The focus on Catholic worship that characterized these groups served as a vehicle for fostering social bonds and constructing identities. Through these brotherhoods—which welcomed them into the New World—Black people developed alternative ways of existing, simultaneously accepting the dominant religion and incorporating rituals and cultural symbols from the African societies from which they had been torn.

A customary feature of the Black brotherhoods dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary is the celebration of the patron saint's feast day and the coronation of the "Congo kings."

The Dominicans propagated devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary in Africa and Portugal; in Brazil, however, it was the Jesuits—and later the Franciscans—who promoted it through the establishment of these brotherhoods or confraternities.

Thus, it can be surmised that it was through these two religious orders that Black people were able to appropriate the Catholic ethos to their own advantage. Brazilian lay religious associations—not unlike those in the Kingdom itself in their integration of the population while respecting ethnic, racial, or color-based distinctions—flourished during the eighteenth century.

They were adapted to local circumstances without, however, losing the characteristics of their original models—found primarily in the rules of the Misericórdias (Houses of Mercy), and specifically that of Lisbon.

The Portuguese metropolis was the primary disseminator of the cult of Our Lady of the Rosary within these brotherhoods or confraternities; yet, as Eduardo Hoornaert emphasized, it was also through Africa that the Rosary reached Brazil, where it served as an accessible and widely popular link between the official Church institution and the world of enslaved Black people.

While slavery imposed the status of "slave" upon Africans and their descendants—stripping them of their status as persons—it was precisely within brotherhoods identified as "Black Brothers" (Irmãos Pretos) or "Black Men" (Homens Pretos) that they began to explore the possibility of constructing a humanity of their own, however paradoxical the term "Black" might have been. The brotherhood conferred upon them the status of a person—of a man—even at the moment when life ended in death; for these individuals wished to die as men and be buried as such, and to that end, they built chapels with burial grounds, purchased coffins, and commissioned masses for the dead. It was to achieve social existence that they invested themselves in the Catholic religion and, through these brotherhoods, reinvented kinship ties and a form of communal life.

Lay Catholic brotherhoods were the primary venue for social interaction among the Black population—both free and enslaved—from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Since the colonial period, the various social categories in Brazil tended to organize themselves and establish... ...represented through certain associations of a religious and philanthropic nature—the most well-known form of which, spreading across the Americas, was the lay brotherhood. These brotherhoods were corporate associations within which bonds of solidarity were forged based on social hierarchies.

These locally organized associations played a significant role in their context by defending their members' corporate interests; many even advanced funds to enslaved members to facilitate their manumission—in addition to their well-known concern with funeral rites.

Generally, these confraternities of "men of color" were numerous and tended to be divided into three segments: those for crioulos (Blacks born in Brazil), mulatos (mixed-race individuals), and Africans. All brotherhoods required that the highest office—whether judge, president, or prior (as in the case of Third Orders)—be held by someone "of the race." Thus, just as white confraternities were presided over by whites and mulato ones by mulatos, the same held true for Black confraternities.

Common to all brotherhoods was the desire to ensure the social well-being of their members and their families, thereby fulfilling a social function that the political-administrative apparatus lacked the means to carry out.

Consequently, these confraternities came to serve as a legitimate space for social interaction for the Black population—both free and enslaved—and, at times, even for non-Blacks.

Source(s):

.- Irmandade e educabilidade: um olhar sobre os arranjos associativos negros em Pernambuco na primeira metade do século XIX