| Summary: | This article analyses an enigmatic document found at Buenos Aires National Archive. It is a small folio written on recto and verso containing text excerpts in three languages: Guarani, Spanish and Latin. We try to understand possible uses of this document in the context of missionary written culture of the Jesuit province of Paraguay shared both by the Jesuit missionaries and the members of the Indigenous elite, while broadly exploring the political and religious praxis of the Guarani mission towns. We argue that this document points to an imbrication between the spiritual and temporal dimensions of mission´s daily life. It also provides evidence of what could have been the development of verbal performance in these spaces, closely linked to devotional practices. While we inquire into the singular characteristics of this enigmatic paper, we try to find its meaning in the framework of the broader corpus. The first part of the article studies specific material characteristics of the document. The second focuses on the analysis of the content of each excerpt in the three languages. The third and fourth parts situate the document respectively in its possible contexts of use and its intertextual weave.
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