Introduction - Negotiating Status through Confraternal Practices

Summary

Confraternities (lay Catholic brotherhoods or sodalities) emerged in medieval Europe's urban centers, especially among migrant groups, as sites of popular devotion, kinship, and mutual aid. Modeled on the Roman collegium, burying the dead was one of their main functions. They first appeared in Rome around 1267 under the pontificate of Clement IV; there is record of the first institution of pious people whose function was to free captive Christians from the Saracens. Depending on their geographical location, and the social and ethno-racial origins of their members, brotherhoods were dedicated to different devotions, namely Christ, the Virgin, or a patron saint, which could be venerated in different locations – such as convent and parish churches. One of the primary functions of indigenous and black confraternities was to provide burial for members and individuals who would otherwise not receive proper funeral rites nor have places to be buried because of their ethno-racial backgrounds. Confraternities organized devotional processions celebrating their patron saints, a festive aspect that defined them. The penitent character of many of the ceremonies that linked them to mendicant orders may be both related to the pious example of the Passion of Christ as well as a validation of practices employed by marginalized subjects looking for a way of becoming visibly legitimized by the dominant culture, as Nicole von Germeten analyzes in her book on Afro-Mexican confraternities. The mendicant orders often supported the efforts of confraternities, seeing in them the opportunity to teach Catholic doctrine to the poor and promote their particular devotions. So, upon arrival in the Americas, the mendicant orders promoted confraternities among the indigenous and black populations. The Jesuits, a new order founded in 1540, joined these efforts. Religious orders saw confraternities as useful sites for evangelizing what they considered reluctant neophytes. But indigenous and black cofrades and irmãos (or confraternity members) had active roles in their confraternities from the beginning, using them to mitigate some of the worst indignities of life under colonialism through mutual aid and redefine their status in colonial society. The chapters in this volume explore the varied strategies indigenous and black cofradías and irmandades (or brotherhoods) employed to achieve these ends.