Robson Pedrosa Costa - Paternalism, Transgression and Slave Resistance in Brazil

ISBN 9783110750928

e-ISBN (PDF) 9783110751079

e-ISBN (EPUB) 9783110751093

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

To Juliana, Camila, Clara and Ceclia.

This book is the result of a long journey that started in 2008, when I started my PhD in History, at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Brazil). Several people contributed to its completion in 2013. However, starting in 2014, new projects helped to advance the research and led me to review old questions and raise new ones. With the support of my colleagues at the Instituto Federal de Pernambuco (IFPE) and the various grants awarded to me over the years by this institution, it was possible to mature as a researcher, gather a significant volume of new documents and deepen my knowledge through readings and discussions with my peers. From the IFPE I thank, among many others that I could mention here: Sofia Brando, Marivaldo Rosas, Flvio Albuquerque and Mrio Monteiro.

I would also like to thank my colleagues from the Postgraduate Program in History at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, especially Sandra Regina and Professor Marlia Azambuja. I also thank professors Marcus Carvalho, Suely Almeida and Jos Bento Rosas, my eternal partners. I also thank Cassia Roth (from the University of Georgia), a partner in these last years of research. I could not forget also Brother Joo Cassiano, who helped me to go through the documentary labyrinth of the Archive of the Monastery of Olinda. I also thank De Gruyter for supporting this work, especially editors Rabea Rittgerodt and Verena Deutsch, for their dedication and professionalism.

Finally, I would like to thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnolgico (CNPq), which contributed to the financing of this project.

Religion is a brake on impetuous man,

the comfort of the afflicted, the stimulus of the weak,

the hope of the disgraced.

Father Antnio C. Fonseca (SJ), 1863.

Data on the Purchase and Sale of Slaves (16971872)

Slaves of the Order of Saint Benedict of Pernambuco

Overview of the number of manumissions in the properties of the Benedictines from Pernambuco (17931865)

Distribution of manumissions according to gender

Manumission and family arrangements (17931865)

Distribution of manumission for decades (17951865)

Price variation in mil-ris of manumission over decades

Overseers-slaves (17551870)

List of Goods cited in the Process

Slaves belonging to Nicolau and Luza

Auto de Partilha (Division of Goods)

Mills, Farms and Leased Land (18841887)

Arquivo da Assembleia Legislativa de Pernambuco

Arquivo Municipal de Olinda Antnio Guimares

Arquivo do Mosteiro de So Bento de Olinda (Pernambuco/Brazil)

Arquivo Pblico Estadual de Pernambuco

Biblioteca Nacional/Rio de Janeiro

Fundao Biblioteca Nacional

Fundao Joaquim Nabuco

Instituto Arqueolgico, Histrico e Geogrfico Pernambucano

Laboratrio de Pesquisa e Ensino em Histria

Map 1: Between 1817 and 1848, the province of Pernambuco lost a large part of its territory, as a consequence of the liberal and separatist revolts. Source: Robson Pedrosa Costa, Sweet Masters: The Order of Saint Benedict and the Good Treatment of Slaves, Brazil, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Historia Crtica, no. 81 (2021): 2147, https://doi.org/10.7440/histcrit81.2021.02. I thank Historia Crtica journal for authorizing the use of this image, published as part of the article.

The possession of slaves by religious orders is a well-known fact. Jesuits, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Benedictines arrived in Brazil in the sixteenth century and quickly became great owners of land and people. Through purchases and donations from the faithful, these institutions have substantially increased the volume of their assets over the centuries. Religious orders took thousands of people from their lands and enslaved them.

This book tells an important chapter of this history, revealing aspects still little known about the richest and most important religious order in Brazil in the 19th century: the Congregation of Saint Benedict. After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1759, the Benedictine order held the largest number of slaves in Brazil (with approximately 2,000 captives across the country) and played an important role in the abolitionist context. Difficult access to these sources must have discouraged some historians who may have been interested in the subject.

To contribute to this debate, I patiently (and with great diplomacy) researched the documents carefully kept in the Archives of the Monastery of Olinda, located in the state of Pernambuco. throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, a peculiar model of slavery management. Through institutionalized strategies followed by all monasteries in the country, the order was able to maintain, without resorting to trafficking, a significant number of slaves on its properties. The main purpose of this book is to demonstrate how a Christian religious institution devised and re-engineered somewhat original strategies for controlling the bodies, minds, and even reproduction of enslaved people.

At first glance, the basic principles of this model are similar to other strategies used by other orders: encouraging a family structure based on a Christian marriage; encouraging production on small pieces of land (as an individual or as a family); the moralisation of customs, through religious precepts; the autonomy of each rural estate. However, within the unique institutional universe of the Luso-Brazilian Congregation of Saint Benedict I identified these peculiarities: 1. Incentives for women to procreate (light services, better food, and more freedom); 2. Creation of an institutional manumission process; 3. Encouragement of slaves to own slaves.

All these principles followed minute conduct procedures imposed on members of the Congregation, in an attempt to avoid the seizure of a patrimony that, in theory, did not belong to the monks, but to Saint Benedict. Thus, Benedictines would only be administrators of all goods that ultimately belonged to the Saint, including slaves. This institutionalized form of slave management caught my attention, leading me to elaborate the concept of Institutional Paternalism, a term that occupies a prominent place in this study.

But despite using the expression model to designate a set of constructed strategies, the Benedictines did not leaveas the Jesuits and other religious orders didwritings that aimed to guide or normalize the relations between masters and enslaved people. Several historians have analyzed these types of writings and found that there were ideas that circulated by word of mouth among slaveholders or even through manuals produced by religious groups and laypeople, who tried to standardise slave management. Although the Benedictines did not use these strategies, I have no doubts that very few masters achieved their effectiveness. It is true that the monks did not write any texts nor were they concerned with convincing other slave owners of their management ideas. Nevertheless, the monks did meet every three years in a large assembly (called General Chapters) at the headquarters of the Congregation, located in Tibes (Portugal). From extensive debates, they wrote new guidelines and confirmed old norms. They recorded all decisions in the Acts of the General Chapters and sent copies to all monasteries in Portugal and Brazil. Despite the resistance of some monks, the abbots generally followed the norms imposed by the Chapters.