val de Reis» and «1750» are on the spine of the codex binding in golden letters. 

Such information is also included in the institution's catalog record, which reads: AZAMBUJA, Antônio Rolim de Moura. Letter to the Count of Val de Reis reports the successes of his trip to his government in Mato Grosso and news about the creation of da Vila Bela de Mato Grosso. Taquari: [s. n. ], 1750. 62 p., Copy. 

As can be seen, in addition to another recipient and the topical and chronological dating that do not correspond to the BNP's testimony, the file includes the house of Azambuja, of which Rolim de Moura was lord and Count, as if it was his surname, printing changes in the name of the author. He was also attributed the authorship of the Notícias sobre a criação de Vila Bela de Mato Grosso -the codex's third manuscript -which was not written in the first person. Finally, it is worth noting that 37. Marcotulio, (2006): 1-6. 

the villa, founded on March 19, 1752, by the governor as the capital of the newly created captaincy, is called Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade and not Vila Bela de Mato Grosso. 

The three documents were written in humanistic type, cursive ductus, and tilt to the right. The copyist used heavyweight in the title's opening lines and the initial line of text and lightweight in the body text, which occupied an average of 32 lines per folio in a well-organized blob of text. Such elements can again indicate the intention to keep and preserve the information on this object to maintain its readability. 

The Carta and the Notícias were listed, under No. 960, in the catalog of the National Library's Exhibition of History of Brazil 38, held in 1881 to commemorate the birthday of D. Pedro II, organized by the institution's librarian Benjamin Franklin de Ramiz Galvão. Since (B. N. ) appears after the manuscripts' titles in the above catalog, the Carta belonged to the Library that year. The initials were placed to differentiate them from documents sent by governments of the Brazilian provinces and individuals to make up the exhibition. 

qA new comparison carried out between Vilhena's transcript, from 1802, and that of the BNP manuscript found that editorial mediation extrapolated specific situations of additions, deletions, and substitutions of words and phrases characterized by drastic changes in the organization of sentences, periods, and paragraphs. The impression is that Vilhena, as a language teacher, was rewriting the text of Relação da viagem like a proofreader, concerned with improving the fluidity of writing and reading. 

According to the BNB catalog record 39, the Recopilação de Notícias da capitania de S. Paolo is a copy and corresponds to number 923 in the catalog of J. C. Rodrigues. José Carlos Rodrigues was a great collector of documents relating to the History of Brazil. In 1907, he had published a catalog of the books about Brazil that made up his Bibliotheca Brasiliense [Brazilian Library]. The catalog presented notes on the volumes' content and format, the amounts paid, where, and from who were bought. Years later, the collection was acquired by Julio Benedicto Ottoni and donated to BNB in 1911, so the materials resulting from this donation bear a stamp pasted on the inside of the binding with the following words: «Benedicto Ottoni Collection / Organized by Dr. J. C. Rodrigues / Donation by Dr. Julio B. Ottoni» 40. 

Rodrigues owned the volumes relating to the Recopilação de Notícias Soteropolitanas e Brasílicas and recorded in the catalog that they had previously belonged to the library of D. Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho, Count of Linhares 41. He described the content of each of the letters but does not mention the 21 st letter referring to São Paulo among his books. The number 963, alluded to in the catalog record, corresponds to the work Historia del Reyno de Portugal, by Faria e Souza, in his Bibliotheca Brasiliense. Paulo 43. Published in full by the Official Press of Bahia in 1935 by Braz do Amaral,» from which it appears that manuscripts and printed matter could be interchangeable, even if they had different origins and transmissions. 

In other words, for the National Library Foundation, the manuscript versions of the Relação da viagem belonging to its collection and the two printed versions so far, published by the IHGB (1845) and by Braz do Amaral (1935), were equivalent or, at least, connected. Although the articulation between all these testimonies through administrative annotations and information from the catalog record are extraordinary, one cannot take one testimony for the other, under penalty of eclipsing or even disregarding the editorial interventions in each transmission. 

To avoid making this mistake, the comparison of the contents of the manuscripts and prints of the Relação da viagem helps to understand how much the dissimilarities between the testimonies compromise the apprehension of the narrative's content. Furthermore, this comparison favors the discussion on the issue of authority in the transmission process of a text, not only restricted to the author of the report, as already mentioned, but linked to the editorial mediators and institutions promoting successive publications. The combination of these three factors explains the widespread use of the Relação da viagem in Brazilian academic circles dedicated to studies of the colonial period.
section_name: THE RELAÇÃO DA VIAGEM AND ITS MANUSCRIPT VERSIONS

section_content: Printed editions and re-editions of the Relação da viagem came to light in 1845, 1935, 1953, 1961, 1969, 1975, 1976, 1981, 1982, 1985, and 2019. Given the temporal distances between the first and the last, there are differences expected due to the intervention levels of editors, vehicles publishing them, the target audience for which they were intended, and what was understood by editing manuscripts in each historical and historiographical context 44. 

From the reading of the various publications of the Relação da viagem, it can be said that, over the years, editions marked by a high degree of mediation gradually gave way to others with moderate and low interventions. If, in the past, professionals adopted procedures related to spelling updating, syntactic, lexical and content adaptations, even suppressing entire parts of the matrix text, more recently, semi-diplomatic and diplomatic editions have been characterized by the conservative reading of the text in linguistic and by the development or not of the abbreviations contained in the original 45. 44. According to Fagundes Duarte, editing is a «Set of philological operations necessary to choose, fix and annotate a text, unpublished or published, preparing it for publication in a certain reading circuit -i. e., to offer it to a characterized type of reader. » Duarte, 2019: 384. 45. Lose, (2017): 74-78. 

Over time, historians who acted as copyists and editors of the Relação da viagem put their personal marks on the printed editions. When they were sometimes silent about the norms that guided the transcription and editing of texts, they confused readers about how much of the manuscript's intellectual authorship was in the published versions of the narrative. In this sense, the considerations by Roger Chartier 46 and Fernando Bouza Alvarez 47 about the multiple authorships of the reports, including those involved in their composition, copying, and editing, are extremely valid. 

To consider the author's hand and the editor's mind 48 in the transmission process of the Relação da viagem, it is essential to consider the losses from the neutralization effect caused by the printed form 49 -the writing gesture, the text smear, the title page -and the discrepancies, which resulted in material and semantic transformations in the printed product. The analysis of the published editions carried out during the 19 th, 20 th, and 21 st centuries allows, finally, to establish the place occupied by them in the transmission chain of the Relação da viagem 50 (Figure 3 ). collection, and dissemination of documents considered essential for the country's history, which was forged in an independent Brazil just two decades ago 51. 

The Revista was the vehicle for extroversion of a societé savante, in the words of Lúcia Guimarães, and presented to a small circle of scholars editions of historical sources, works written by members and authors outside the Institute's staff, minutes of sessions, pronouncements, and correspondence from IHGB members 52. 

In 1842, Varnhagen, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon and corresponding member of the IHGB, was appointed to the post of first-class attaché. His attributions were to research, transcribe, and have copying notable documents in archives from Europe who held manuscripts relating to Brazil 53. 

In addition to the specific objective of collecting documents for the writing of national history, the missions of IHGB researchers abroad aimed to provide subsidies to the government for the demarcation of its internal and external borders, ensuring the country's sovereignty 54. The concern with territorial limits brought with it the recovery of monsoons narratives in the pages of the Revista. Varnhagen, for example, not only collaborated with the offer of the Relação da viagem, but also sent other two accounts 55. 

Due to Mato Grosso's strategic position in the heart of the Americas, the initiative of the imperial State in providing itself with documentation relating to the nation unity was such that in the first 30 years of the Revista do IHGB, there were more than 50 publications concerning the region 56. The journal had wide circulation, being sent to all members of the institute and to national and foreign associations with which the IHGB maintained contact 57, which guaranteed it a prominent place in disseminating the historical knowledge produced in Brazil. 

In volume VII, the title page of the manuscript Relação da viagem became the title of the narrative «Account of the Journey made by the Count of Azambuja, D. Antonio Rolim, from the city of S. Paulo to the Villa of Cuyabá, in 1751,» placed at the beginning of the text. As can be seen, it has already been modified compared to the source text by adding and altering words. In it, the «D. Antonio Rolim» was included as Count of Azambuja's apposition and «in 1751» takes the place of «in the year of 1751». 

Similarly, in reading the printed version, several critical places were identified compared to BNP's Relação da viagem. At this point, it is worth highlighting some among many cases of exchange and suppression of terms that compromise the understanding of the descriptions and comments made by D. Antonio Rolim de 51. Founded in October 1838, the IHGB, as well as similar institutions, had the objective of «building a nation's history, recreating a past, solidifying foundation myths, ordering facts seeking homogeneity in characters and events that had been dispersed until then». Schwarcz, 1993: 129. 52. Guimarães, (2012): 41. 53. Guimarães, 2011: 90-91. 54. Guimarães, (1988): 23. 55. In addition to participating in the magazine by sending transcripts of documents to be published, Varnhagen regularly contributed articles to the section devoted to biographies of distinguished Brazilians. The cases of word substitution sometimes seem like lapses of the copyist, which were not revised afterward. Thus, by changing the October 7 th and 8 th by 17 th and 18 th, he incurred errors in the journey chronology. Likewise, referring to the sixteen cargos belonging to the king -and not the six mentioned by Rolim de Moura accommodated in the vessels -left the reader in doubt about the carrying capacity of a monsoon expedition. The most glaring cases correspond to misinformation about the animal and natural world published in the pages of the Revista. By ignoring the indigenous terms to designate typical Pantanal animals and unknown in Europe, Varnhagen probably brought to the scene and perpetuated unreal beings in any part of the globe. 

Still, in the case of permutation, it is worth mentioning the exchange of the word «principais» (principals) for «padres» (priests) at the end of the narrative, when Rolim de Moura reports that he invited the principals to have supper with him. By restricting the governor's guests to the Church's priests, Varnhagen excluded all those who could be considered the principals of the land. For example, the men of the most influential families in the locality, those who occupied positions in the colonial administration, those who belonged to the economic elite of the region, and which, given the social places occupied, played different roles in a newly created captaincy. 

However, the most striking intervention corresponds to the elimination of sixteen lines. In them, the Count of Azambuja described the three types of mosquitoes that chased him along the way. 

Such actions seem to fit in with Varnhagen's participative attitude in the texts he produced. Although he shared notions of 19 th -century historiography, related to the establishment of historical truth through the search for original documents in archives, the objectivity of the narrative and the impartiality of the historian, in the analysis of Temístocles Cézar, Varnhagen had difficulty in respecting the line between subject and object. According to the author, «he was unable to hide himself in the text, nor did he even try to conceal his presence» 58. The analysis of the version of the Relação da viagem, sent by him to the IHGB, corroborates this statement concerning his attitude towards text editing. 

The Relação da viagem, published in the Revista do IHGB, became the matrix for many other editions throughout the 20 th century 59, such as the one featured in the collection Relatos monçoeiros (1953), organized by Afonso d'Escragnolle Taunay (1876-1958). At that time, the historian was already retired as director of the Paulista Museum, where he worked from 1917 to 1945. An engineer by training, he also worked as a professor of the History of Brazilian Civilization at the newly created University of São Paulo. He was a member of the Historical and Geographical Institutes since 1911 and immortal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. 

58. Cezar, 2018: 25. 59. Mendonça, 1985: 30-41. The work is part of the Paulista Historical Library collection, coordinated by him and published on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the city of São Paulo in 1954 60. In 1976, the collection was published again. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was fully published by Itatiaia and University of São Paulo publishing companies 61. Relatos monçoeiros would also be published, in the 1960s, as volume III of the História das bandeiras paulistas [History of São Paulo «bandeiras»] by Afonso Taunay 62. There is no doubt that such reprints greatly contributed to the dissemination of the Relação da viagem, especially in academia, and facilitated access to the narrative. 

Relatos can divided into two parts: the first corresponds to the Introduction and occupies about a third of the work, while the second brings together the complete publication of 13 narratives, including the Relação da viagem, referred to only as «Account» in the Summary. Most of the 20 introductory studies had already been published identically or approximately in newspapers during the 1910s -1940s. Concerning the Relação de viagem, Taunay had taken care to publicize it in a very fragmented way in two consecutive articles in 1944 63. 

Taunay had adopted collecting the articles published separately in the press in a book since the beginning of his career. This practice, however, was not exclusive to him and could be extended to writers in the first decades of the 20 th century, who made known their works, especially those in the literary field, primarily on the pages of various newspapers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo 64. 

In the newspaper articles, Taunay had mentioned for the first time that the Relação da viagem was a letter and that it was addressed to the Count of Val de Reys, information later reproduced in Relatos monçoeiros. Curiously, he identified the recipient as the noble brother of Rolim de Moura in the subtitle, but in the textual reproduction, he continued to start the narrative with «My cousin». This discrepancy ruled out the hypothesis that he had consulted the Carta do Ill. mo e Ex. mo Snr Conde de Azambuja, kept at the BNP, which begins with «My brother» and has never been printed. 

Finally, the explanation rested on the possibility that Taunay had read the Catálogo da Exposição de História do Brasil [Exhibition of History of Brazil Catalog], already mentioned. Such edition lists the printed version of the Relação da viagem, published in Revista do IHGB, under number 963, and handwritten version of the Carta, deposited at the BNB, under number 960. Both entries contain the name of the Count of Azambuja and the journey towards Mato Grosso. It could have enabled Taunay to bring together elements from two different versions of the manuscript in a single title, perpetuating ambiguous information about the documental species 60. This collection consisted of ten titles, eight of which were reprints of works about the past in São Paulo, written in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and two unpublished, edited by Taunay himself. All brought introductory studies and were illustrated. On the role of the São Paulo Historical Library in celebrating the fourth centenary, see Borrego; Souza, (2019): 280-287. 61. On the reissue of the Brazilian Historical Library and Paulista Historical Library collections by Itatiaia and Edusp publishing companies, see Serrano, (2014): 280-294. 62. Taunay, [1961], vol. III. 63. Taunay, 1944a: 2. Taunay, 1944b: 2. 64. Anhezini, (2003): 59-60. 

and conflicting information about the missive's recipients. Although it cannot be assured that the Catálogo was his source of reference, the volume published by G. 

Leuzinger & Filhos in 1881 is part of the collection of the Paulista Museum Library. The publication of documents was not an initiative Taunay took up at the end of his life. An admirer of the principles of the methodical school advocated by Langlois and Seignobos, since taking charge of the Paulista Museum, he had been committed to collecting documents, in the spirit of the historical and geographic institutes, to provide it with information for historiographical works and the museum's exhibitions 65. 

The publication of documents composing the Relatos monçoeiros displays Taunay's positivist conception of historical sources. The documents were taken as authentic because they were contemporary with the historical fact -the monsoons -and credible, based on the confrontation of their elements. Taunay undertook this activity in the introductory studies, juxtaposing the speech of one narrator with that of the other, usually as a confirmation and not as a counterpoint 66. The veracity of the reports was given by the competence and recognition of their copyists. In the case of Relação da viagem, the Varnhagen's credibility 67 conferred authenticity to the Revista do IHGB version. 

Apart from insertions -crucial, indeed -related to the documental species and the recipient's identification in the editorial peritext of the narrative 68, in general, Taunay endorsed Varnhagen's printed version in the edition carried out in 1953. However, it is worth mentioning that he corrected some indigenous names of localities, animals, and rivers that had not been deciphered by his predecessor. However, he kept the most bizarre terms, absent from the dictionaries, which he failed to approach the reality in which he lived. 

Taunay's edition of the Relação da viagem must not have not been reviewed by the publishing company or the author himself. This helps to explain how their choices and mistakes perpetuated in 1961, 1975, 1976, and 1981 editions. They are part of Brazilian public and university libraries to this day, playing «an important role in the expansion of circulation and the consultation of these texts by the public» 69. 

The Relação da viagem also had repercussions by Braz Hermenegildo do Amaral (1861-1949), who published it for the first time in 1935, within the Recopilação de Notícias da capitania de S. Paulo, which corresponds to the 21 st letter of Luiz dos Santos Vilhena, as already pointed out 70. In 1969, the 24 letters of the Greek Language teacher were collected by Édison Carneiro and published in 3 volumes in the work 65. Anhezini, 2011: 31. 66. On the criteria of authenticity and verisimilitude adopted by Taunay concerning textual and iconographic sources in his performance at the Paulista Museum, see Lima e Carvalho, (1993): 148-150. 

67. Varnhagen earned the nickname of «Brazilian Herodotus» and «Founder of the History of Brazil» due to the supposed scientific pioneering and critical rigor of his books. For a critique of Varnhagen's historiographical practice and epithets, see Clementino (2018): 128-152. 68. Genette, 2009: 21. 69. Souza, 2021: 217. 70. Vilhena, 1935 [1802]. Braz do Amaral was a physician and professor of pathology and surgical clinic at the School of Medicine of Bahia. He was also very active in letters and history due to his participation in the Academy of Letters of Bahia, the IHGB, and the Geographical and Historical Institute of Bahia (IGHB). The links connecting Afonso Taunay e Braz do Amaral to these associations are part of a process of creation of regional centers for the study of national history, the organization of state and municipal archives, and the publication of documents from the national past, driven by the advent of the Republic in 1889 72. Both corresponded to the typical historian of the institutes that Antonio Celso Ferreira defined as «the erudite man, who moved fluently through different intellectual domains» 73. 

During his research at the National Library, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1917, Braz do Amaral located Vilhena's letters from the José Carlos Rodrigues Collection, donated by Julio Benedicto Ottoni. Encouraged by the Bahian government, he undertook to edit them to be published by the Official Press of the State of Bahia, within the scope of the celebrations of the centenary of the independence of Brazil, in 1922, an opportune occasion for the dissemination of documents «telling» the history of Brazil and helping build a national memory 74. 

The 21 st Letter, however, would only be published 17 years later, separately. This time-lapse can be explained by the fact that Braz do Amaral did not find the manuscript on that occasion, as it was not with the other letters. Although it belonged to the Linhares Collection, as evidenced by the administrative annotations and the initials C L in blue crayon at the beginning of the document (Figure 4 ), the Recopilação de Notícias da capitania de S. Paolo had entered the BNB in another way. 71. Roteiros, 1977: 89-137. 72. Anhezini, 2011: 53. 73. Ferreira, 2002: 123. 74. Alves Neta, 2018: 60. Therefore, it had been cataloged and stored differently. Again, librarians provided clues about the entry of the manuscript into the institution by recording in the first folios: «No. 306 of cat. of the Auction» (Figure 2 ). Consulting the auction catalog of the Count of Linhares library, it was possible to confirm that this number corresponds precisely to the 21 st letter by Vilhena. Many documents were acquired by BNB from the Counts of Linhares library's auction in Lisbon at the end of the 19 th century to assist in border disputes in which Brazil was involved. According to Iuri Azevedo Lapa e Silva, together with the Baron of Rio Branco (1845-1912), directors were in charge of selecting the documentary pieces that, after being used by the Brazilian diplomat, would have the National Library as their final destination 75. Therefore, it is very likely how the 21 st letter entered the collection. However, as part of a larger group, it would only be located in 1933 when Braz do Amaral was informed of its existence. 

To ensure the legitimacy of the letters, Braz do Amaral compared them with other documents from Vilhena papers and resorted to various textual sources to confirm or compare the information recorded by the 18 th -century author. This procedure sought to guarantee documental rigor and scientificity to his working method 76. However, the principle of the historian's impartiality, recommended by 19 th -century historiographical practice, on which he relied to criticize Vilhena's biased postures, ended up missing when copying the 21 st letter and, above all, the Relação da viagem. 

Although he stated in the opening pages of the 1935 publication that the original «was copied by me,» Braz do Amaral was not just a transcriber of Vilhena's letter, since, from the beginning, he aimed to make it public 77. As an editor, therefore, he ended up establishing a body of documents forged from his interference in Vilhena's material, widely used by the historians that consumed this printed version without realizing that they were not reading the Relação da viagem copied by Vilhena at the BNP. Only the first 15 pages were transcribed from Vilhena 78, since the remaining 30 were copied from the version offered by Varnhagen to IHGB, and publish in 1845, with all the critical issues already pointed out, which were kept in the 1969 and 1977 editions. While the first matrix was Vilhena, Varnhagen prevailed. In this mixed editorial format, scholars disseminated and appropriated the narrative. It means that part of the History of Brazil continued to be written through the lenses and hands of Varnhagen. 

Only in 1982, a new transmission process of the Relação da viagem manuscript, deposited at the National Library of Portugal, would be carried out by professionals from the Regional Historical Information and Documentation Center of the Federal University of Mato Grosso (NDIHR/UFMT) 79. 

75. Silva, (2008): 27. 76. Alves Neta, 2018: 70-72. 77. For Alicia Lose, the difference between transcription and editing lies in the intention of publishing the second. See Lose, (2012): 79-80. 

78. The copy of this first part also had the addition, deletion, and substitution of terms concerning the original. It was riddled with mistakes in the transcription of numbers related to dates, starting with the same year of the Relação da viagem, identified as 1757. The edition of Relação da viagem was part of a collection that sought to disseminate the biographies of colonial Mato Grosso governors and the active correspondence maintained by them with various agents in the colony and the metropolis. The missives of D. Antonio Rolim de Moura, Count of Azambuja, were edited in 3 volumes, the first being released in the year of his death bicentenary. 

Ana Mesquita Martins de Paiva, Maria Cecília Guerreiro de Sousa e Nyl-Iza Valadão Freitas Geremias were responsible for the compilation, transcription, and indexing of the documents, which include the Relação da viagem. The scholars explained the paleographical criteria adopted that took into account the «fidelity to the historical-linguistic level in which the document was produced without, however, harming the conditions of understanding required by readers with diversified educational background» 80. Thus, they kept the tenses and verb modes, punctuation, and paragraphing consistent with the original, but updated the spelling, developed the abbreviations for proper or common names, pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs, and turned off words and expressions written together. 

While this version was widely used by researchers from Mato Grosso, who had access to the publication at the UFMT and institutions in the region, its circulation was not large enough for wide circulation. Currently NDIHR/UFMT publications referring to the colonial period have been digitized and can be obtained upon request. 

The last known printed version of the Relação da viagem was edited by the zoologist Nelson Papavero and published in 2019. Richly illustrated, the article is dedicated to the identification of fauna and flora elements mentioned by D. Antonio Rolim de Moura on the trip made in 1751, according to the BNP manuscript 81. The author carried out a diplomatic edition of the document, as he announces, with a low degree of mediation. However, it should be noted that although he did not develop abbreviations, he sometimes interfered with the boundaries between words and expressions. 

It is not the first time that Papavero has focused on the Relação da viagem. In another work, published in 2007, he used the Varnhagen version of 1845 to refer to the animals that inhabited the geographic space corresponding to the current state of São Paulo 82. Therefore, what would justify a new edition of the narrative?

One of the plausible answers would be the online availability of the manuscript of the National Library of Portugal. It currently allows researchers to consult the 18 th -century document in the cybernetic environment, carry out new editions of the text without having to travel to Lisbon, and perform the virtual comparison between manuscript versions and printed ones. These procedures help to understand the editorial mediations and the documentary tradition of the narrative over time, as this article intended to accomplish in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
section_name: PRINTED EDITIONS OF THE RELAÇÃO DA VIAGEM

section_content: The examination of the transmission process of the Relação da viagem favored the understanding of how its content was socialized over time, largely the result of official initiatives and in moments of events linked to the country's history. Although there is a significant time lag between the first printed version in 1845 and those of 1935 and 1953, the fact that Braz do Amaral and Afonso Taunay followed the edition of Revista do IHGB, can be explained, not only by the authority of Varnhagen in the intellectual milieu but mainly for the privileged social place occupied by the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute -of which the three were members -in the production of historical knowledge between the mid-19 th century and the initial decades of the 20 th century when university courses in History had not yet been strengthened in Brazil. 

As proposed by Michel de Certeau, when reflecting on the historiographical operation, the social place is conceived as a place of socioeconomic, political, and cultural production in conjunction with historiographic practices defined by a method and with a specific writing 83. In this case, the IHGB was responsible for dictating the rules of historiographical discourse, determining the relevant topics for research and the parameters to be obeyed, and validating the historiographical work that, in that period, included the edition and publication of documents. Once the publication of the Relação da viagem in the institutional periodic was approved, the historiographical editing work gained legitimacy. Therefore, it could be reproduced without the obligation to compare it with the source text. 

Analyzing the documental tradition of the Relação das guerras feitas aos Palmares de Pernambuco [Account of battles made against the Palmares of Pernambuco],» of 1678, composed of handwritten and printed versions, with generic dating, Silvia Lara and Phablo Fachin reached the same conclusion regarding the publication of the document in the Revista do IHGB in 1859. The authors state: «the endorsement given by the publication in the journal pages remained sufficient to attest to the manuscript's authenticity» 84. 

However, the IHGB was not the only social place for the production and extroversion of historical knowledge in that context. As seen, the National Library, the Paulista Museum, the historical and geographic institutes, and the regional archives also occupied a privileged space in the topography of historical knowledge until the mid-1900s. It occurred whether by collecting and keeping documents from the national past, or by making them available for exhibitions, reproduction, and publication in their journals, such as the Anais da Biblioteca Nacional, Anais do Museu Paulista, or even through the official presses of the states of the federation. 

The cataloging of the manuscripts and the administrative annotations of the librarians in the bibliographic records and the printed and handwritten versions of the Relação da viagem showed not only the centrality of these institutions for the 83. Certeau, 1982: 66-75. 84. Lara e Fachin, 2021: 84. writing of history in that context, as also drew attention to the urgency of a closer dialogue between historians, librarians, and archivists to unveil the extratextual universe of historiographic practice in any situation. In this sense, initiatives are beneficial and should be promoted among professionals from different fields of knowledge to update and qualify bibliographic records and databases of museum collections based on new researches. 

The editions of the Relação da viagem in 1982 and 2019, in turn, took place in the university environment, and the results were very different from previous versions. Aside from the expected differences, what should be highlighted is: the 2019 edition has already been produced and released in a virtual environment, with free, open access. As the writing of the article was developed in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which archives and libraries in Brazil remained closed, virtual access to this latest edition, to the manuscript versions of 1751 and 1802, and to the printed versions from 1845 and 1935, made available online by the National Library of Portugal, the National Library Foundation, and the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute, was essential. 

However, it is not only in exceptional periods that the digitization of historical documents and historiographic works facilitates the researcher's work, as we all know, allowing distances to be overcome in a click. The handwritten and printed versions of Relação da viagem, as we have seen, are spread over two continents and in two Brazilian cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Reading them in the home environment and confronting them as often as you like on the same screen, in addition to the epistemological mutation that Chartier talks about 85, certainly has positive impacts on the development of research in terms of time, displacement, and costs. However, young researchers cannot create the illusion that everything is on the net or can be achieved on-demand, at the risk of becoming cabinet historians, as we have been doing for almost two years. 

Professionals must be aware that they will always have limited access to sources. They will only consult what technicians responsible for the collections dissemination policy have decided to digitize. In the case of the Relação da viagem, the handwritten version deposited at the BNB, entitled Carta do Ill. mo e Ex. mo Snr Conde de Azambuja, ao de Val de Reys em que lhe relata os sucessos de sua viagem para o seo governo do Matto Grosso em 1750, for example, is not digitized. It would be a significant gap in the study of the manuscript transmission process if the face-to-face consultation did not take place on the very last day of operation of the National Library Foundation before its closing on March 17, 2020. During contact with the document, it could be seen that the recipient identified in the title had caused changing the initial letter's greeting to «My brother and lord,» different from that found in the copy of the BNP. Furthermore, the date 1750 could only be explained by the document's structure, which was read in the consultation room of the manuscript section. 

85. Chartier, 2002: 108. Even when the documents used in the research were digitized, it should be borne in mind that their rematerialization 86 implies both the loss of organoleptic properties, sometimes decisive for the characterization of historical sources, as the invisibility of identifying paper elements as watermarks and countermarks present in papers. In the 1751 and 1802 manuscripts, the texture and softness of the support could inform the composition of the paper, while the watermarks and countermarks would help to date the copies as they contain data about their makers. 

Without sacrificing the gains brought by the digitization of manuscripts, these alerts are helpful for us not to forget to consider them, at the same time, as a documental type and an artifact 87, and, thus, expand the possibilities of analyzing the editorial mediation process of documents and their historical trajectories in the fields of written culture and material culture. 

86. As digitized objects occupy space in data storage systems, it is not appropriate to speak of a dematerialization process, but instead of rematerialization, i. e., matter in another format in the virtual world. Brasil e Nascimento, 2020: 201. 87. Almada, 2018: 17-40. Meneses, 1998: 80-103.
section_name: FINAL CONSIDERATIONS