A Portuguese manor in rural Brazil; or The saga of the enlightened Dom Frei Cipriano and the garden of the former episcopal palace in the late eighteenth century.

This is a reconstruction of the career of the Most Reverend Dom Frei Cipriano de São José and the historical garden he built for his palace in Mariana, Minas Gerais, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The grounds, which, like most of their counterparts in Minas Gerais, contained an orchard and kitchen garden, underwent a major reform to fit the mold of the classical European garden. Orderly and showing aesthetic concern, they were an admirable space at the end of the colonial period, representing as they did the enlightened metropolitan elite's growing interest in natural history and botany. A variety of documental sources were used to reconstruct the history of the grounds and the career of the person behind their design, the enlightened Dom Frei Cipriano de São José.