CHAPTER 4

The Onset of Conflict

For the insolence of the Defendants was so extreme that among the most injurious derisions that they cast in the face of the Plaintiff was the scandalous and most injurious name of sorceress, by which she fears the Defendants have defamed her before all her acquaintanceship; hence the Plaintiff worries that in this manner she shall come to be reputed as such.

—Libel Suit, Rio de Janeiro, 1772

Before the European witch-hunt released its full fury, magic had been associated with a logical order and a social order, as is still the case today in many communities studied by anthropologists. This integration, found among Germanic and Slavic peoples, for example, was thrown somewhat off balance during times of tension by the predominance of maleficent magic.¹

In a slave society like colonial Brazil, this tension was ongoing, a constituent part of the social formation itself, reflected in many of the magical practices and sorcery used by the colonists. Through these, the colonial inhabitants at times sought to safeguard their physical well-being and at others to do evil to possible enemies. Therefore such practices fulfilled a dual role: they were offensive, that is, meant to attack, and they were defensive, meant to protect and preserve.

These practices were found in all social ranks, where participants could be both subject and object. Not all such practices were directly related to the tension existing between masters and slaves, though a good share did indeed reflect it. They were very often an expression of personal rivalries or conflicts between neighbors, so common in European villages, where such tensions likewise gave birth to spells and maleficia. Many of the practices recreated centuries-old fantasies from the European imagination within a new context. Finally, some were unique to the world of slavery and colonial life.

Spells intended to do harm or even to kill must have been a very common part of daily colonial life. That they were so commonplace may explain why the era’s documents contain so many merely vague allusions to their practice, as if there were little point in dwelling on something so routine. For example, in Recife around 1728, the slave Luís was denounced as a reputed sorcerer and for “having a compact with the devil, for taking lives, and doing other things.”² In Conceição do Mato Dentro, when gold production was already declining, the black woman Luzia Lopes was said to be a sorceress; she was publicly flogged in the local chapel by a missionary on his way through the town. She used powders, ointments, bones, skulls, roots, and leaves, and the devil had tempted her into killing a female slave of mixed blood with the aid of such ingredients.3 In São João del Rei, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Custódia was professed to be a sorceress, though no concrete accusations were lodged against her. The only thing known was that a certain woman had fallen sick after premature childbirth, and when they had gone about “burying the blood of the birth, . . . the said Custódia found herself attending to this burial and had most eagerly asked to do so herself, and that later a bundle of silk or taffeta had been found, which resembled the clothing of the said Custódia, and that in the said bundle a small amount of blood from the same birth had been found, together with fingernail parings, hair, bones, and a spine of a [illegible] coendou [hedgehog].” Everyone suspected the bundle belonged to Custódia.⁴ To judge by the arsenal it contained, the young woman most certainly must have been a sorceress: after all, bones, menstrual blood, fingernails, and hair were always tied to spells.⁵

There were more specific spells and maleficia, intended to achieve a given end and hurt a certain individual. The same Beatriz Correia who forced the ships in which she traveled to make port sent Fernão Cabral de Taíde “the belly of a fish stuffed with things of sorcery,” just to upset him.⁶ In the early seventeenth century, the bishop of Brazil, Dom Constantino Barradas, was at constant odds with Governor Diogo de Menezes. The former accused the latter of covering up the offenses and indecency of Maria Barbosa, a woman eventually tried for sorcery in Lisbon. Maria Barbosa paid the bishop back for his hatred in kind: she sought out the old black woman Domingas Velosa, pestering her to arrange “some sorcery or some outright malevolence to kill the bishop.” Maria said, “[F]ind me something through which the bishop will get me out of here or make him go to the devil.” She also specified what kind of poison she wanted: a certain variety of beans and a small manioc bug, both of which were venomous.⁷

Married to a small farmer, Rita Maria supposedly caused serious disturbances in the district of the Santo Antonio chapel, in Pitangui. She was accused of bewitching the wife of Francisco Fernandes, Quitéria, who had fallen hopelessly ill. When Rita went to visit her, the sick woman’s condition worsened dramatically. In despair, Quitéria’s husband wanted to murder the alleged sorceress. But they held him back, arguing that “if he killed her, his wife would also die.” A black man by the name of Ventura tried some counter-charms, but he himself died a few days later, “lamenting that the said sorceress was killing him because he had aided the infirm.” The community was terrified by the reach of Rita Maria’s powers. Francisco Fernandes, the sick woman’s husband, rounded up three men and went to Rita’s house on horseback. “Placing her under arrest and leading her out of her house, they said they would kill her if his wife did not heal, for she was having fits and close to death.” Rita Maria calmed the husband down, assuring him that Quitéria would not die, which she did not. But Rita left other victims in the community: the daughter of Domingos Ferreira Pacheco and the entire family of Escolástico Vieira Antunes.8

Tensions between Neighbors

Denunciations of sorcery often reflected tension between neighbors, acquaintances, enemies. Accused of sorcery by her master’s entire family, as will be seen later, Luzia da Silva Soares was also incriminated by a black man named Francisco, who wanted to have “illicit dealings” with her but was unsuccessful in his efforts.⁹ As in Europe, petty concerns and village gossip laid the ground for denunciations and the creation of testimonies.¹⁰ Through the collective construction of the witch stereotype, a way was found to settle conflicts within community life, by “identifying and excluding those responsible for misfortunes.”¹¹ One case followed another—like that of Jasmin’s witch, to cite just one, rediscovered by Le Roy Ladurie.¹² At the same time, many sorceresses bragged to their neighbors about their powers in order to gain notoriety, attract clients, and eke out an existence. Both situations—when neighbors or acquaintances believed a woman wielded evil powers or when the sorceress made this claim herself—provided a justification for inquisitorial persecutions and created material for Inquiries and Visitations to the colony.¹³

The story of Antonia Maria, mentioned earlier, provides a fine illustration of the link between sorcery and conflicts between neighbors. From the time she had lived in Portugal, this witch upon request had offered up prayers meant to neutralize conflicts. She taught a lovely prayer intended to obtain someone’s forgiveness. Holding a bowl of water in her hand, she would say: “The heavens I see, the stars I find, Lady St. Anne, oh what can I do, for I have not yet seen so and so [male] today, nor so and so [female] . . . nor Noah, nor anyone who would give me news of them. Lady St. Anne, as the sea floweth, the heavens shine with stars, and the wind bloweth, and the fishes cannot enter the sea without water, nor the body without soul, so is it that so and so [male] and so and so [female] cannot stay without forgiveness granted.” Antonia would then put her mouth to the bowl; strike the ground with three switches from a quince tree; and invoke Barabbas, Satan, Caiaphas, Maria Padilha and all her company, as well as a “seahorse that shall in all haste bring them along their way.” She would next toss a bit of altar stone, wolf lip, lavender, sangue de leão [lion’s blood, a Brazilian plant] and barbasco [a plant used to render fish poison] into a boiling pot.¹⁴

Another example from the realm of conjuration incorporating Catholicism was the following supplication for pardon, also part of Antonia’s repertoire: “Donia is Donia, sweet is God; Requiem eternam for the souls and saints, faithful servants of God—God save thee, faithful saints of God; God save thee, save thee God. Those who walk in church plazas and holy places, be they baptized or yet to be, may it please all to gather, and incorporate, and enter unto the hearts of so and so [male], and of so and so [female], and grant her pardon; may eating and drinking and sleeping be gone, and may they call for so and so [male], that he desire to grant forgiveness.” When the purpose was to free a prisoner, Antonia’s ritual magic would be addressed to the presiding judge. She would first put to boil an animal’s heart pierced by three needles and three pins and then place it in a new pot with a bit of vinegar. Next she would recite: “So and so [naming the judge], here I boil thy heart, with all the nerves that are in thy body. With Barabbas, Satan, with Lucifer and his wife, may it please them all to gather and unto thy heart enter so that thou cannot be nor have rest save thou rule in favor of so and so, and all that he shall ask of thee, may it please thee to grant.”

Antonia was a veritable repository of prayers. Not only did they reinforce confidence in the medieval church’s curative power, but many of these supplications contained mutilated bits of semireligious verses that described episodes in the life of Christ or the saints. “They reflected the ancient belief that mythical events could be a timeless source of supernatural power,” as Keith Thomas has pointed out.15 A model example here is Antonia’s formula for seeing an offense pardoned. Standing before a boiling copper pot containing an infusion of vinegar, altar stone, and barbasco, she would recite these words:

When this barbasco flowereth, then shall so and so cease to love and want his kin. . . . When this altar stone be consecrated, then shall so and so fail to grant this pardon [and she would throw a chicken’s head into the boiler]. . . . When this cock croweth, then shall so and so fail to grant this pardon [and she would stir the mixture with a spoon]. . . . As St. Erasmus’s insides were stuck and wound on a sheave, thus shall so and so run and walk to this house [and she would strike three switches from a quince tree on the ground]. . . . Blessed St. Erasmus, I pray thee, may it please thee to grant this to me, and may thou enter unto the heart of so and so, and such tremors may thou bring him and his wife that they will not stop, till this pardon be granted.

In the Maria Padilha prayer above, and in another one likewise seeking pardon for offenses, a new element appears: the emphasis on certain herbs and plants, generally medicinal, employed here in ritual fashion.¹⁶ In the supplications above, lavender and barbasco are mentioned; the next prayer makes reference to three green switches that should be gathered in the valley of Lucifer, sharpened on the stone of Barabbas, and stabbed into the heart of the person whose pardon is sought: “With one, thou piercest his life, as such people have their pain and weariness; with another, thou piercest his heart, as such people have their pain and passion; and with the other, thou piercest his soul, as such people have their pain and sorrow.” Finally, the souls were urged to gather and incorporate: “Go and fare in these nine days, that I pray thou grant me.”

As seen earlier, Antonia Maria was arrested, tried by the Inquisition in Lisbon, and ended up in Pernambuco around 1715, together with another sorceress, Joana de Andrade. She found herself a house on Trincheiras Street, with a yard adjoining that of the 43-year-old mason João Pimentel. This neighbor was married to Bárbara de Mello, but the sorceress’s proximity, the adjacency of their houses, and, ultimately, “human weakness” compelled him to have illicit dealings with her, “spending on the said woman his meager earnings.” When Bárbara de Mello saw that her husband had lost his head over their neighbor, she began harassing Antonia. Meanwhile, the mason curbed his amorous whims, fearful of his wife’s wrath. But Antonia was persistent and started going over to her ex-lover’s house on the pretext of visiting Bárbara, who had fallen ill. After Bárbara recovered, she learned from Joana de Andrade that the sorceress Antonia had cast spells at her door to harm not only herself but her husband and household slaves as well. Antonia was particularly interested in doing evil to a young black slave, because her ex-lover had refused to give her the woman as a present. Indeed, the black woman and all the others soon took seriously ill. João Pimentel sought the aid of a Carmelite cleric to exorcise all members of the household. The place was sprinkled with holy water and fumigated with incense. João began “casting forth . . . from his body, out of his via do curso [rectum], much of the herb known as sedge, wood shavings, whole human teeth, bones, charcoal, little trees with branches, fish bones, pieces of stone, human hair, and much beach sand; and while the exorcisms were being performed, many stones were thrown, which fell off the roof into the house, and at night it sounded as if goats were running over the roof.” His wife and slaves also cast out the same “filth,” and they finally rid themselves of the spells only by resorting to purgatives of herbs and roots prepared by a black male curandeiro.

In addition to reflecting a conflict between two neighboring women over the love of a man, Antonia’s story is indicative of tensions between two sorceresses prompted by mutual jealousy over professional prestige. Antonia and Joana had been friends ever since their days in Portugal. During the course of her trial, perhaps to attenuate her crimes, Antonia stated she had learned everything she knew from Joana de Andrade, in Beja. They had arrived together in Brazil and had resumed their sorcery and divination together as well. But, according to Joana, her friend had gone even further, refining her technique in the colony through the teachings of a skilled sorceress named Páscoa Maria (the colonial world accentuated demoniacal vocations). Joana was resentful of her then-friend’s success. Taking deathly ill, she accused Antonia of trying to murder her, because she was fearful of the competition. When Antonia came to visit, Joana said: “Antonia had already seen what she wanted, which was to see her dead because she was robbing her of her livelihood.” Indeed, before getting sick and ultimately dying, Joana had worked as a counter-sorceress against Antonia’s spells. Joana had informed on her to Bárbara de Mello and had attempted to undo the maleficent magic she claimed her friend had performed against the mason’s family. Antonia never forgave this meddling in her affairs: she paid Joana back by killing her.17

Infanticide

Tensions also manifested themselves in the form of infanticide, actual or imagined. In Europe, one of the most generalized witch-beliefs was that these women murdered children. In the south of France, it was believed they suffocated babies in the cradle and that an infant’s body would bleed when a witch passed by.18 Infanticide was the crime with which the witches of Logroño were most frequently charged.¹⁹ Those sent to the stake in Lisbon in 1559 had gone about murdering children at the devil’s orders.²⁰ In the seventeenth century, in the duchy of Luxembourg, a great many children died due to their own parents’ neglect, since both had to work to support the family. References to consequent accidents were often cold and hard: “a one florin fine for a child destroyed by a pig.”²¹ During a time of crisis, blaming this kind of death on witches was perhaps a way of alleviating stress and assuaging guilt.²²

The terror of infanticide lingered on in the popular mentality. Sick, rachitic children were thought to have been sucked by witches.²³ The soles of old shoes were burned to drive these witches away, and unsheathed swords were hung at the heads of cribs.²⁴

In the late sixteenth century, the gypsy Joana Ribeira was accused by the Visitation to Bahia of bewitching a child through a magical procedure based on what certain authors have called the law of similarity.²⁵ Joana had gone to visit a gypsy friend in her child-bed. The infant had been born with its head wrapped in the afterbirth, and Joana had taken it home and salted it. The newborn started to get sick “and to turn black, and some thirty days suffered thus, without suckling nor opening its mouth, and wasting away, unable even to cry.” The mother then remembered the afterbirth and Joana Ribeira. She went to Joana’s house, opened a chest, and “found the said afterbirth made into a ball salted with church salt left over from the baptism.” The infant died.²⁶

It was common to link nursing problems and the infanticide practiced by witches. Among the evil talents attributed to witches in Gaul was the ability to dry up a mother’s milk.²⁷ In Pernambuco at the close of the sixteenth century, Isabel Antunes had been bedridden for six days after giving birth to a baby girl, when through her door walked a woman she knew only by sight and who was said to be a sorceress. It was Ana Jácome, a cross-eyed, husbandless woman. The newborn was lying near Isabel Antunes, and in the bed next to her was a 3-year-old slave. The stranger approached and said: “If thou dost not want the witches to come into thy house, take a table and turn it with its legs pointed upward, and a trivet with its feet turned upward as well, and with your broom atop, all behind the door.” She went up to the little mulata girl and murmured: “Thou, godchild, hast lived, whilst my daughter hath died.” She then spat three times all over the bed and went out the door, saying: “Now stay ye.” The new mother and the slave girl were immediately stricken with fever and the chills; the baby, which had not yet been baptized and “had always been of good health and suckled well, began to cry loudly, and succoring the child, they found it to be hexed, with its mouth sucked in both corners, with a black spot with bite marks in each corner of the mouth, and on its groin too another suck mark and black spot on both sides.” The baby never again nursed, “nor could it take anything into its mouth.” Baptized at home, the child cried incessantly till it could no longer open its mouth, and then it died.28

Ana Jácome’s story meshes with similar reports from Europe and seems to belong to one of the groups of stereotyped witch-beliefs. In the early seventeenth century, in the south of France, the sorceress Marie de Sansarric breathed into the mouth of a small child, hexing it; never again was it able to speak or shed tears, and it died some time afterward.²⁹ Using their sight, touch, or breath, the Portuguese witches burned at the stake in 1559 would leave a child “so dazed and poisoned that it no longer suckled and died in a few days.”³⁰ The demons of Logroño sucked small children “by their nature” (genitals), leaving them feeble; they would squeeze them “fiercely with their hands and suck them hard.”³¹ Sucking blood was also said to be a practice of Yoruba sorceresses in twentieth-century Nigeria.³²

In eighteenth-century Minas, in the region of Ouro Preto, Florencia do Bonsucesso seduced “some men into using her in an evil way.” For this purpose she kept “a shriveled child at home, wherefrom she removed dry meat and reduced it to powder to use in her sorceries.”³³ Luzia da Silva Soares, a sorceress who lived in the arraial of Antonio Pereira, had learned a number of magical practices from the black man Mateus, who carried round with him “a shriveled child whom he had hexed, kept in a shepherd’s leather bag” for use in spell-making.³⁴ In the collective imagination, these mummified children were the very embodiment of society’s fears of infanticide by witches.

Tensions between Master and Slave

Among many other crimes, Luzia was accused of killing two of her mistress’s children. She had used the brains of one to prepare a porridge or potion to make her boss sick.³⁵ But Luzia da Silva Soares’s practice of infanticide illuminates yet another facet of the matter: the tensions between master and slave. This was not the death of just any child but of children belonging to the master’s family.

As seen in earlier chapters, demoniacal traits had been attributed to Brazil ever since its discovery. Indigenous peoples, blacks, and, later on, the settlers were viewed as a race of demons. Settlers who were also slave-owners—and who, beginning in the eighteenth century, would be seen as potential demons with a penchant for rebellion—often had a demonized view of their captives. Concomitantly, slavery itself pushed slaves toward demonization. Bastide has shown how, through slavery, “African culture ceased to be the communal culture of a global society and became the exclusive culture of a social class, of one distinct group in Brazilian society—a class that was economically exploited and socially subordinated.”36 In this context, maleficent magic or sorcery became a necessity for a society based on slavery. It not only furnished weapons with which the slaves could wage a silent battle against their masters (quite often the only battle possible); it also legitimized repression of and violence against these captives. Keith Thomas documents how the inhabitants of sixteenth-century English villages committed acts of extreme violence against sorceresses, believing they could in this way undo the spell.³⁷ In Brazil, this belief in the redemptive, purifying power of physical violence found a powerful ally in slavery’s need for exemplary punishment. Slaves could be punished for legitimate reasons since they were also sorcerers. Seeing them as sorcerers was in turn an expression of the paranoia of the masters.

The association between sorcery and punishment appears in the very early days of colonization. Brandônio tells us that he had a mulata slave of whom he was very fond. She once informed him about a theft by a male slave said to be a sorcerer. The girl then fell gravely ill: she gasped for air, rolled her eyes, ground her teeth, and foamed at the mouth. Her master soon concluded that the sorcerer was the author of the maleficia vexing the slave girl. He summoned the alleged sorcerer, “stating to him that he would have no longer life than that which the girl enjoyed” and stating further that if he did not lift the spell, “he would be passed through the mill shafts.” Terrified, the slave “agreed to cure the sick girl,” asking only for permission to go into the woods to pick some special herbs. Zealously wishing to control everything that happened within the realm of his plantation, Brandônio told a trusted slave to follow the herbalist and discover which herb would be used as an antidote. “But the other was so sly that, with the intent thereby to protect against this, he gathered many and diverse herbs, amongst which he included that of which he had need.” So the spy was unable to ascertain the proper herb for such cases. Once administered to the sick girl, the herb did its job; she soon reacted, opening her mouth and eyes, “purging greatly below and above.”³⁸

Masters were thus taking precautions against their slaves’ magical powers from early on. Their fears lasted as long as slavery. In the early eighteenth century, in Pernambuco’s parish of Santo Amaro do Jaboatão, Captain José Carneiro wanted to keep his distance from his slave Marcos; he did not like to see the boy in his house and had in fact relocated him to a different farm, because rumor had it he was a sorcerer.³⁹ José Francisco’s master “did not wish his Negroes to use any prayers, for he was afraid that they were mandinga.” He must have punished them harshly for this practice, because a frightened José Francisco threw out all the pouches he carried with him.⁴⁰

Expressing a still incipient tension concerning their masters, the slaves attempted to deliver themselves from castigation by using spells. Although mutual accusations of sorcery at times reflected friction among the slaves themselves, they also served as an escape route to avoid possible punishment. Luís da Silva was a slave in a house where Luzia da Silva Soares lived. His foot swelled up after he stepped on a thorn while stealing corn in the field. Afraid to confess this deed to his masters, he accused Luzia of putting a hex on him.41 Many slaves in Minas believed that “the wheat root that grew in the swamps” had the power to save them from punishment.⁴² Others, like the black man Manuel da Piedade, would scrape the soles of their masters’ shoes to avert beatings.⁴³ Marcelina Maria, who had been born in Rio but went to live in Lisbon while still young, kept the scrapings from her mistress’s shoe soles wrapped in two small bits of paper. When the moon came out, Marcelina would make three crosses in the moonlight, place the papers between her legs, and go to sleep like that; afterward she would store them “in the tuck of her skirt.” She changed masters quite often and always abhorred bondage and punishment. In despair, she at times “desired to be sold to the Brazils,” land of her birth. Her mistresses were jealous of Marcelina and their husbands, who in turn were jealous of the boyfriends Marcelina would arrange to meet on occasion. One of her masters, João Eufrásio,

due to receiving news . . . that she was the mistress of a Negro house slave, ordered her to strip naked, tied her hands, one Negro taking hold of her, and another flogging her, and the most shameful for her was that she saw herself unclothed before six or seven men, one of whom was the said master of hers, and his eldest son, seeking to know from her, by means of this harsh punishment, how many times she had copulated with the said Negro man, who was present as well and was also flogged at the same time and on the same occasion.⁴⁴

Sortilege involving shavings from soles or ground trod upon by the intended victim was also common among European populations. In the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese sorceress Maria Cebreira was accused of bewitching people by taking earth from beneath their feet.⁴⁵ Under France’s ancien régime, people were advised to spit in their right shoe before putting it on in order to ward off maleficia.⁴⁶ It is hard to tell whether this was likewise a current practice among African populations or if slaves like Manuel and Marcelina had picked it up while living in a European city. In any case, it is interesting to note that when employed by captives it took on a new connotation: it was meant to ward off the punishments inherent in the slave system. Once again, the colony recast magical practices and endowed them with a singularly colonial meaning.

At a second level of tension, sorcery and magical practices were a way for slaves to get out of the system without destroying it. This option could be paternalistic in nature. For example, when called upon by Catarina Pereira da Matta, Friar Luís de Nazaré (whose name appeared earlier) cooked pig’s blood, cut the pork into pieces, and went to throw it all at the door of Catarina’s husband with a view to obtaining the freedom of a slave named Inácio.⁴⁷ The slave José Francisco, who also resided in Lisbon, performed spells at the behest of other slaves to obtain their freedom. Sought out by Antonio, who wanted his foreign-born master to sell him, José Francisco asked Antonio to “bring him, from the house wherein he gave assistance to the said master, a small amount of rubbish . . . , and to scrape the sole of his shoes, and to bring some phlegm of his.” He mixed it all together with a bit of sulfur, mashed it, and put it in a small cloth bag, “which, cooked, he gave to the said Negro, telling him to bury it next to the door through which his master entered.” Three days later, he should dig up the bag and keep it, and soon after he would be sold. José Francisco was also called upon by four black men who wanted a prayer that would enable them to open a certain door; inside the house they would find a great deal of money, with which they intended to buy their freedom and “some things needed for their use.” A letter was supposed to be drawn up in the terms of a diabolic contract that would hand their souls over to the devil, but it was never written. In his state of delirium under torture (which will be analyzed later), José Francisco told how he had counted on the devil’s aid to free himself from captivity.48

At a third level, slaves could turn against their masters’ property, initiating a more direct kind of protest against the slave system. Gratuitously—or rather because “the demon had tempted her”—the Mina slave Joana killed a slave belonging to her mistress, Dona Maria de Sá Cavalcante, in Conceição do Mato Dentro.⁴⁹ Another Joana, slave at the Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe sugar plantation in the state of Pará, raised a knife against her mistress. Such attitudes led the second Joana’s masters to keep a careful eye on her. During interrogations meant to ascertain the slave’s guilt, her masters said that “she does not have a very good nature and is fond of doing and saying evil.” Their distrust had prompted them to warn the indigenous slave Filipa Josefa to be wary of Joana. But when Joana offered Filipa a gourd full of the delicacy tacacá, “which is the juice of manioc roots,” plus three stewed fish, the Indian could not resist. That very same night, “she began, with a series of vomitings, to spew from her mouth a most great abundance of blood.” Her masters first punished Joana on their own. They must have tortured her (though no specific mention is made of this in the records), and they put her in the stocks. When they decided to take her to the town jail, in effect shifting the matter into public hands, the unfortunate woman had to be carried on her husband’s back, “for she was unable to walk on her own feet, due to being hobbled by the long time she had spent in the stocks.” Once in the clutches of the Inquisition, she confessed that because of her masters’ constant punishments, she had decided to arm herself as best she could. She had learned sortilege using roots of the cipó picão vine, with which she rubbed her wrists in the form of a cross, saying: “Master paitinga [literally, white father], as thou hast wrath against me, so shalt thou warm thy heart.” Whenever she went to speak to her master, she would place a piece of this vine under her tongue to protect herself. She had grown to hate Filipa because this other slave was “very attentive to her master,” and so she accused Filipa of doing evil and provoking punishments against her. She put tajá roots in Filipa’s food to poison her.50

Joana attacked one of her master’s slaves, thus repaying her punishments by causing monetary damages. But she also wanted to kill her mistress. Luzia da Silva Soares, the sorceress from Antonio Pereira, performed generalized witchcraft against her master’s whole family. Among the many accusations hurled at Luzia were that she had hexed gold-mining operations so they would produce no more and that she wanted to see the master’s entire family dead so she could take over the plantation herself.⁵¹ Crimes against the master’s property mingled with crimes against the physical safety of the master and his family, perhaps constituting the most direct contestation of slavery through recourse to sorcery. A cause of much worry for masters, suicide itself was a crime against their property. Antonil astutely perceived the close relationship between murder and suicide and always made references to them together: if “punishment be frequent and excessive,” the Jesuit said, “either the slaves shall leave, fleeing into the woods, or shall kill themselves, as they are accustomed to doing, smothering themselves or hanging themselves, or they shall try to take the lives of those who treat them so ill, resorting (if need be) to the diabolical arts.” Captured in mocambos in the woods where they fled, “it may be that they shall kill themselves, before their master flogs them or before some relative of theirs takes vengeance into his hands, either through sorcery or through poison.”⁵²

In situations of extreme despair, masters were murdered, shaking the slave structure through violence that was often spontaneous and not always conscious. The black woman Josefa would wash her nether parts and put the water in her masters’ food to do them harm.⁵³ She lived in Minas, like the Coura slave by the name of Quitéria, who in the mid-eighteenth century had performed spells on her mistress and left her on her deathbed. Under punishment, Quitéria “had confessed that a Negro man, José Mina, slave to Gabriel Gonçalves, had given them to her to place in her mistress’s food, and in her bed as well.”⁵⁴ Another Minas resident, the same Joana mentioned earlier (who succumbed to the devil’s temptation to kill female co-workers), ended up making her mistress Maria de Sá Cavalcante a widow.⁵⁵

Although it really only came into existence in the early eighteenth century, Minas Gerais had always led other regions of Brazil when it came to clashes between masters and slaves involving magical practices and sorcery. It outranked Bahia, where the slave population was even greater in number, undoubtedly because the slave system in Minas was more complex and existed within a more extensively urbanized environment.⁵⁶ Conflicts erupted there constantly, upsetting the gold-rich arraiais. The greatest concentration of quilombos could probably be found in Minas Gerais during the colonial period.⁵⁷ The African cultural complex was also best preserved there, as will be seen shortly.

Mandinga Pouches

In terms of magical practices and sorcery, colonial tensions found their most consistent expression in bolsas de mandinga, also known as patuás. It can even be said that these mandinga pouches were the most typically colonial form of sorcery in Brazil: first, because of their popularity and the broad extent of their use. From northern to southern Brazil, people of the most varied social ranks (admittedly, almost always men) would carry them. Therein lies the second argument: use of these bags was not unique to one segment of society, though they were widely employed by slaves. Third, they were perhaps the most syncretic of all magical practices and forms of sorcery utilized by Brazilians, a unique fusion of European, African, and indigenous cultural habits that combined the European tradition of amulets with Amerindian fetishism and the customs of African populations. Finally, they were typical of the eighteenth century, with no mention of their use during the First and Second Visitations; the first reference to them dates to the late seventeenth century, while all others come only in the eighteenth century. This information is of marked significance since amulets were an age-old custom and in the previous two centuries the Brazilian colonists would have been familiar with them. Why then did the habit of carrying these little pouches become widespread only in the eighteenth century? Perhaps the answer is that it takes time to construct a syncretic practice with a highly symbolic meaning. The time that it took for the use of mandinga pouches to become widespread was, curiously enough, the same time taken to construct a colonial mentality, that is, the perception of what Luís dos Santos Vilhena was to call “living in colonies.”58

Mandinga pouches seem to have been most popular in northern Brazil, that is, in the regions corresponding to the states of Grão-Pará and Maranhão. Yet it is hard to know whether they were really more common in this region or whether this was merely apparently the case, since the only eighteenth-century Visitation of which there is any knowledge took place in the north. The seventeenth-century mention of the bags noted earlier involved a barber from this region. Manuel João, originally from Maranhão, moved to his grandfather’s house in Grão-Pará at the age of sixteen. Accused of being superstitious, a sorcerer, and a devil conjurer, Manuel was found wearing one of these pouches round his neck when he was arrested on May 9, 1668. The ouvidor had the pouch removed and inside it discovered a paper with the Our Lady of Montserrat prayer (found in the sepulcher in Jerusalem), intended to ward off danger, with “four marked rules” on it; a piece of torn paper; a crumpled paper containing many pieces of Agnus Dei; some garlic; two stalks of rue; and a bone the size of a fingertip, wrapped in a paper “and appearing to belong to some dead man, for the paper wherein it was wrapped had a spot, whereby it appeared that the bone had been wrapped in it still fresh.”⁵⁹

From the late Middle Ages, fashioning amulets had been considered one of a sorcerer’s main activities. In Decretorum libri, Burchard of Worms censured the use of herbs, magical words, and pieces of wood or stones and condemned both those who made amulets and those who asked others to do so for them, with the intention of wearing them sewn into their clothing or attached to their bodies.60 Cesarius of Arles likewise condemned use of so-called characters: pieces of wood, stone, metal, fabric, or parchment covered with signs. In 813 the Third Council of Tours banned carrying about on one’s person the bones of dead animals and charmed herbs.⁶¹ Shortly before that, St. Boniface had listed the works of the devil: magical filters, charms and sortilege, the belief in witches and werewolves, the practice of abortion, disobedience to masters, and carrying amulets on one’s person.⁶² Known as ligaduras, amulets attached to the body—on the arm, leg, or neck—were believed to safeguard against illness and accidents.⁶³ Manuel João had thus committed an offense defined centuries before. But he found himself in the company of some illustrious individuals: in 1597 Elizabeth I gave the earl of Essex a coin from the time of Edward III to protect him during his expedition to the Azores.⁶⁴ Manuals popular under the ancien régime explained how to make talismans.⁶⁵ Europeans resisted the ban on them: “Why is it that using a key of St. Peter, namely, the key from a church dedicated to St. Peter, which must be placed on the back to protect against wrath, is condemned as superstitious, while carrying round an Agnus Dei, clothes of the Virgin, or scapulars is encouraged as protection against all disease?” asks François Lebrun.⁶⁶ Why was the use of scapulars accepted, while the use of mandinga pouches was rejected in colonial Brazil?

Both talismans and mandinga pouches can be considered part of what Etienne Delcambre classifies as the “law of contact.”⁶⁷ In terms of magic, it was believed that beneficial fluids emanated from the objects inside the bag or from the talisman itself. The Mandinga or Malinkê were the people that inhabited one of the Muslim kingdoms in the Niger valley in the eighth century, the kingdom of Mali. In Brazil, this name became transformed into Malê. In Rio as well as Bahia, Malê were considered masters of black magic.⁶⁸ It was their habit to wear amulets around their necks, containing Solomon’s seals or bits of paper with verses from the Koran.⁶⁹ It is hard to tell whether it was really the Malê who introduced mandinga pouches to the colony. But it is interesting to note that in the eighteenth century, for a series of reasons, the expression bolsa de mandinga—which was linked to the colonial system and to the Africans who were forced to serve as colonial slaves—came to refer to a specific kind of talisman that blended European, African, and, in a certain way, indigenous practices as well.

In the eighteenth century, the earliest references to these pouches come from Pernambuco. While not describing the object as a mandinga pouch, Antonia Maria’s trial narrates how this sorceress gave out bags of wolf lip and altar stone so that whoever carried them would be successful in buying and selling. A prayer went along with the bag: “Altar stone, Altar stone, that was found in the sea, and consecrated on land, as the bishops and archbishops, friars and clerics, cannot say mass without thee, so be it that all creatures that shall touch me cannot be without me, and shall give me all that they have, and shall tell me all that they know, and shall desire to buy all my fabric, and where I am shall no one else be able to sell, nor to buy.”70 About ten years after Antonia was tried, another Recife resident, who lived on Água Verde Street, used a pouch to “seal his body” [fechar o corpo]. His informer was the licentiate Caetano da Silveira, in whose home the following episode occurred. João de Siqueira Varejão Castelo Branco, the accused, “had said that nothing of iron could enter him, and he showed him a large pouch that he hung round his neck.” When the licentiate expressed skepticism, João de Siqueira called a house slave—“a person of small wit”—and “cast the pouch about his neck, and wanted to plunge a sword through him, to which the Denouncer did not consent, but said that in such things he did not believe, and at the Denouncer’s many pleas he removed the pouch.” But still João de Siqueira did not give up trying to prove his talisman’s powers. He hung the bag around his own neck, laid the sword on the licentiate’s bookshelf, and, “placing the point at his left breast, with fury and wrath he pushed himself onto the sword, which curved but did not in any wise harm him, and he soon became angry, and wrathful.” Inside the bag there were some “communion cloths and purificators, and other little things.”⁷¹

By the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the union of the mandinga pouch with sacred elements had been defined. The altar stone was a piece of marble with an opening where relics of holy martyrs were placed and over which priests consecrated the communion host and wine. It possessed great magical meaning, for it was indispensable to the mystery of the Eucharist. The Constituições primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia referred to it as a “portable altar” because whenever a cleric said mass other than at the church altar, he was supposed to bring the altar stone with him and place it upon a table, where mass would be celebrated.⁷² In the European popular mentality, the altar stone’s significance must have intermingled not only with that of the stones of virtue from the tradition of marvels—which only the best knight could approach—but also with a whole gamut of holy stones: Roman ones, used to delimit the boundaries of provinces and private properties, and barbarian ones, revered by Germanic peoples.⁷³ As to people who carried bits of altar stones to bring them luck—such as the Portuguese witch Dona Paula Tereza de Miranda Souto Maior, mentioned earlier—it was recommended that they not wear them during mass.⁷⁴ Despite this appreciation of the stone’s religious significance, the tendency was to turn it inside out—that is, its magical meaning was simultaneously a product of its religious meaning and of its negation. For Mandrou, the tendency to invert church rites constituted an indication of the devil’s intervention in human life, manifesting itself not only in the sabbat—an inverted mass—but also in the sorcery derived from these rites, at times resorted to even by priests.⁷⁵

A sanguinho, or purificator, was a thin piece of napkin-shaped cloth that priests used to wipe off the chalice after consecrating the wine into Christ’s blood. It was usually kept in the sacristy after mass, and stealing it was like having the blood of Jesus.76

Something that would later become a mandatory feature of these mandinga pouches was already appearing in Pernambuco: pieces of paper or letters where prayers and cabalistic signs were mixed together. Antonio José Barreto carried one of these in his pocket, with an inverted creed, an Ave Maria, a “sign of Solomon,” and words supposed to defend him from armed fights and to ensure him numerous friendships.⁷⁷ Often engraved on the doorways of Portuguese houses to ward off the evil eye, the sign of Solomon or saimão traced its roots to ancient traditions.⁷⁸ This six-pointed star had been widely used in ritual magic and conjuration during the Middle Ages.⁷⁹ From the early days of Christianity, using the name and writings of Solomon in certain magical practices and amulets was a common practice, as attested by Origenes. Over time these were replaced by verses from the Gospel and by the relics of saints, as St. Jerome observed women doing in the Christian communities of Palestine.⁸⁰ In the popular mentality and within the realm of magical practices, however, the Solomonic tradition maintained its allure over the centuries, reaching colonial lands.

One very curious fact about the mandinga pouches is that much of our information on them comes from trials involving slaves residing in Lisbon. In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, Lisbon’s population included a substantial black contingent. Many of the Portuguese government employees brought their captives back with them when they returned to the metropolis. Large numbers of black Africans consequently roamed the streets of Lisbon, having first lived on the Atlantic islands or in various captaincies of Brazil; others had only stopped at these places along their way, as the slave ships carried them to the Kingdom. Some saw their stay in Portugal as temporary and longed to return to Africa or Brazil. The fact that they circulated in the midst of the colonial system, disseminating African cultural values and (among other magical practices) the use of these bags, again underscores the uniquely colonial character of these practices.

Although there was a close link between the colonial universe and these pouches, their use was not limited to slaves and settlers. Many whites born and raised in the metropolis soon took up the custom. In 1700 Manuel Lopes, cabin boy and son of a tavern-keeper from Batalha, was condemned on presumptive evidence of a pact and for carrying a pouch. In 1711 it was the turn of Francisco Xavier, ajudante de auxiliares [militia adjutant] from Galvêas. But greatest usage was observed among slaves and settlers. In 1704 Jacques Viegas, a black man born on the Mina coast and a resident of Lisbon, was accused of carrying one of these pouches; his trial ended in an auto-da-fé. In 1714 the same thing occurred with Francisco Lourenço de Vasconcelos, a white man born in Angola. Two years later, the freedman Diogo Lopes Pereira, originally from Cape Verde, met with a similar fate.⁸¹

In the early eighteenth century, use of these pouches gradually defined itself through these interactions involving Portugal, Brazil, and Africa. Although the practice was adopted on both sides of the Atlantic, it would gradually come to be associated with Brazil, where it was to achieve final form under the name bolsa de mandinga or mandinga pouch.

In August 1731 Miguel Vieira, apprentice to a tinsmith, went of his own accord before the Board of the Holy Office to denounce a black slave named Mateus. The story seems to omit some facts. The denouncer, son of a deceased commissary in Brazil, had run into Mateus one night at the door of his house. Mateus gave him a pouch and asked him to keep it for him. Miguel did not open the bag and had no idea what it contained; he nevertheless put it away in a box until one day, following the advice of his neighbor, a priest, and of a young man named João, he decided to take the pouch to the Board of the Inquisition and lodge a denunciation. He finished his narrative by stating that Mateus had earlier asked him to transcribe a prayer of Our Lady of Montserrat, which he did without ever knowing what purpose it would serve. He stressed that he had acted innocently in regard to both the bag and the prayer.82 The denunciation makes no reference to the bag’s contents.

To my knowledge, three of the most complete trials involving mandinga pouches occurred in the years 1730 and 1731. Two of these were related, as the defendants were friends and had acted together. As to the third man, although it seems quite likely he had contact with the first two, there is not enough information to confirm this. The third man was Manuel da Piedade, a slave to Captain Gaspar de Valadares who had been born in the city of Bahia and later become a resident of eastern Lisbon. He was arrested in March 1730, one year after a number of slaves in Coimbra had denounced him as a mandingueiro. His accusers included Luís de Lima, Antonio Criança, José Luís, Sebastião Rocha, and Ventura Ramos, most of who were from western Africa’s Mina coast. Shortly after his trial began, Manuel da Piedade confessed that he carried a prayer of the Just Judge in his pocket, which afforded protection against the dangers of the sea and of beatings. In common use in Brazil, it had been given to him by a young man when he lived in Bahia. He had later resided in Pernambuco, Porto, Vila de Viana, Esposende, Braga, and finally Lisbon, where he ended up after fleeing from his master. The strongest accusation against him was that he sold the ingredients needed for mandinga pouches, which he prepared with the devil’s assistance in the countryside near the cities where he lived. One of these ingredients was a certain prayer whose efficacy depended upon its being placed under an altar stone, where three masses should be celebrated.⁸³

The other two black men were José Francisco Pereira and José Francisco Pedroso, slaves to two brothers, João Francisco Pedroso and Domingos Francisco Pedroso, respectively. In this case the intellectual mentor for the sorcery was José Francisco Pereira, while the other slave simply carried out his orders. Both of them had the habit of placing prayers beneath altar stones, like Manuel da Piedade, and of making mandinga pouches for sale. The slave Pedroso named a number of his customers, who always had some kind of tie to Brazil: José, “who lives in Remolares, slave to a man who came from Rio de Janeiro on the last fleet”; “Francisco, slave to Matias da Guerra, who lived in Jesus, and was already deceased, which Negro embarked with a fleet from Bahia to Maranhão”; “the Negro Antonio, slave to a cleric, who lives in the woods of Alcântara, and also has houses in Confeitaria, and was sold to Pernambuco”; “a Negro named Miguel, slave to the bishop’s assistant in São Paulo, and who was sold to Bahia”; “Ventura, last name unknown, slave to Paulo Rodrigues, understood to be a businessman, resident across the street from the Casa da Moeda, and [who] went to Rio de Janeiro.” All of these and other black men from Alfama, whom Pedroso was unable to name, “had purchased mandingas from the said Negro José at the time of the fleet.”84

Pedroso had lived for some time in Rio, where he had been baptized and confirmed and had first heard of mandingas, “and that they served well to protect from knife slashes.” As soon as he arrived from the colony, Pereira was badgered by black men asking him for mandingas: “Since he . . . had a short time before come from Brazil, many Negroes beleaguered him . . . so that he would give them mandingas, for he must have brought some from there.”⁸⁵ For slaves who lived in the metropolis, and for the inquisitors as well, Brazil was a demoniacal land where sorcery flourished. One of the mandinga ingredients prepared by the two friends was a root that the demon gave them “so that, when they tarried in the house, their masters would not beat them.” They did not know what plant it was, only that it “smelled much, and comes from Brazil.”⁸⁶

The pouches were made of cloth, almost always white, and were basically intended to protect their bearers from knife or gunshot wounds. They contained flint stones, onyx, sulfur, gunpowder, a lead bullet, a silver vintém, a dead man’s bone, and the famous writings that were supposed to have spent time under an altar stone. The papers were covered with letters and figures written with the blood of a white or sometimes black chicken or else with the blood of José Francisco’s own left arm. The prayer of St. Mark was also included: “O glorious St. Mark, St. Mark mark thee, Jesus Christ soothe thee, St. Manso [literally, St. Gentle] calm thee, the Holy Spirit humble thee, my St. Mark, glorious saint, I ask thee that my blood not be spilled nor my strength be taken nor my enemies encountered, by the power of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, that if my enemies have eyes, that they not see me, and if they have mouths, that they not speak to me, by the power of Lucifer, at all times be with me, where I encounter my enemies.” An acquaintance of José Francisco Pereira would copy out the prayers since the slave was illiterate. Once ready, the bag was fumigated with incense. Sometimes the contents were buried at midnight and then dug up before being placed in the bag. On St. John’s Night, the sorcerer would place the bags under the bonfire to render them more efficacious.87

In 1743 numerous people came before the Board of the Inquisition in Lisbon to denounce the slave Antonio Mascarenhas as a mandingueiro. The accused eventually presented himself and confessed to engaging in magical practices. He had been born in Angola but had left there when still a child and had gone to Funchal, in Madeira. He had also spent time in Rio de Janeiro, the island of São Miguel, Lisbon, and Mazagão. Some nine years earlier, in Rio de Janeiro, he had learned of mandinga pouches from a ship captain’s slave, who had given him “a letter that he said was from a mandinga, with diverse figures painted in red ink, whereupon there was an image of Christ Our Lord crucified, and an ugly figure that resembled the face of a person, and many other things in the way of trivets and gridirons, and more figures.” The letter would safeguard its bearer from fights and rows and prevent injuries. With it in hand, Antonio returned to Madeira, where he gave it to the student Antonio da Silva for transcription. The student copied the writing and also taught him that “for the mandinga to be most strong, he must place it between the altar stone and altar cloth so that mass would be said upon it.”⁸⁸ Notions about mandinga pouches and the letters placed inside them were therefore circulating around the Portuguese colonial system in the eighteenth century. But their paternity was always assigned to the Brazilian colony.

In the mid-eighteenth century, use of mandinga pouches had become prevalent in Bahia. In Vila de Cachoeira, in 1749, Miguel Moniz, pardo, was arrested at the order of the district’s ouvidor geral [superior magistrate]. In his house, inside a basket, he had found a “small bundle, with two covers, one of flaxen cloth, the other of fine cotton sewn around, wherein was held a little bundle of black hairs that appeared to be of an animal, tied with a string of white thread, half a sheet of wrapped paper written in block and, inside of this, some powders with beads of quicksilver and other hairs.” They also found a half-sheet of paper “written along a border, and a fourth sheet also written on one part, which contained prayers with strange words in honor of saints.” Although his name was inscribed on these papers, Miguel denied having anything to do with them. He claimed that he had no idea what they were all about and that they had arrived inside the basket, unbeknownst to him. He was removed to the Salvador jail and eventually released, in April 1750, receiving pardon along with other prisoners on Good Friday.⁸⁹ At no time did the secular or ecclesiastical authorities refer to a mandinga, although this was the object described. Was it possible they were unfamiliar with the term?

Around 1750 three friends, all of them slaves, were arrested in Jacobina for using mandinga pouches. Their stories are intertwined: they had all traveled together to Portugal, shared time in prison, and probably appeared in the same auto-da-fé, although the Inquisition found them guilty at different levels. Their names were Luís Pereira de Almeida, twenty, slave to Dona Antonia Pereira de Almeida, residing at her small farm in Riachão; Mateus Pereira Machado, fifteen, slave to Veríssimo Pereira Machado, residing in the countryside of Vila de Cachoeira and assistant at Vila de Jacobina; and José Martins, twenty-six, a black freedman, son of freed black parents, married, born and residing in Riachão, at the small farm called “Joana de Andrade.” José Martins’s father had given him a mandinga pouch meant to instill bravery; it contained prayers in the Holy Name of Jesus and of St. Cyprian, along with a purificator and altar stone. Some time later, José sold it to Mateus, who gave him a dog in exchange.90 All indications are that Mateus had another pouch, holding not only an altar stone and purificator but bits of a paschal candle, a consecrated host, an inverted creed, and the following words:

So say I . . . that the sea shall give me its fleets, Jesus Christ, His power: O, my altar stone, that in the sea hath been created, and on land found, in Rome confirmed, I ask thee and pray thee by the seven virgin maids, by the seven godmothers, by the seven married women, by the seven devout women, by the seven bishops, and by the seven archbishops, and as the Supreme Pontiffs cannot celebrate mass without thee, I ask thee and pray thee by the seven hanged men, by the seven [illegible] men, by the seven men shot down by a strong man that is Barabbas, and Satan, and Caiaphas, and Lucifer that is my king, my duke, prince of my battles, victor of the army, that all these shall be in my favor and aid in my intent, and [illegible] me [illegible] . . . winds like a soldier in the field.⁹¹

Luís, however, was not really an advocate of mandinga pouches, although he was arrested and tried in Lisbon. His offense was keeping one of Mateus’s bags for a while.⁹² It is the words of Luís—as reported by José Martins—that reveal the scope of this custom among Bahian blacks. The two friends had been talking about the seizure of one of the bags when Luís revealed to José that it held small consecrated hosts. “We are lost,” said a distressed José. His friend calmed him by saying that, after all, numerous blacks carried such hosts around in bags.⁹³

José Fernandes, a free pardo, widower, and shoemaker, also ended up in an inquisitorial prison because he used a mandinga pouch. He stole a small host from mass and carried it around, along with superstitious prayers, “for the indecent purpose of warding off dangers and not being harmed by any weapon.” A week later, repentant, he swallowed the communion wafer and prayed an act of contrition. In a palm tree in the woods he hid the cloth in which the wafer had been wrapped, but he kept the bag round his neck. His reason for resorting to the pouch was a little different from that of so many fellow Bahians. The widower had fallen in love with a married woman and was having an affair with her. His beloved had begun to ask him to kill her husband, who in turn was going around saying he would kill the rival courting his wife. José Fernandes turned to the amulet’s powers in hopes of acquiring strength to resist the temptation of adultery, while at the same time it made him feel safer, with his body “sealed.”94

During the course of the eighteenth century, the use of mandinga pouches became better defined and more complex. Paschal candles and communion wafers were also utilized in Europe. Around the sixth century, Eucharist bread was stolen for use in apotropaic rites and magical practices in general.⁹⁵ Six centuries later, Hugh of St. Victor accused sorcerers of using baptismal water and holy chrism oils in the making of amulets.⁹⁶ In fourteenth-century Ireland, Lady Alice Kyteler kept in her closet a “wafer of sacramental bread which was said to be stamped with the Devil’s name.”⁹⁷ One century later, the Constituições do Arcebispado de Lisboa condemned use of the consecrated host and holy chrism oils in the preparation of spells.⁹⁸ In early modern Spain, Rodrigo de Reynosa’s “Coplas de las comadres” leaves a record of the use of wax from paschal candles to “make spells and things for romantic purposes.”⁹⁹ Communion wafers were stolen to make ointments under France’s ancien régime.¹⁰⁰ In 1651, in a village in the duchy of Luxembourg, a poor woman stole the host lying on the altar and ate it, thereafter bleeding greatly from the mouth and nose. She was eventually burned at the stake. Her sacrilege was punished, but word spread of the miracle, which was nevertheless exalted—“as superstitions indeed are repressed, while the worship of saints and the veneration of relics are exalted,” in the words of Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat.¹⁰¹

There had thus been a long-standing tradition of employing the communion wafer as a magical element that lent strength and supernatural powers, sealing the body against acts of aggression. But it was only around the mid-eighteenth century that the tradition took firm root in the colony, merging with practices already in place, such as the use of papers covered with signs from ritual magic and the utilization of altar stones, purificators, and other ornaments from mass. Perhaps one day it can be clarified why certain practices preceded others. For now, my concern is to show how they gradually became interwoven and overlapped, ultimately constituting a magical procedure singularly colonial in character.

The path that led to this unique magic syncretism was neither linear nor cumulative. Around roughly the same time that blacks and mestizos in Bahia popularized the use of communion hosts in mandinga pouches, two artisans from Minas were seized by the Inquisition for engaging in similar practices. Salvador Carvalho Serra was a carpenter and lived in the arraial of Tapanhuacanga, on the boundary of Vila do Príncipe; his brother Antonio, a shoemaker, lived in the arraial of Conceição do Serro do Frio.¹⁰² Together they trod a veritable path to Calvary because they stole some consecrated hosts, wrapped them inside a bit of paper, and carried them in their pockets for a time. The two brothers’ goal is not wholly clear, unlike the Bahians’; the siblings never did confess what they expected to gain from the hosts, but upon every interrogation simply repeated that they viewed them as relics. Their attitude was more archaic and not directly part of the magical practices through which others sought protection within a society suffering great tensions and conflict. Rather, the two brothers’ behavior stemmed from a pervasive sacrality dating back to medieval times, when the faithful saw communion primarily as a form of magical contact with the divine, a way of “taking out a security on the mysterious and terrible divinity in whose name the saints performed great miracles.”103 So during the same period, similar behaviors bore different significances.

Mandinga pouches were also in use among indigenous peoples and mestizos of Grão-Pará in the eighteenth century. During the Visitation of Geraldo José de Abranches, some of these individuals were arrested, leaving us a record of their practices. A number of those accused knew each other, suggesting that some people made the bags while others distributed them among friends and customers, much as in mid-eighteenth-century Lisbon.

Although the episodes narrated in the inquisitorial records occurred in two different towns—Benfica and Beja—their similarities are surprising. Both involve the theft of communion wafers around the same time of the year: April 1764. It can be inferred from one of the trials that it was Easter week. For uneducated colonists professing a uniquely and sharply syncretic religiosity, this was perhaps the time of year when the body of God was most heavily imbued with magical potential, since it was when He had risen from the dead.

In the town of Benfica, on Palm Sunday, the vicar noticed that some communion cloths were missing. The following Friday—that is, Good Friday—he discovered that the altar stone from the head altar had been moved and its cover was unraveling along one side. When he went to look closer, he saw that it was ripped down the middle and that a piece of the stone was missing. More communion cloths disappeared on Easter Sunday. After some investigating, suspicion fell primarily on Anselmo, a 15-year-old indigenous lad who worked as a sacristan for the vicar. When questioned by his friends, Anselmo explained his intentions: he wanted a communion wafer so that he would “be strong, and neither knives, nor swords, nor sticks could harm him.” He also said that it “was for a protective medicine, and to have a mandinga.” Warned that he might be excommunicated, Anselmo replied that “excommunication would do him no harm.” Likewise accused were Joaquim, mentor for the theft; Francisco, who became frightened and returned some of the communion cloths to the sacristy; and Patrício—all three men of indigenous origin. Joaquim believed that a mandinga pouch containing wafers, an altar stone, a purificator, Baby Jesus ribbons, and candle wax would be most helpful in coping with daily dangers and conflicts. It would deliver him from the evil that his enemies could do him, as well as from wildcats and snakes. “It served to assure that arrows, knives, or gunshots would not enter the body of whoever carried it with him.” In payment for the stolen altar stone, Joaquim had promised Anselmo a shirt of fine cotton. Evidently he later vacillated about paying the debt, offering Anselmo part of the altar stone instead. In the end, he hid it inside a box belonging to Anselmo, wrapped in a piece of red taffeta.

At a time when communication was basically oral, news of this theft spread quickly throughout the population. Anselmo learned of his coming arrest from João, an indigenous canoe man, who advised the boy that he was suspected of having stolen communion cloths from the sacristy. When Anselmo was taken to Belém after his arrest, he heard the true story of the Indian Francisco’s participation in the episode from the mouth of the canoe man who transported him, an indigenous man by the name of Simão.104

The episode in Beja took place some fifteen days before Holy Week, but also in 1764. The key protagonist was Joaquim Pedro, nineteen, indigenous and a sacristan like Anselmo. And like Anselmo he too was asked by friends to steal a piece of altar stone and some wafers so they could make pouches. They put a brick in the spot where the stone was broken off and sewed the cover over it. As in the previous case, pieces of communion host and altar stone later mysteriously appeared at the bottom of a chest, wrapped in the pages of a breviary and in crimson taffeta. The discovery incriminated Lázaro Vieira, another native Brazilian, and triggered persecutions of a large number of indigenous youth, all enticed by the powers of the altar stone and host. Manuel de Jesus, the only black person involved in the episode, was thirteen years old and wanted a pouch with an altar stone and host so he would enjoy success with women. Judging Manuel to be still a child, Joaquim was reluctant to give him the relics. But he had given them to Francisco, only ten years old, and to the 15-year-old son of the native Brazilian João Lourenço. Even the settlement’s sergeant-major, Domingos Gaspar, a rather well-respected married man of indigenous blood, had gone to Joaquim to ask for a pouch and had promised him nine tostões in payment. Matias, twenty-two, wanted a pouch to make sure he did not die without confession and so that he would be “delivered from drowning to death, and from being bitten by snakes, and preserved from wildcats, and from everything that could hamper him.” Luís Antonio, twelve, wore a pouch round his neck so he would not die a sudden death; he made other pouches at home, perhaps to sell. When he was arrested, Joaquim was carrying a pouch; the wafer inside had already crumbled to bits from his perspiration. He believed that whoever carried one would be delivered from a “knife or a sword entering his body, for all broke against the body.” He was preparing another one at home to sell to Matias. Lázaro Vieira, mentioned earlier, and Angélico de Barros, both indigenous, were also on the list of altar stone and host customers who pressured Joaquim Pedro into obtaining them.¹⁰⁵

In northern Brazil more than in any other region, the magical significance of the altar stone found fertile soil in which to flourish. It perhaps acquired such importance partly because indigenous people also revered it highly.¹⁰⁶ It was their way of seeking protection from the routine, everyday hardships they encountered: ferocious animals, flooded rivers, and the arrows of fierce Indians. Through the stone, wafers, and pouches, they created a parallel universe where the obstacles of daily life dwindled in strength. The balancing role of this universe was to deny the limits of the human condition and nourish the hope that fate could be conquered.107 This often required overcoming specific tensions. Perhaps the mandinga pouch’s greatest virtue was the way in which it metamorphosed and molded itself to respond to these tensions—hence its importance within the colony’s magical universe.