12 - Cultural Resistance and Afro-Catholicism in Colonial Brazil

Summary

Abstract

Lay brotherhoods were a major form of social organization in colonial Brazil. These brotherhoods were dedicated to mutual aid and devotion to the Virgin Mary and certain saints. There were white, mestizo, black, rich, mid-income and poor brotherhoods. Black brotherhoods elected a king among its charges. His authority was recognized by the community he represented, and he was a respected mediator with slave-owners, priests, and colonial authorities. Brotherhoods offered Afro-Brazilian possibilities of affirming their identity and a social space. Afro-Brazilian brotherhoods show that Afro-Brazilians did not only achieved their own space through revolt and resistance, but also through negotiation and the adoption of European institutions.

Keywords: Brazil, Afro-Brazilian Brotherhoods, Afro-Catholicism, Royal Pageantry, resistance

Irmandades de homens pretos

It was common in the vast area around the Atlantic Ocean, where slavery and colonial relations prevailed, for Africans and their descendants to organize into lay brotherhoods devoted to Catholic saints and the Virgin. These brotherhoods had existed in Portugal, Spain, and their American colonies since the arrival of the first enslaved Africans, who were obliged to convert to Christianity and find new ways of organizing themselves in their new world. In some places in Africa, such as Cape Verde, São Tomé, Luanda, and Mozambique, brotherhoods dedicated to the Virgin or certain saints were introduced by the Catholic Church in conjunction with the Portuguese Crown and adopted by the mixed-race communities taking shape at the time.

Irmandades de homens pretos (black brotherhoods, literally “brotherhoods of the blacks”), as they were called in Brazil, were lay associations made up of black men and women – enslaved, manumitted, and free-born Afro-descendants – devoted to the Virgin or certain saints, whose “image” – in statue or painted form – was deposited on an altar or which had their own confraternal church. They were governed by a set of rules recorded in a compromisso (statutes), a written document signed by the juizes (board members) who held management positions and were recognized by royal, ecclesiastical, and colonial authorities alike. The compromisso defined the profile of the irmãos (literally brothers, or members) to be admitted, the terms for their admittance, the ways they should contribute to the irmandade or brotherhood's common funds, the composition and selection of the administrative board (the juizes, literally “judges”), the irmaos and juizes’ duties, and how they would celebrate their patron's annual feast.