Death Is a Festival by João José Reis

Author:João José Reis [Reis, João José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807827734
Publisher: UNC Press
Published: 2003-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

CELESTIAL INTERCESSORS

The dead depended on the living to pray and to have masses said for the souls of the departed. However, wills also launched more direct means of propitiation: the intercession of saints. Probate records provide excellent evidence of how people envisaged their judgment in heaven. The main characters in this celestial drama were the individual’s soul, the defendant; God, the judge; and a myriad of saints and angels as defense attorneys. The punishment could be horrific: Francisco José Vieira Guimarães requested the intercession of various saints “so that the Devil shall not triumph over me or make me succumb.” Acquittal could mean being allowed into the “Land of the Kingdom of Glory,” as Pedro Gonçalves dos Anjos put it in 1823.52

The Church suggested that testators commend their souls to God, the Holy Trinity, and Christ and request the intercession of the Virgin Mary, angels, heavenly spirits, and saints. The commendations were almost rigidly formal, but the invocations were more varied, despite a certain formalism indicating the testator’s devotional preferences. In Bahia, even former slaves invoked a legion of saints to help them attain the glory of heaven. Just 20 percent of the freedmen and -women studied by Katia Mattoso were not concerned with this matter. Rita Maria Joana de Jesus, from the African Benguela nation, in 1828 invoked her patron saint, Rita of Cascia; her guardian angel; the Virgin Mary; and the heavenly court to obtain a pardon from the “Divine Arbiter” and to “free [her] from the Infernal Enemy.” Rita de Jesus had thoroughly assimilated the Catholic faith.53

Josefa Maria da Conceição Alves dos Reis, a freedwoman originally from the Slave Coast who was a poor and childless widow, in 1819 made requests that displayed an original understanding of Christian doctrine. First, she commended her soul “to the holiest virgin, who created her,” a matriarchal interpretation of the mystery of life. However, Reis knew that her soul would be judged by the “Eternal Father” and made a direct request to the Son (“my Lord Jesus Christ”) to act as her “intercessor and advocate.” She then cited the Holy Ghost and Holy Trinity among the “saints of my particular devotion” and disclosed that she had not one but many “Guardian Angels.” She begged all of them and St. Joseph (after whom she was named) for their aid in “presenting my soul before the Divine Tribunal.” In some respects, Reis’s invocation includes archaic formulas, such as naming Jesus Christ as her intercessor and associating the Holy Spirit with the heavenly court, formulas that appeared in Europe as early as the sixteenth century. (In 1829 a canon, José Vieria de Lemos, produced the mixed-up archaism of calling Christ “our advocate,” “my intercessor” and “my Judge” in the same sentence.)54

Reis’s invocations were even more original in other passages, such as her reference to the Holy Ghost in addition to the Holy Trinity and her belief that she was protected by more than one guardian angel. But the most original statement was her attribution

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