CONTESTED
LEGACIES
PORTUGAL
The Early Atlantic Slave Trade in Portugal: A Digital Archive of Contested Legacies
++SITES
LAGOS
LISBON
- Terreiro do Paço
- Casa dos Escravos
- Rua Nova dos Mercadores
- Campo das Cebolas
- Chafariz d’El-Rei
- Church of São Domingos
- Court of the Inquisition
- Rua do Poço dos Negros
- Monument to the Discoveries
++OBJECTIVES
- This digital archive aims to excavate and document the legacy of the early Atlantic slave trade in Portugal. We deal with sites in which the controversial memory of slavery ...
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++CONTRIBUTORS
1. Arlindo Manuel Caldeira
2. Pedro Cardim
3. Paula Cardoso
4. Gabriela Có
5. Beatriz Gomez Dias
6. Djuzé (Batoto Yetu)
7. Naky Gaglo
8. Giuseppe Marcocci
9. María Elena Morán Hernández
10. Ricardo Roque
11. Sofia Yala
PARTNERS
6. Church of São Domingos
Mapping Coordinates: 38.7147° N, 9.1388° W
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Status: Uncontested
Facing one corner of the central Rossio Square, the Church of São Domingos was one of Lisbon’s main religious centres. Several lay associations – or, brotherhoods – had their base in the church, including the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary. The latter became widely associated with black African Catholic devotion in the early modern Iberian world. The brotherhood of Lisbon was the centre of a harsh struggle over the right to emancipate enslaved brothers during the central decades of the sixteenth century, which led to a formal division between white and black members. The existence of two separate branches in the Lisbon census written by Cristóvão Rodrigues de Oliveira from the early 1550s.
From the archives
Privilege of manumitting enslaved members granted to the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of Lisbon (1518)
I further approve black members and stewards of the Brotherhood, by their own action or through their representatives, demanding and asserting the liberation and manumission of whichever black man or woman who will be members of the Brotherhood.
(Privileges and liberties granted by King John III to the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Island of São Tomé, 9 July 1526, in Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Chancelaria de D. João III, liv. 12, fl. 134v)
I further approve black members and stewards of the Brotherhood, by their own action or through their representatives, demanding and asserting the liberation and manumission of whichever black man or woman who will be members of the Brotherhood.
(Privileges and liberties granted by King John III to the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Island of São Tomé, 9 July 1526, in Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Chancelaria de D. João III, liv. 12, fl. 134v)
Original
Outro sy me praz que os homes pretos e mordomos da dita Comfraria, posam por sy e por seus procuradores demãdar e obrigar a ljberdade e alforria de quaesquer pretos e pretas que forem comfrades.
Outro sy me praz que os homes pretos e mordomos da dita Comfraria, posam por sy e por seus procuradores demãdar e obrigar a ljberdade e alforria de quaesquer pretos e pretas que forem comfrades.
Split of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of Lisbon (c. 1551)
And the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary, which is divided into two branches, that of the honourable persons and the other of the black freedmen and slaves of Lisbon.
(Cristóvão Rodrigues de Oliveira, Sumario e[m] que breuemente se contem alguas cousas assi ecclesiasticas como seculares que ha na cidade de Lisboa. Lisbon: Germain Gaillard [post 1554], fl. 27v)
And the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary, which is divided into two branches, that of the honourable persons and the other of the black freedmen and slaves of Lisbon.
(Cristóvão Rodrigues de Oliveira, Sumario e[m] que breuemente se contem alguas cousas assi ecclesiasticas como seculares que ha na cidade de Lisboa. Lisbon: Germain Gaillard [post 1554], fl. 27v)
Original
E a confraria de nossa senhora do rosairo repartida em duas, hûa de pessoas honrradas, E outra dos pretos forros E escrauos de Lixboa.
E a confraria de nossa senhora do rosairo repartida em duas, hûa de pessoas honrradas, E outra dos pretos forros E escrauos de Lixboa.