Black and Mulatto Brotherhoods in Colonial Brazil: A Study in Collective Behavior

Abstract

G UILDS OF ARTISANS, brotherhoods, and confraternities flowered in Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. To be sure, a corporate spirit was part of the European ethos itself, as has been shown by the presence of burial societies of early Christians in Rome. Their importance greatly increased, however, in the late middle ages, a product of an age responding to the stoic doctrines of St. Francis and St. Dominic, coupled with an entirely secular phenomenon-the emergence of the city. Victims of famine and plague deserted the countryside for the cities, only to fall prey to unemployment, poverty, and enforced vagrancy. The establishment of confraternities of lay men and women had the dual objective of protecting members against such misfortunes and practicing works of charity. Such brotherhoods represented the birth of a social conscience in Europe. The Iberian Peninsula did not remain immune to this corporate sentiment sweeping Europe. Furthermore, the societies of Spain and Portugal included different religions, races, and languages, and afforded opportunities for frequent intercultural contacts. By the fifteenth century there existed in the cities of Spain and Portugal Catholic brotherhoods that counted among their members blacks brought from Africa as slaves, as well as whites of Iberian stock. Despite minor administrative differences, all brotherhoods pos-