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Concubinage in colonial Brazil: the inequalities of race, class,

and gender
Autor: Muriel Nazzari
Data: Apr. 1996
From: Journal of Family History(Vol. 21, Issue 2)
Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc.
Tipo de documento: Article
Length: 10.543 words

Resumo:
Colonial society's requirement that marriage must be endogamous meant that the only possible long-term sexual relationship
between a man of superior status in regard to class and/or race and a woman of inferior status was concubinage. Focusing on racial
differences, this study documents such inequality within concubinage and also demonstrates that despite the strong Christian
endorsement of marriage, the church also subscribed to the idea that marriage had to be endogamous. Thus, when confronted by
single sexual partners who were highly unequal, the church did not oblige them to marry but instead attempted to separate them.

Texto completo:
Marriage in colonial Brazil was mostly endogamous. In a previous study, I found that within that system, men were expected to marry
women who were either their equals or their superiors, especially in wealth. The logical corollary of such a marriage system was that
any sexual relationship with a woman who had no property or dowry or who was of an inferior race tended to be carried out outside
legal marriage. This article therefore studies long-lasting sexual relationships between men of superior and women of inferior status,
based on research in parish records of baptism and marriage; censuses; private letters; legitimation processes; and ecclesiastical
divorce, betrothal, and concubinage lawsuits.

Society in colonial Brazil was highly stratified, not only through different degrees of wealth and property ownership but also by racial
categories and civil status, that is, whether a person was free or a slave. Such hierarchies of property, class, and race set the
parameters for marriage choices in colonial Brazil, and the main mechanism that ensured equality in marriage was the dowry.(1) The
seeming exceptions to this rule were cases of penniless European men who, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century,
married women of the Sao Paulo elite who were of mixed white/Indian heritage and who had substantial dowries that included real
estate and slaves.(2) In these cases, however, equality was achieved through the men's European race that compensated for their
lack of property.

I argue that this endogamous marriage system was at least partly responsible for the large illegitimacy rate found in eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century Brazil and for the prevalence of concubinage. In this article I will not be using the term consensual union to
describe long-lasting relationships outside of marriage because it implies a certain equality between the partners. I wish to emphasize
those relations between men and women outside of marriage that were highly unequal, including relationships between masters and
slaves in which force might have been applied. I do not wish to imply that inequality was always present in sexual relationship outside
of marriage in colonial Brazil. There undoubtedly were both casual and long-lasting liaisons between relative equals, and it is difficult
to come by reliable statistics to prove the point in one way or the other.

I will therefore use the term concubinage, which was the term used by contemporaries, and use it to mean an illegal and (from the
point of view of the church) "immoral" sexual relationship between a man and woman in which the inherent gender inequality was
reinforced by the added inequality in property, class, civil status, and/or race.(3) (The asymmetry between the sexual partners implied
by the term concubinage was also true of the Latin term used by the Romans, concubinat, which designated relations men held with
inferior or immoral women.)(4)

My interest in studying the sexual relationship between unequals lies in exploring in what ways gender inequality was reinforced by
social arrangements that included other inequalities. Within a marriage of equals, whatever inequality existed was solely gender
inequality.

To study status or class differences within concubinage, however, is much more difficult than within marriage because of the relative
paucity of information. When marriage is between property owners, it is possible to find documentation to compare the spouses'
class, at least in relation to their wealth and their education, whereas it is hard to find evidence of difference of class between the men
and women in relationships outside of marriage. I propose to show inequality within concubinage by using racial status to show
existing asymmetries. These racial asymmetries were not necessarily correlated to wealth or income, for scholars have demonstrated
that not all Europeans were wealthy nor all persons of color poor. In colonial Spanish America, calidad and clase were two categories
that ranked persons, the first in relation to race and the latter in relation to class.(5) These two different status-conferring factors also
existed in Brazil, and persons were judged in relation to both. Race cannot therefore be used as an exact counterpart of class.
However, since race was as important as class in setting the limits of an endogamous marriage, it can be used to determine
inequality.

To study racial inequality within concubinage, one must first study how contemporaries regarded race. Though the Portuguese in
Brazil never developed a racially segregated society, nor ever prohibited interfacial marriage or interfacial sexual relations, they did
bring from Portugal strong racist tendencies. Because Jews, African slaves, and Moors were not Christian, Portuguese racism
originated in the defense of the Christian faith. After the Jews were expelled from Portugal or obliged to convert to Christianity, the
Inquisition's concern with the survival of Jewish practices led to a distinction between "New Christians" and "Old Christians." All
important privileges, titles, or positions in the Portuguese Empire came to be bestowed only on those who could prove they were Old
Christians, which, very soon was to mean genealogical proof of their "purity of blood," that is, proof that their blood was not tainted
with that of "infected races." Orthodox Christianity had become confused with biological race.

These racial concerns were easily transferred in the Americas to issues of miscegenation with Indians and Africans, both peoples
with a pagan past. For instance, in the second decade of the eighteenth century, the governor of Minas Gerais ruled that all
godparents of baptized adult slaves should be white, for whites had "drunk the milk of the Church from their most tender years,"
whereas blacks had been raised as pagan barbarians.(6) Throughout colonial times in Brazil, candidates to the priesthood or to a
monastic order had to prove the purity of their blood, and the lay religious brotherhoods were likewise not allowed to admit members
whose blood was impure.(7)

Yet the fact that few Portuguese women emigrated to colonial Brazil, and the fact that those who did stayed in the more developed
cities, meant that in frontier regions the demographic situation worked against the preservation of a "pure" European race. During the
gold boom in Minas Gerais only a small minority of baptized infants were white; most baptisms were of black infants or those with
mixed blood, such as Indian/white mixture (mestizos) or black/white mixture (mulattoes). This fact was very alarming to the crown,
which did not want its colonies governed by colored people. Thus the Overseas Council suggested in 1725 that a law be passed
prohibiting colored men from filling positions on Municipal Councils, and restricting these positions not only to Europeans but to
certain Europeans, the husbands or widowers of white women. The explicit rationale was to encourage white men to marry only white
women and to have children by them instead of by black or mulatto concubines.(8) One can safely assume, therefore, that European
contemporaries considered their race superior to all others. There is also evidence that the children of white men with black or Indian
women, that is, mulatto and mestizo children, were also viewed as somewhat superior to those with purely black or Indian blood.(9)

The extreme racism of colonial discourse is illustrated in a frequent comment made in ecclesiastical concubinage lawsuits. A witness
who wished to prove that a certain man had sexual relations with his slave or with a black or mulatto freedwoman, would present as
evidence that the man bought clothes for the woman or that "he treated her as though she were his wife with all the tenderness and
good treatment and status as though she were white."(10) The opposite case is that of Francisco Dias, who abandoned his wife to
live with his mulatto slave, but first, in the words of a horrified witness, "he beat his wife as though she were black."(11)

The documents on concubinage demonstrate further that it is essential to consider the role of the church, which set some of the most
important parameters within which individuals played out their lives. Whereas secular society created class and racial differences
between individuals that worked to prevent their marriage, the church established what was moral and what was immoral. It also had
powerful institutional mechanisms, such as confession and the ecclesiastical law courts, which were used to attempt to control the
behavior of the faithful.

This article is organized in the following fashion. First, I will briefly review the literature on illegitimacy in colonial Brazil. Second, I will
describe the position of the church on concubinage and the institutional vehicles used in attempts to control it. Third, I will analyze
records that show the racial inequality within concubinage and illuminate the prevalent discourse about inequality. Last, I will show
that the church did not promote marriage between the sexual partners it prosecuted for concubinage but instead sought to separate
them, thereby demonstrating that it adhered to the contemporary belief that class and racial endogamy were requisites for marriage.

REVIEW OF ILLEGITIMACY STATISTICS

Foreign travelers to Brazil in the nineteenth century commented that Brazilians were not a marrying people. Studies made of the
proportion of illegitimate children in colonial Brazil confirm these observations, showing that illegitimacy rates varied according to
region from a low of 5.5 percent to a high of 65 percent of all births.(12) In the urban area of Sao Paulo itself, illegitimate births in
parish registers rose from 10 percent in 1741-55 to 21 percent in 1786-1800 to 31 percent in 1831-45. If one adds the baptisms of
abandoned children to the number of illegitimate ones, the proportion of illegitimate children increases from 15 to 20 percent each
decade.(13) In two parishes of Rio de Janeiro during the second part of the eighteenth century, one fourth of all baptisms were
illegitimate and one fifth were of foundlings, giving a total of 45 percent of children born outside of marriage. Moreover, a study of the
1836 Sao Paulo census shows that 27 percent of all mothers were single, and that proportion rose to 40 percent in the more densely
urban neighborhoods. When the race of free mothers is considered, 27 percent of white mothers were single, compared to almost 50
percent of free black and mulatto mothers.(14)

Contemporaries believed that it was the expense of marriage in the church that deterred people from marrying.(15) To be able to
marry, banns had to be read in every parish in which the bride or groom had resided more than six months. In such a mobile
population, in which a man might have lived in one or two towns in Portugal and then in several cities in Brazil, this was a very
expensive proposition, making it in fact difficult for persons with limited means to afford marriage. Furthermore, when a certificate of
baptism could not be found, witnesses had to be called and interrogated by officials of the ecclesiastical court to prove the person
had been baptized, thereby also increasing the fees to be paid. If a dispensation for consanguinity was necessary, and in small towns
where everyone was related this was frequently the case, that also was expensive.

One may therefore conclude that when people lived together without marrying, or had long-lasting visiting relationships, one of the
reasons may well have been that it was so expensive to marry. I suggest, however, that another reason men had for not marrying
was the partners' inequality.

These situations showed up most frequently in ecclesiastical betrothal suits. For instance, in 1753 Maria Pires brought her case to the
church court when her betrothed would not marry her because of his father's opposition to the marriage. One of the witnesses said
that he supposed that, although Maria was an honorable woman, the father objected to her poverty.(16) The slave Quiteria de
Moraes had had a visiting relationship with Joaquim de Camargo for four years and had had a son with him, so she brought a suit for
breach of promise when she heard de Camargo had arranged to marry a free mulatto woman. She and her witnesses were not able
to convince church authorities that there had been a betrothal. From Joaquim de Camargo's point of view, whether he was a poor
white man or a free mulatto, his chosen wife was of a superior status to his previous lover.(17) In the concubinage suit against
Joaquim Goncalves and Catharina Cardosa, a mestizo woman, one of the witnesses declared that he knew they had lived together
for around ten years and had four children. He added that they were both single and had used the pretext of intending to marry in
order to live together, but that Joaquim had not married Catharina "because she was not his equal."(18)

Much of the disapproval of these unequal relationships was clearly related to the ways in which men gave their lovers privileges that
society condemned as unfit for the status of these women. This was especially so in relations of concubinage between masters and
their slaves, or between white men and their colored concubines. In one instance, a witness sought to prove the concubinage of a
master with his slave with the words "He treats her like a wife and has her as mistress of his house."(19) Another witness described
how a master did not send his slave "out to work, and allowed her to take all sorts of liberties."(20) A blacksmith was accused of
cohabiting with his slave, "who runs around in slippers whereas his wife goes barefoot."(21) Bento Fernandes da Silva, another
blacksmith, was accused of having his other slaves serve his slave lover, and of "providing her with everything she needed."(22)

A man's special treatment of his female slave was many times used as evidence of concubinage. Lieutenant Miguel Raposo was
accused of having lived with his slave, of having five children with her, and of "treating her very differently from the way slaves should
be treated."(23) In another case, a white sergeant major was accused of having his slaves serve his free mulatto lover and having her
come to his house to participate at his table when he held banquets, at which his guests even drank to her health.(24) Gaspar Ribeiro
Salvago, on the contrary, defended himself from the accusation of concubinage with his slave by stating that "he did not give her any
different treatment than his other slaves and she didn't go around dressed in quality clothes, except for the clothes he provided for
her to wear when she went to mass as his wife's page."(25) These issues of treatment of slaves are also exemplified by the frequent
cases in which a married man was accused of concubinage with his slave "because he wouldn't permit his wife to beat her."(26)
These examples also show that although masters clearly exploited their slaves when they made them their concubines, these slave
concubines did receive advantages because of the relationship.

THE CHURCH AND CONCUBINAGE

The church, of course, condemned concubinage.(27) However, the church was also a forgiving church, giving absolution when the
sinner repented, performed a penance, and promised not to repeat the sin. Yet the nature of a sexual relationship is such that sexual
activity may easily be repeated. Therefore, the sin that could most easily be confessed was simple fornication with prostitutes or
occasional partners, which would not necessarily be repeated, and could be forgiven, and the sinner could be absolved upon his or
her promise not to sin again.

In fact, it was through the sacrament of confession that the church sought to control the morality of the population.(28) The faithful
were advised to confess frequently, but ecclesiastical law obliged them to confess at least once a year during Lent. Parish priests
were ordered to prepare annual lists of the members of all households of their parish (listed by street), checking off whether every
male over fourteen and every female over twelve had confessed before Easter. When his parishioners did not comply, the priest had
to specify what the reason was: whether it was rebellion to church law or whether there was a more lawful reason, such as the fact
that the person had been away on a trip. Those who had not confessed were given a period of grace in which they could still do so.
Those who continued to disobey the confession rule were excommunicated.(29) This happened to Gertrudes, a poor woman who
defended herself by saying that she had left the city without making her annual confession because she was ignorant of its
importance.(30) People who happened to be traveling through Lent were allowed to confess elsewhere and bring a certificate of
compliance back to their parish priest.(31) In several of the ecclesiastical judicial processes related to concubinage, the male partner,
at least, traveled during Lent so that he could confess to a priest in another parish who knew nothing of his sin of concubinage. So
notorious was one man's actions in this respect that one of his surnames became Quaresma (Lent).(32) Another threw his lover out
from his house in order to receive absolution, but later, while the parish priest was away preaching in the city for some time, he
brought her back in.(33) When such actions were discovered, they were used to indict the sinners and to confirm their guilt.

Concubinage was defined by church law as an illicit relationship between a man and a woman that continued for a considerable time
period.(34) The duration of the relationship was important in the decision whether to prosecute or not. Church law stated that
accusations of adultery were not to be accepted unless there were scandal and perseverance in the sin that led to a situation of long-
lasting concubinage.(35) People were encouraged to denounce others for sins, including concubinage, to the ecclesiastical
prosecutor or to the bishop on his official visit to a region. Over 80 percent of the sins reported in episcopal visits to Minas Gerais and
Mato Grosso concerned cases of concubinage.(36)

Church officials could themselves do the denouncing, and in some cases, they would receive a third of the fines collected from the
convicted sinners. Once a couple was denounced, there was a lawsuit in the ecclesiastical court to determine whether the accusation
of concubinage could be proved. Once proved, usually through the testimony of witnesses, the ecclesiastical prosecutor admonished
the guilty partners, requiring them to separate and stop sinning, and each was sentenced to pay a fine. The fines were many times
the lesser expense, for the accused also had to pay court costs. For instance, in the case of Manoel Pires Dias, who was accused of
concubinage with his slave, the fine was 1$000 each; whereas the legal fees amounted to 15$080.(37) If, after three admonitions the
couple continued in sin, the ecclesiastical judge could sentence them to an even greater fine, or to prison, exile, or
excommunication.(38) Scholars have shown that in Minas Gerais, it was usually the female partner who was exiled, whereas the
male partner was allowed to remain in town.(39)

Fernando Torres Londono has argued that the church only prosecuted cases of concubinage in which the relationship was so open
that it was viewed as scandalous. As such, it was a public sin that had to be punished publicly so as to deter other Christians.(40) Yet
nobody could be condemned on his or her reputation only, for church law established the rules of evidence necessary to prove
concubinage. That many accusations fell through is demonstrated by the fact that only 63 percent of the accused in the episcopal
visits to Minas Gerais of the first half of the eighteenth century were actually prosecuted, and only 22 percent of the accused were
convicted.(41)

There is also an interesting class component regarding who accused and who were accused. A study of those who accused others of
sexual sins to the Inquisition in Bahia in 1591 and 1618 demonstrates that the majority of accusers were of a high social status,
whereas the majority of the accused were of a low status. Men of the elite, landowners, large-scale merchants, and the members of
the civil, military, and ecclesiastical power structure made up 60 percent of the accusers, and only 25 percent of the accused;
whereas slaves were only 10 percent of the accusers but 40 percent of the accused. Ronaldo Vaifas argues that these results do not
mean that the majority of the men of the elite were necessarily innocent. In a hierarchical society in which the privilege of race,
wealth, and position gave men so much power, and in which most persons integrated webs of patron/client relations, it would be
dangerous for underlings to denounce their superiors, even under church guarantees of absolute secrecy.(42)

The ecclesiastical concubinage suits in Sao Paulo confirm this trend, for there were almost no truly important men accused of
concubinage. Though there was inequality between men and women in the lawsuits studied, the men usually did not hold very high
ranks in the militia, nor were they professionals. Out of 79 cases, only three men were found with titles of any kind: two were officers
of the militia, and the third a doctor of law.(43) Many of the men were colored themselves, as was probably the case above when
Joaquim de Camargo chose to marry a freed woman rather than a slave, or else were relatively poor whites like Jose Rodrigues
Padilla, who was accused not only of concubinage but also of not going to hear mass. He defended himself by claiming that he could
not afford to buy the kind of clothes necessary for churchgoing. One witness argued his statement was not true because he had an
aunt who had offered to help him, which in itself shows he was not well-off.(44)

INEQUALITY WITHIN CONCUBINAGE

The account book of fines paid to the Diocese of Sao Paulo for convictions in ecclesiastical lawsuits shows how many relationships
outside of marriage involved men and women of a different race.(45) The period covered by the legible portion of the book is from
March 1747 through 1752, and 90 percent of the fines were for concubinage lawsuits. Fines were applied equally to both partners in
concubinage, according to whether it was their first, second, or third lapse. Fines for a first lapse amounted to 800 reis per person if
both partners were single, and to 1,000 if one or both were married. For a second lapse the fines were doubled, for a third lapse they
were tripled. Since these were large fines, the church allowed the condemned partners to pay their fines in two or three equal
payments.(46) During the five years between 1747 and 1752, thirty-nine couples were listed as having paid fines for their sin of
concubinage. Most of these lived either in the center of town or in one of its outlying neighborhoods, whereas others were from the
surrounding villages, most within the municipality of Sao Paulo. According to the list, most partners resided in the same
neighborhood.(47)

The majority of those fined for practicing concubinage were single. In twenty-eight cases, or 71 percent, both partners were single,
whereas eleven couples, 29 percent, included at least one married partner. These statistics confirm the trends found for Minas
Gerais, in which 85 percent of male partners were single and 91 percent of females were single. In the Sao Paulo diocese book of
fines, one finds that of the ten cases where it is known whether it was the man or the woman partner who was married, four were
male, four were female, and in two cases both partners were married to third parties. These last statistics suggest that married
women were as prone to adultery as married men, but this is probably due to the small size of the sample, for studies done in Minas
Gerais show that it was more frequent for married men than married women to be unfaithful: 12 percent of the men accused of
concubinage there were married compared to only 6 percent of the women.(48)

The list of fines paid to the Diocese of Sao Paulo enters the names of the condemned parties without always specifying their race. In
twenty-three cases, there is no mention of the race of either partner. It can be assumed they were all white, since in no case is white
given as a racial category. (Two of the couples might have been Indians or mestizos, since they are mentioned as residing in Sao
Miguel, an Indian village. If this were so, failure to mention their race might be due to the fact that the recorder saw them as equals.)
In the sixteen other cases, the race of at least one of the partners was mentioned, and I will again assume that the unmentioned race
was white.

In most of these cases, the man belonged to a race that was viewed as superior to that of his female partner. Of these sixteen
couples, in only one is the racial status of the man inferior to that of the woman, that is when a mestizo woman was the concubine of
a black slave. Otherwise, the males were all white; and of their fifteen female partners, five were black, five mulatto, three mestizo,
and two Indian. Three of the ten black or mulatto women were slaves, one of them her own master's concubine. Six of the ten black
and mulatto women were identified as forras, that is, freedwomen. The category "freed" implied "once removed from slavery," and
therefore also had a negative connotation compared to a person of any color who was born free. In this book of fines, most persons,
97 percent of the men and 92 percent of the women, were free. (Fifteen percent of the women were freedwomen.) With regard to
their race, 62 percent of the women were white, 13 percent were mulatto, 13 percent were black, 8 percent were mestizo, and 5
percent were Indian.(49)

These findings from the book of fines of the Sao Paulo diocese confirm the trend shown in work done on early eighteenth-century
mining regions of Brazil. Studying the 350 cases of concubinage investigated by the bishop in his 1737 visit to Minas Gerais,
Francisco Vidal Luna and Iraci del Nero da Costa found that 95 percent of the male partners were free, with only 4 percent freedmen
and less than 1 percent slaves. The composition of the group of female partners was clearly of a lower status. The majority, 54
percent, were freedwomen; the second group, 27 percent, were slaves; and women who were born free made up only 18
percent.(50) These findings show a much greater status difference between the men and the women tried for concubinage in Minas
than those in the book of fines in Sao Paulo. This difference is probably due to the fact that Minas Gerais, as a booming gold-rush
frontier region, had relatively few European women in the early eighteenth century. The general makeup of the population in Minas
was reflected in the race of the women sentenced for concubinage. Only 9 percent were white, whereas the majority, 52 percent,
were black, with mulattoes making up 19 percent and mestizos 20 percent.(51)

An interesting pattern emerges from the list of fines paid to the Sao Paulo diocese, which leads to the conclusion that the men tended
not only to belong to a race perceived to be superior to that of their female companions but to be in a better financial situation. The list
provides evidence that suggests that the male furnished the funds to pay the fines for both partners. The church did not condemn the
couple jointly but instead sentenced each individual, who was expected to pay his or her fine separately. The date of payment of each
partner's fine is listed for seventeen of the couples. In all but one of those cases, the man and woman either paid on the same day
(four cases), or the man paid one day before the woman (seven cases), or several days before the woman (five cases). In only one
case did the woman pay before the man, and in that case the woman was a widow. Yet if each person was responsible for the
payment of his or her fine, we would expect to find approximately the same number of cases in which the woman paid before her
partner as those in which he paid first.

The fact that practically all fines were paid either on the same day by both partners or first by the man, then by the woman, suggests
that the funds for the payment of these fines came from the male. Thus there probably was economic inequality within the couple,
even in those cases in which both partners were white, let alone in those couples in which the men belonged to a race considered
superior to that of their companions. This hypothesis correlates with the one exception above, the case where the widow paid before
her male partner. If she was the widow of a property owner, she may well have been more affluent than her companion in the sin of
concubinage, and she could therefore reverse the usual order of paying fines. Another concubinage case with such a role reversal is
that of a certain mulatto freedman in Bahia in 1813 who was supported by his white concubine.(52)

POLICY OF THE CHURCH REGARDING MARRIAGE OF THOSE ACCUSED OF CONCUBINAGE

The church was clearly a part of the highly stratified and hierarchical society of colonial Brazil. The policies and laws of the church
reflected common assumptions about differences in the "quality" of persons. Church sentences prescribed different punishments for
persons of different quality. For instance, if a commoner committed incest with an ascendent or descendent he would be imprisoned,
fined, and sentenced to the galleys for ten years, whereas the same crime committed by a man with noble blood would only result in
exile to Angola for ten years. Women, because of their presumed weakness, were also to be sentenced more leniently than men of
their class.(53)

Regarding adultery, there were great differences between the church and the state. The Portuguese state mainly condemned female
adultery, allowing men to kill their unfaithful wives and lovers with impunity, whereas the church condemned the adultery of both
women and men.(54) Furthermore, because of the possibility that a man might kill or physically punish his adulterous wife, the church
also protected the latter by not publishing her name. For instance, we find the case of Simao Pinto Guede who was admonished in
1750 in the Sao Paulo ecclesiastical court for the sin of concubinage with "a certain married woman."(55) Moreover, even if the
woman was single, but had not already lost her good reputation, she was also to be protected from publicity, especially if she
belonged to a family of good status, and/or there was fear that her father or brothers would punish her.(56)

Church law, based on a code drafted in the Archbishopric of Bahia and accepted by its synod in 1707, stated that the clergy should
search for those living in concubinage "only in order to remove them from sin, and toward this goal should proceed with admonitions
and punishment until in fact they are reformed."(57) Lay persons who had been denounced as living in concubinage "with infamy,
scandal, and perseverance in sin, should be admonished to remove themselves from their illicit relationship, and stop the scandal;
and if he has her in his home, he must throw her out shortly."(58) Marriage of the sinners was not mentioned in the church code as a
solution to the problem of concubinage until it addressed the situation of slaves who lived in concubinage. Slaves were also to be
admonished (though no fines were to be levied on them), and their masters were to be warned about what was happening so that
they might take measures to stop the concubinage, "either through marriage (which is the best method according to God's Law, and
masters cannot prevent such marriages without putting their own souls in danger) or through any other convenient method."(59)

It is interesting that the first mention in the church code of marriage of the partners as a solution for the sin of concubinage is found in
relation to the concubinage between slaves, two persons easily perceived as equals. In a later paragraph on concubinage, the church
code again mentioned marriage as a solution, stating that if a single or widowed woman who has been charged with the sin of
concubinage should marry, the church prosecutor shall dismiss all charges against the couple, adding that if both partners were
single and they married each other, charges would also be dismissed.(60) However, the first several pages in the church code that
dealt with concubinage did not propose this solution.

The first solution suggested by church law was separation. Moreover, this was the solution promoted almost exclusively in the more
than fifty ecclesiastical lawsuits against concubinage I studied. In 1773, when Jose Antonio de Araujo, a single man, was accused of
concubinage with his cook, the single freedwoman Francisca, he was admonished to throw her out of his home within three days and
to refrain from seeing her again.(61) Another man was told by the priest to move his concubine of over twelve years to another
parish, which he did. However, witnesses concurred that he continued to visit her.(62) When those accused were a master and his
female slave, the master was invariably sentenced to sell the slave. In the lawsuit against Lieutenant Miguel Raposo and his slave
Quiteria, the lieutenant, who had lived with his slave for over fifteen years and had five children with her, whom he acknowledged as
his, never accepted the sentence by signing a confession. We do not know, therefore, whether he ever obeyed the sentence.(63)

In the case of Jose Rodrigues Padilla and Bernarda Lopes, the sentence did include the possibility of marriage. The wording was "on
condition that they prepare to marry or [italics added] have his accomplice, Bernarda Lopes, marry outside this parish."(64) This
sentence gave the male partner a choice: he could marry the female, or, if his partner was too unequal to marry, he should find her a
husband (which usually implied endowing her). In another case, the parish priest suggested to Inacio de Freitas, a married man, that
he find a man willing to marry his mistress, promising to marry them free of charge.(65) The solution of finding a husband for the
woman did not always work. Joao Pinto de Aguiar, a married man, followed his confessor's advice and found a slave husband for his
slave mistress. Yet he later prevented them from living together and kept the slave woman in his own house.(66) Another woman,
responding to her confessor's pressure, married a newcomer to Sao Paulo, who abandoned her after a few months and left for Rio de
Janeiro. In later testimony, she declared that she only married him because she felt so intimidated by her parish priest. It is significant
that the priest, however, had not made her marry the man she was alleged to be living with, though he was a widower and therefore
free to marry.(67)

Clearly, church authorities subscribed to the then current view on marriage, which had to be between equals, and thus found it
difficult to oblige a man to marry a woman who was not his equal. Ecclesiastical judges therefore proposed the separation of the
sinning couple, or that the woman marry a third party.

The interest of the church in the equality of marriage partners is also demonstrated in the questions asked of prospective brides and
grooms. One of the routine questions was what inheritance each prospective spouse had received or expected to receive. (Because
the Portuguese inheritance system did not allow full testamentary freedom, and children could not be disinherited, most children of
property owners had an approximate idea of what they would inherit.) This question was even asked of slaves. For instance, when
Felix Monteiro de Barros and Quiteria Dias started their wedding proceedings, they were both asked what the quality of their parents
was and what inheritance they expected. Felix explained that he was the son of the slave Maria and that his father was reputed to be
white and of quality, but that he had not received an inheritance nor did he expect one because he was illegitimate and the slave of
Capitain Antonio Leyte de Barros. Quiteria, the illegitimate daughter of a mixed Indian/white woman, and therefore free, was asked
the same question and answered that she did not know her father but assumed he must have been an Indian.(68) The question was
asked of all, rich and poor alike, and every couple sought to prove their equality. For instance, Rita de Moraes said she was very
poor. Her fiance, Jose Martins de Oliveira, added that "though he was also poor, he was of the same quality as his fiancee, and hard-
working and capable of supporting her."(69)

There is no evidence that the church officially discouraged the marriage of couples who could not show equality, or at least
superiority of the bride, which was the socially acceptable inequality within marriage. Yet it seems significant that church practice
always included these questions related to property ownership and status in its proceedings before a wedding. Furthermore, the
acquiescence of the church in the idea of endogamous marriage is shown in the wording used by the bishop of the Diocese of Sao
Paulo in a sentence he issued on February 5, 1779, in a betrothal suit. He stated that "since there is no inequality between the
betrothed, and in light of the information received, the Reverend Vicar can continue with the publication of the banns."(70) The
church's interest in endogamous marriages helps explain its obvious reluctance to encourage the marriage of couples sentenced for
concubinage, most of whom consisted of a male of higher status with a female of lower status.

Within this context, it is significant that the church in colonial Brazil actually had the power to oblige people to marry, a power that
shows up most frequently in betrothal suits. When a betrothal was proved to the satisfaction of the church, it had the authority to
imprison the partner who no longer wanted to marry and to oblige the couple to marry. An example is the two-year-long betrothal
case of Joaquim Antonio de Souza, a mulatto engaged to Maria Francisca dos Anjos, a white woman with property. When he wished
to break the engagement, the church had him imprisoned and sentenced them to marry within a month.(71) This, of course, was the
type of couple contemporaries thought should marry, in which the bride-to-be was of a superior status to her fiance. In many other
betrothal suits, the recalcitrant man was imprisoned and obliged to marry.(72) Betrothed women who had changed their minds were
also imprisoned and made to marry the man to which they had been betrothed.(73) The church therefore had the power to oblige
couples to marry, yet it did not do so in most of the concubinage cases studied, even when, as in the majority of cases, both partners
were single.

That the church did not oblige couples accused of concubinage to marry not only reflects on how church authorities were fully
integrated into the contemporary values system, it also confirms that all or almost all those couples must have been unequal in
status. The evidence points to relationships in which the male was of a superior class, race, or status and the female of an inferior
class, race, or status. In this respect, concubinage in colonial Brazil had all the advantages for the male of morganatic marriage, in
which a wife had no rights to the property or status of her husband. However, it lacked the disadvantages of morganatic marriage,
because partners in concubinage could dissolve their relationship at will.

From the point of view of the male partner, concubinage was a relationship in which he had the greatest possible control. His property
remained his alone, whereas within marriage, there was a regime of community property in which his wife had title to half the property
and had a veto right on the sale of real estate, and his father-in-law and brothers-in-law would feel free to interfere with how he
administered the property.

One nineteenth-century letter spells out explicitly the advantages of concubinage. The letter was written by a professional, Dr. Arthur
M. de Azevedo, to the mother of Zezinha, the woman who had had his child. Zezinha's family appears to have been a family of
quality and her mother, probably a widow, had seen better times. Dr. Azevedo writes how, because of his love for Zezinha, he broke
his engagement to the daughter of one of the prominent families of Rio de Janeiro. As a consequence, the woman's father, with the
help of Azevedo's own mother and uncles, had threatened to have him drafted and sent to the war in the south of Brazil if he did not
go through with the marriage. He did not change his mind but paid another man to take his place in the draft, resigned his position in
one of the imperial ministries, and bought a ranch far away in Minas Gerais, where he intended to live until the affair had blown over.

The letter was not, however, an offer of marriage to Zezinha. Instead Dr. Azevedo offered to settle shares on Zezinha, on her mother,
and on her sister, so that they would have an independent income, and he asked them to join him in his ranch to live "as though we
were married.... with the fazenda in my name." These last words show his concern over full control of his estate. Furthermore, there
are words in his letter that show that one of his reasons for breaking his engagement with the other woman may have been that he
thought her family was interested in his money. That concern could be translated to mean he had learned that she would not bring to
the marriage as much property as he.(74)

Men in colonial Brazil did not marry women who were not their equals, which means that men of property married only property
owners or the daughters of property owners. A pattern developed through which many young men entered a relationship of
concubinage for many years until they felt they were in a position to marry. Portuguese legislation permitted the "natural" children of a
commoner to inherit equally with legitimate children (natural children were those born to unmarried partners who were both either
single or widowed and could, therefore, have married if they so desired).(75) That two single persons lived together, had children,
and yet did not marry, despite the church's clear condemnation of the relationship, suggests that the reasons for not doing so were
considered valid. When Jose Antonio Fernandes, still single in his old age, sought in 1824 to recognize the children he had had with
his partner of many years, a single mulatto woman, he made it explicit, declaring that there was no impediment to their marriage
except for the difference in their color and status, since he was a noble.(76) In the petition to legitimize his daughter, retired
Lieutenant Colonel Joao Gomes Nobre, from Ceara, also made it explicit when he declared that he had not married his lover because
"it was prohibited by law for at that time he was an Infantry Adjutant and she had no nobility in spite of being white, or at least looking
white."(77)

Men consciously chose to establish two different relationships with women, concubinage and marriage, usually choosing them
sequentially, the former before the latter. There is an interesting series of letters written in the 1770s by Colonel Carlos Manoel Gago
da Camara to a doctor's widow, the mother of the colonel's natural son. There would not seem to have been that much difference in
their status, for the colonel was himself the natural son of a Portuguese nobleman. He later was able to become legitimized and
succeed to the property and honors of his father. The difference in their status must have been mainly a question of property,
because several years into the correspondence he wrote her that he was going to marry a common friend who had recently become
a widow, adding that he had asked her brothers to give him an inventory of her property.(78) He wrote in a matter-of-fact manner,
demonstrating that there had never been the possibility of his marrying the mother of his son, and assuming she would understand
his need to marry a property owner.

In the two preceding cases, the differences between the partners were almost entirely questions of property and, therefore, class.
There were many other cases where the difference was much greater. Such was the case of Second Lieutenant Jose Paulo de Roza,
who never married but had a very long relationship with his mother's slave, Anna Maria de Jesus, which resulted in their having
twelve children. His mother freed her twelve grandchildren and their mother, Anna Maria; and though the Lieutenant did not marry
Anna Maria, he proceeded to legitimize their children so that they could inherit his property. In such a relationship all the power was in
the male's hands, not only because of his gender but because the woman was a slave, and he was her legal master. Yet in this and
so many other instances, the result was upward mobility for the woman and especially for her children.(79)

Thus concubinage, as described in this article, was a relationship with different implications for men and women. Men were obviously
aware of the inequality of their partners but may have chosen such relations not only as way stations toward legal marriage but also
as sexual relationships in which, as distinct from marriage, they had the most power and freedom of action. The women in such
relations may or may not have had much choice. Women slaves undoubtedly were the most exploited, although, as seen above,
some of them benefited from being their masters' concubines, as did their children, especially when they were freed. Thus it is
possible that some female slaves made the rational choice to promote the relation ship. All women in such unequal relations would
necessarily have to submit to their male partner's every whim if they wished to preserve the stability of the relationship. Concubinage
was therefore a relation of much power for the male and conscious submission for the female, in which the determining factors were
the inequalities of race, class, and gender between the partners.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the Indiana University History Faculty Seminar and two anonymous referees of this journal for comments on previous drafts of
this article. The research was carried out with the support of a Fulbright Area Research Grant and an award from the Joint Committee
on Latin American Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.

NOTES

1. Muriel Nazzari, Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in Sao Paulo, Brazil (1600-1900) (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).

2. Ibid., chaps. 1-6.

3. For studies about concubinage in colonial Mexico, see Thomas Calvo, "Concubinato y mestizaje en el medio urbano: El caso de
Guadalajara en el siglo XVII," Revista de Indias 44 no. 173 (1984): 204-12; and "The Warmth of the Hearth: Seventeenth-Century
Guadalajara Families," in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press, 1989). See also Robert McCaa, "Marriageways in Mexico and Spain, 1500-1900," Continuity and Change 9, no. 1
(1994): 11-43.

4. Grimal, Pierre, O amor em Roma (Sao Paulo: Martim Fontes, 1991), 132, cited in Fernando Torres Londono, "Publico e
Escandaloso: Igreja e concubinato no antigo bispado do Rio de Janeiro" (Ph.D. diss., University of Sao Paulo, 1992), 8.

5. Robert McCaa, "Calidad, Clase and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788-1790," Hispanic American Historical
Review 64 (1984): 477-502. For an extensive study of race and class in marriage and concubinage, see Verena Martinez-Alier,
Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1974).
6. Luciano Raposo de Almeida Figueiredo, "Barrocas Familias: Vida familiar em Minas Gerais no seculo XVIII" (master's thesis,
University of Sao Paulo, 1989), 166.

7. See Charles R. Boxer, Race Relations in the Portuguese Empire (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1963); M. Tucci Carneiro, Preconceito
Racial: Portugal e Brasil-Colonia (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), especially chap. 4; Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O nome e o sangue.
Uma fraude genealogica no Pernambuco colonial (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1989).

8. Charles R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 166. In 1771, an Indian
was removed from his post of captain-major because he had married a black woman, thus "having stained his blood and shown
himself unworthy of the office." This incident suggests that Indians were not viewed as negatively as blacks. Gilberto Freyre, The
Masters and the Slaves, trans. Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 409.

9. These ideas, which gave a positive weight to the white component of people with mixed ancestry, were to continue into the
twentieth century, making Brazilian racism different from the American variety, which is completely binary. See Carl Degler, Neither
Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the U.S. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986); and Thomas
Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York: Oxford Universtity Press, 1974).

10. For instance, Arquivo da Curia Metropolitana de Sao Paulo (hereafter ACMSP), Auto de perguntas nupciais, 1753, Domingos dos
Santos, pardo forro, Caetana Rodrigues, parda forra. In this case, dos Santos had paid Rodrigues's master for her freedom in order
for them to marry. When she became free and refused to marry him, witnesses were called, one of which testified to how well he
treated her when they were living together.

11. The words of a witness in the case, cited by Figueiredo, Barrocas Familias," 111; a similar case is cited by Laura de Mello e
Souza, "As Devassas eclesiasticas da Arquidiocese de Mariana: Fonte primaria para a historia das mentalidades," Anais do museu
paulista 33 (1984): 71 n. 11.

12. Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof, "Ilegitimidade, raca e lacos de familia no Brasil do seculo XIX: Uma Analice da informacao de censos e
de batismos para Sao Paulo e Rio de Janeiro," in Historia e Populacao: Estudos sobre a America Latina, ed. Sergio Odilon Nadalin,
Maria Luiza Marcilio, and Altiva Pillati Balhana (Sao Paulo: ABEP, 1990), 166.

13. Maria Luiza Marcilio, A cidade de Sao Paulo: povoamento e populacao; 1750-1850 (Sao Paulo: Pioneira, 1974), 159.

14. Elizabeth Kuznesof, "Sexual Politics, Race and Bastard-Bearing in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: A Question of Culture or Power?"
Journal of Family History 16 (1991): 241-60.

15. For the comments of Sao Paulo's eighteenth-century governor, Dom Luis Antonio de Souza, on why few people married, see
Documentos interessantes para a historia e costumes de Sao Paulo, 93 vols. (Sao Paulo: Arquivo do Estado de Sao Paulo,
1897-1980), 23: 380-1; see also Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, Sistema de casamento no Brasil colonial (Sao Paulo: Queiroz, 1984),
50-6.

16. ACMSP, Processos de Esponsais, 1753, Maria Pires, justificante, Joao Barbosa, justificado.

17. ACMSP, Processos de Esponsais, 1762, Quiteria de Moraes, justificante, Joaquim de Camargo, justificado, bairro de S. Pedro,
hoje Jaragua.

18. ACMSP, Processos Crime - Concubinato Duplo, 1779, Reus: Joaquim Goncalves, solteiro, Catharina Cardosa, solteira, Maria de
Camargo, solteira, Interior de Sao Paulo, Guarulhos. Joaquim was accused of being simultaneosly involved with two women.

19. Torres Londono, "Publico e escandaloso," 89.

20. Figueiredo, "Barrocas famflias," 142.

21. Ibid., 110.

22. ACMSP, Processos Crime, Concubinato, 1747, Reus: Bento Fernandes da Silva, solteiro, e Tereza, solteira e sua escrava.

23. ACMSP, Processos Crime - Concubinato, 1779, Denunciados: Miguel Raposo, tenente, e Quiteria, sua escrava, Interior Sao
Paulo, Guarulhos.

24. Figueiredo, "Barrocas familias," 143.

25. ACMSP, Processos Crime, Concubinato, 1736, Bairro de Penha, Denunciados: Gaspar Ribeiro Salvago e Vitoria, carijo bastarda.
In the text, Gaspar uses the word slave when speaking about the woman in question, yet he declares she is his administrada, a legal
arrangement for the use of Indian and mestizo labor that was not exactly slavery, because administrados could not legally be sold,
yet approximated slavery because administrados had no right, at that time, to voluntarily change masters. See Muriel Nazzari,
"Transition toward Slavery: Changing Legal Practice Regarding Indians in Seventeenth-Century Sao Paulo," The Americas 49, no. 2
(1992) 137-41. See also John Monteiro, Negros da terra: indios e bandeirantes nas origens de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo: Companhia
das Letras, 1994).

26. For instance, ACMSP, Crime, Concubinato, 1751, Nossa Senhora do O, Reus: Joao Pinto de Aguiar, casado e Quiteria, sua
escrava mulata; also ACMSP, Crime, Concubinato, 1784, bairro de Tatuape, Denuciados: Manoel Pires Dias, casado, e Ana, sua
escrava.

27. The Council of Trent explicitly condemned concubinage. Fernando Torres Londono, "El Concubinato y la Iglesia en el Brasil
Colonial," Estudos CEDHAL (Sao Paulo) 2 (1988): 9.

28. Church law in eighteenth-century Brazil came from an ecclesiatic constitution formulated in 1707 in the Archbishopric of Bahia:
Constituicoes prirneiras do Arcebispado da Bahia, feitas e ordenadas pelo ilustrissimo e reverendissimo senhor Sebastiao Monteiro
da Vide bispo do dito Arcebispado, e do Conselho de Sua Magestade, propostas e aceitas em o synodo diocesano que o dito senhor
celebrou em 12 de junho do anno 1707 (Sao Paulo: Typografia 2 de dezembro, 1853), hereafter Constituicoes.

29. Constituicoes, Liv. I, Tit. XXXVI and XXXVII. See also Ronaldo Vainfas, "A condenacao do adulterio," in Mulheres, Adulteros e
Padres, ed. Lana Lage da Gama Lima (Rio de Janeiro: Dois Pontos, 1987).

30. AMCSP, Processos Crime, Nao safisfez os preceitos da Quaresma, 1780, Reu: Gertrudes bastarda, chamada Gerundinha.

31. For the rules about lists of parishioners who had confessed, and desobrigas (certificates given by a priest to confirm the
compliance of annual confession), see Constituicoes, Liv. I, Tits. XXXVI and XXXVII.

32. ACMSP, Processos Crime, Concubinato - 1779 - Denunciados: Joao de Almeida Quaresma, Patricia Correa.

33. ACMSP, Processos Crime, Concubinato - 1779 - Denunciados: Jose Roiz Padilla, Bernarda Lopes; Mairipora, freguesia de
Juquery.

34. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXII, par. 979.

35. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XIX, par. 968: "Porem, nao se admittira denunciacao, ou accusacao criminal em nosso juizo contra
pessoa leiga para effeito de set castigada, por se dizer, que commeteo adulterio, se juntamente nao houver infamia, e perseveranca,
que induza amancebamento."

36. Concubinage accounted for 85 percent of denunciations in the episcopal visits to Minas Gerais. Luciano Figueiredo and Ricardo
Martins de Sousa, "Segredos de Mariana: pesquisando a inquisicao mineira," Acervo Revista do Arquivo Nacional 2, no. 2 (1987):
18. The practice accounted for 80 percent of the denunciations to Mato Grosso. Torres Londono, "Publico e escandaloso," 275.

37. ACMSP, Processos crime, concubinato, 1784, Manoel Pires Dias, casado, denunciado, e Ana, sua escrava, concubina, bairro de
Tatuape, Sao Paulo. The monetary unit in the seventeenth century was the real (plural, reis). The denomination of 1,000 reis was
written 1$000 and called milreis. It became the monetary unit by the end of the eighteenth century.

38. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XII, par. 980-3.

39. Laura de Mello e Souza, "As devassas eclesiasticas da Arquidiocese de Mariana: Fonte primaria para a historia das
mentalidades," Anais do Museu Paulista, 33 (1984): 70.

40. Torres Londono, "Publico e escandaloso," 285-8.

41. Calculated from figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7 in Luciano Raposo "Barrocas Familias," 70-1.

42. Ronaldo Vainfas, "A teia da intriga: Delacao e moralidade na sociedade colonial," in Historia e Sexualidade no Brasil, ed.
Ronaldo Vainfas (Rio de Janeiro: Edicoes Graal, 1986), 52-4.

43. The three cases were (1) ACMSP, Processos crime, concubinato, 1779, Tenente Miguel Raposo e Quiteria, sua escrava; (2)
ACMSP, Processos crime, concubinato, 1762, Doutor Constantino Jose da Silva e Azevedo, solteiro, e Maria dos Prazeres, solteira;
and (3) ACMSP, "Livro de receitas e despesa do dineiro das condenacoes da justica eclesiasticas, Diocese de Sao Paulo,"
(hereafter "Livro de receitas"), 11 de janeiro de 1749, Sargento mor Francisco da Rocha de Abreu, e Lara, preta forra.

44. ACMSP, Esponsais, 1762, Quiteria de Moraes, justificante, Joaquim de Camargo, justificado, bairro de S. Pedro, hoje Jaragua;
and ACMSP, Crime, Concubinato, 1779. Denunciados: Jose Roiz Padilla, Bernarda Lopes; Interior de Sao Paulo, Mairipora.

45. ACMSP, "Livro de receita."

46. For the fines to be levied, see Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXII, par. 980-1. To help give an idea of the value of these fines, the
amount of manioc flour consumed in one month as a ration by one soldier in a Rio de Janeiro garrison in 1718 was worth 423 reis (for
the size of the ration), see Dauril Alden, "Price Movements in Brazil Before, During, and After the Gold Boom, with Special Reference
to the Salvador Market, 1670-1769," in Essays on the Price History of Eighteenth-Century Latin America, ed. Lyman L. Johnson and
Enrique Tandeter (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 1990), 348. I calculated the price of the monthly ration from the 1750
price shown in table 11.4, p. 350). Other prices: a gold necklace, 12$000; eight sterling silver spoons, 5$360; a dozen pewter plates,
2$000. See Nazzari, Disappearance of the Dowry, 179).

47. No residence is given for nine couples. Of the others, twenty-eight were from the same and only two from different towns,
parishes, or neighborhoods. The breakdown is the following: center of Sao Paulo, 6; outlying neighborhoods, 14 (Conceicao, Penha,
Santana, Bom Sucesso, Cotia, Sao Miguel, Santo Amaro); neighboring villages, 10 (Mogi, Jundiahi, Juquery, Tremembe, Jacarehi);
and unknown, 9; total, 39.
48. The statistics for Minas Gerais were taken from Francisco Vidal Luna and Iraci del Nero da Costa, "Devassa nas minas Gerais:
Observacoes sobre casos de concubinato," Anais do Museu Paulista 31 (1982): 227.

49. A study of accusations of adultery in Sao Paulo shows comparable statistics. In 98 accusations of a husband's adultery, 72
percent of concubines were free, 19 percent slave, 4 percent free Indian, and 4 percent unknown. Raquel Bumplesperger Lopes
Domingues da Costa, "Divorcio e anulacao de matrimonio em Sao Paulo colonial," (master's thesis, University of Sao Paulo, 1986),
268.

50. Vidal Luna and del Nero da Costa, "Devassa nas Minas Gerais," 227.

51. Ibid., 231.

52. Luis Mott, "Os pecados da familia na baia de Todos os Santos (1813)," Centro de Estudos Baianos (Salvador, Brazil) 98 (1982):
5-55. Cited in Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, Vida privada e quotidiano no Brasil (Lisbon, Portugal: Estampa, 1993), 174. The
description of his relationship was expressed in the following words in the document: "De porta adentro, teudo e manteudo corn
Paulina Maria, branca." Though Nizza da Silva does not remark about it, these words are especially interesting because they are the
exact reversal of the words used in most of the cases of concubinage. It was usually the concubine who was described as teuda e
manteuda (supported). In the above quotation, the use of the masculine form (teudo e manteudo) informs the reader explicitly that
she was supporting him.

53. For the punishment of incest, see Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XX.

54. The lover could not be killed with impunity, however, unless he were of the same or a lower status than the betrayed husband.
Vainfas, "A condenacao do Adulterio,", 43-4.

55. ACMSP, "Livro de receita," fine No. 69, 1750, Simao Pinto Guede.

56. For the church law protecting married women and reputable maidens, see Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXIII, Par. 990-2.

57. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXII, par. 979.

58. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXII, par. 980.

59. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXII, Par. 989.

60. Constituicoes, Liv. V, Tit. XXI, Par. 992.

61. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1773, Reus: Jose Antonio de Araujo, solteiro, Francisca, liberta, solteira.

62. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1779, Interior S.P., Mairipora, Denunciados: Antonio de Camargo, Escolastica de Godoi
(cabocla).

63. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1779, Guarulhos, Reus Denunciados: Miguel Raposo, tenente, e Quiteria, sua escrava.

64. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1779, Interior S.P., Mairipora, Denunciados: Jose Roiz Padilla, Bernarda Lopes.

65. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1779, Interior S.P., Mogi Guacu, Denunciados: Inacio de Freitas, casado, Domingas,
carijo.

66. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1751, Nossa Senhora do O, Denunciados: Joao Pinto de Aguiar, Quiteria, sua escrava,
mulata.

67. ACMSP, Processos Crime Concubinato, 1748, cidade, Denunciados: Josefa Maria de Jesus Avila, Francisco Leite, viuvo,
concubino da re; citados: Francisco de Avila, Natalia, bastarda.

68. ACMSP, Processo de Casamento, 1752, Felix Monteiro de Barros e Quiteria Dias, administrada do L. Antonio Leite.

69. ACMSP, Processos de Casamento, 6-84-2477, Jose Martins de Oliveira, Rita de Moraes.

70. ACMSP, Processos Esponsais, Auto de Justificacao Entre Partes, Sao Paulo, 1780, Maria Gertrudes, Justificante, Joaquim
Pereira Machado, Justificado.

71. ACMSP, Processos Esponsais, Interior S. Paulo, Ubatuba, 1772, Autor: Maria Francisca dos Anjos, Reu: Joaquim Antonio de
Souza, mulato prezo. The suit is incomplete, and the sentence is later embargoed by Joaquim, so we do not know whether they in
fact married. He defended his refusal to marry her by accusing her of being a loose woman.

72. For instance, ACMSP, Processos Esponsais, (1) Freguesia de N.S. de Nazareth, 1751, Rosa Cardosa de Lima, justificante, Joao
Afonso Escudeiro, justificado; (2) Ana Maria Inacia, autora, Francisco Jose Vas, reu; (3) Santo Amaro, 1751, Boaventura Furtado,
justificante, Maria de Jesus, justificada; (4) Freguesia de Santo Amaro, 1758, Simoa de Melo, autora, Domingos Marques Requeixo,
reu.
73. ACMSP, Processos Esponsais, 1753, Domingos dos Santos, oficial de armeiro, pardo forro, justificante, Caetana Rodrigues,
parda forra, justificada.

74. Letter addressed to Illm.a Exm.a Senr.a D. Emilia F. Vega, January 3, 1876, Biblioteca Nacional, Secao Manustritos 20, 1, 2:
Cartas dirigidas a Miguel Arcanjo Galvo (Cartas e outros escriptos. Centro, Sul e Norte do Imperio e Paizes Estrangeiros. Postos em
ordem pot M.A.G. 1885), vol. I, no. 314.

75. Linda Lewin, "Natural and Spurious Children in Brazilian Inheritance Law from Colony to Empire: A Methodological Essay," The
Americas 48, no. 3 (1992) 351-96.

76. Arquivo Nacional, Legitimacoes no Desembargo do Paco (hereafter Legitimacoes), Caixa 126, Pacote 2 - Doc. 35 - 1824,
Joaquim Jose Fernandes, Thezoreiro Geral da Junta da Fazenda Publica da Provincia do Esp. Santo.

77. Legitimacoes, Caixa 125, Pasta 2, Doc. 38.

78. Legitimacoes, Caixa 126, Pasta 1, Doc. 15, 1809, Joaquim Manoel Gago da Camara.

79. Legitimacoes, Caixa 126, Pasta 2, Doc. 13, 1822, Alferes Jose Paulo de Roza.

Muriel Nazzari is an associate professor in the Department of History of Indiana University. Her publications include Disappearance
of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in Sao Paulo, Brazil (1600-1900) and "Widows as Obstacles to Business: British
Objections to Brazilian Marriage and Inheritance Laws," in Comparative Studies in Society and History (October 1995). Her present
research focuses on miscegenation, concubinage, foundlings, and the social construction of race.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 Sage Publications, Inc.

http://jfh.sagepub-com.ez49.periodicos.capes.gov.br
Citação da fonte (MLA 8)
Nazzari, Muriel. "Concubinage in colonial Brazil: the inequalities of race, class, and gender." Journal of Family History, vol. 21, no. 2,
1996, p. 107+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link-
gale.ez49.periodicos.capes.gov.br/apps/doc/A18262756/AONE?u=capes&sid=AONE&xid=2f203670. Accessed 6 May 2020.
Número do documento Gale: GALE|A18262756