## Brotherhoods, devotions and Black experience  
The first lay brotherhoods in Portugal date back to the thirteenth century. Under the invocation of a patron saint, these associations held spiritual exercises as well as performing works of social philanthropy and providing assistance to their members (Penteado, 1995, pp. 15-52; Saunders, 1994, p. 204). By combining new Tridentine spiritualities with the practices of mutual aid societies from the Early Middle Ages, such as the craftsmen's guilds, the brotherhoods went beyond strictly religious functions. They provided protection in times of disease, hunger, imprisonment and death, as well as organizing parties and other social activities. The commitment or statute, approved by the civil and/or ecclesiastical authorities, was a formal registration of the founding of a brotherhood (Reginaldo, 2018, p. 269). This document set out the religious standards, such as regular devotional practice and celebrating the patron saint's day, as well as commitments determining the rules of association, such as membership criteria, the organization of elections, a definition of positions on the management board, and the practice of mutual aid and philanthropy where appropriate. ${ }^{1}$ New, more modern criteria for belonging to brotherhoods were successively introduced, almost always added to the social  
[^0]
[^0]:    1 It is known, however, that many brotherhoods whose activities were recorded in a range of documents, had no written commitment. These organizations are often identified as brotherhoods of devotion.  
demarcators of the old regime and the associative practices inherited from medieval times. Thus, the new legal statuses (slave and freedman), as well as skin colour (white, black, brown, mulatto) and generic or specific geographical origin (ports of embarkation, ethnic identities and 'nations') became basic criteria for the constitution of Iberian and American brotherhoods (Fonseca, 2010, p. 436; Reginaldo, 2011, p. 155; Reis, 1996, p. 12; Soares, 2000, pp. 222-23; Viana, 2007, p. 154).