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Natural and Spurious Children in Brazilian Inheritance Law From Colony to Empire: A Methodological Essay1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Linda Lewin
Linda Lewin*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, California
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Extract

This discussion takes its historical cue from a piece of recent urban folk wisdom in Brazil, one claiming that children born outside wedlock historically have enjoyed equal inheritance rights with their legitimate half-siblings. This notion attained wide circulation in the final years of the great debate over divorce that ended in 1976. As the defenders of the status quo, opponents of divorce usually failed to point out that Brazilian succession law had historically distinguished not just between individuals of legitimate and illegitimate birth but also among those of illegitimate birth. Of course, most Brazilians, like most North Americans, remained unaware of the vast differences prevailing between their two legal systems of inheritance. They usually assumed that the legal precept contained in the Statute of Merton (1235) still served as a rule of thumb for the Anglo-American experience: “Once a bastard, always a bastard.” On the other hand, what appealed to Brazilians' sense of fairness was the flexibility their national system of succession offered. The notion that inheritance rights should be restricted to those of legitimate birth was one they proudly rejected. In leaving the door open to the possibility that civil law could equip those born to unmarried parents with the potential for equal inheritance rights with legitimate heirs, Brazil's system of succession provided that so-called bastardy could be converted into legitimacy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , January 1992 , pp. 351 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1992

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Footnotes

1

A Tinker Post-Doctoral Fellowship, together with a travel grant from the Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies, permitted initial research as a Visiting Research Fellow at Boston College Law School and the Faculdade de Direito, São Paulo, in 1980–1981. A Humanities Research Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, contributed to a sabbatical leave in 1985 for follow-up research at the Fundação Casa de Ruy Barbosa and the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro in Rio de Janeiro. A travel grant from the American Philosophical Society, as well as a Beveridge Prize for Research in American History from the American Historical Association, also facilitated that research. Special thanks goes to Professors Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School (formerly of Boston College Law School) and Maria Luiza Marcílio of the University of São Paulo for respective help with comparative family law and archival sources in Brazil. Laima Mesgraves, Lia Fukui, Eni Mesquita Samara, José Witter, and Pedro Tortimã also deserve thanks. The late Joyce Riegelhaupt is especially remembered for her friendly encouragement. Comments on various drafts offered by Muriel Nazzari, Patricia Seed, Brian Juan O’Neill, Mary Karasch, Ted Riedinger, Sandra Lauderdale Graham, and Paloma Fernández Pérez were much appreciated.

References

2 Since the mid-1970s Brazilian law has considerably expanded opportunity for illegitimate offspring to acquire succession rights.

3 My book in progress (Redefining Bastardy in Imperial Brazil: The Changing Inheritance Rights of Illegitimate Offspring, 1770–1890) treats the late Empire and early Republic in more detail.

4 I use “diverging devolution” following Jack Goody, i.e., the transmission of property between generations within a bilateral (cognatic) system of inheritance, one where wealth passes to sons and daughters, including dowry, dower, bequests, and gifts intervivos. Goody, Jack, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 244–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Casey, James, Chacón, Francisco, Gacto, Enrique, et. al., compilers, La família en la España mediterránea (Barcelona: Centre D’Estudis D’História Moderna “Pierre Vilar,” 1987),Google Scholar especially Gacto’s, Enrique “El grupo familiar de la edad moderna en los territorios del mediterráneo hispánico: Una visión jurídica,” pp. 36–64.Google Scholar I am grateful to Paloma Fernández Pérez for bringing this volume to my attention.

6 Portugal’s 1603 Ordenações Filipinas remained in effect (where not specifically revised or abrogated) until adoption of the first Brazilian Civil Code in 1916. All references to the Ordenações do Reino (also, Ordenações Filipinas) refer to Candido Mendes de Almeida’s monumental 14th edition [Codigo Philippine ou Ordenações do Reino de Portugal (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. do Instituto Philomathico, 1870)]. The following abbreviations are used in notes: Ord. (Ordenações), L. (Livro), Tit. (Título), Art. (Artigo), and Par. (Parágrafo). References to “Candido Mendes, Ord.,” followed by page and/or footnote numbers, refer to the 1870 edition and cite Candido Mendes' retrospective glosses of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century legal commentaries. NOTE: Nineteenth-century Brazilian laws, decrees, etc., appear in standard form, by number and/or day, month, and year. From 1808 to 1889 they may be found in the annual serial volumes published by the imperial government (and republished after 1889), bearing the title “Collecção das leis do Imperio do Brasil de [year]” or a variant. Otherwise, verbatim texts or their key clauses appear in the major jurisprudential works cited below, esp. by Gouvêa Pinto, Trigo de Loureiro, Liz Teixeira, [Manuel de Almeida e Sousa de] Lobão, Lafayette [Rodrigues Pereira], Clovis Bevilaqua, or Candido Mendes, etc.

7 See Nazzari, Muriel Smith, The Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil (1600–1900) (Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Samara, Eni Mesquita, “O dote na sociedade paulista do século XIX,” Anais do Museu Paulista, 30 (1980/81), 41–53 Google Scholar; idem, “A família na sociedade paulista do século XIX, 1800–1860” (Ph.D. diss., University of São Paulo, 1980); and de Silva, Maria Beatriz Nizza, Sistema de casamento no Brasil colonial (São Paulo: Editora da USP, 1978),Google Scholar especially chap. 6. On succession, see Mourà, Margarida, Os herdeiros da terra (São Paulo: HUCITEC, 1978)Google Scholar; Samara, Eni Mesquita, “Família, divórcio e partilha de bens em São Paulo no século XIX,” Estudos Econômicos, 13 (1983), 787–97Google Scholar; Metcalf, Alida, “Families of Planters, Peasants, and Slaves: Strategies for Survival in Santana de Parnaíba, Brazil, 1720–1820” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1983)Google Scholar; idem, “Women and Means: Women and Family Property in Colonial Brazil,” Journal of Social History, 24:2 (1990), 277–98. Three anthropological works on Portuguese inheritance strategies are directly relevant for Brazil: O’Neill, Brian Juan, Social Inequality in a Portuguese Village: Land, Late Marriage, and Bastardy, 1870–1978 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brettell, Carolyn B., Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Population and History in a Portuguese Parish (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and de Fátima Brandão, Maria, “Land, Inheritance and Family in North-West Portugal: The Case of Mosteiro in the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., School of Modern Languages and European History, University of East Anglia, 1988).Google Scholar See also Brettell, Caroline B., “Kinship and Contract: Property Transmission and Family Relations in Northwestern Portugal,” CSSH, 33: 3 (1992), 443–65Google Scholar; and Behar, Ruth and Frye, David, “Property, Progeny, and Emotion: Family History in a Leonese Village,” Journal of Family History, 13: 1 (1988), 13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 On the intersection of ecclesiastical and civil law, see Ronaldo Vainfas, “A condenação dos adultérios e padres,” and Ida Lewkowicz, “A fragilidade do celibato,” in da Gama, Lana Lage e Lima, ed., Mulheres, adultérios e padres (Rio de Janeiro: Raymundo Paula de Arruda, 1987), pp. 35–52, 53–68.Google Scholar See also Maria Beatriz Nizza de Silva’s pioneering chapter four, in Sistema casamento Brasil; and Vainfas, Ronaldo, “A teia da intriga; delação e moralidade na sociedade colonial,” in idem ed., História da sexualidade no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: GRAAL, 1986), pp. 41–66.Google Scholar Mott’s, Luiz R.B. Os pecados de família na Bahia de Todos os Santos (1813) (Salvador: Centro de Estados Baianos, Universidade Federai da Bahia, 1982)Google Scholar is a particularly rich analysis. See also Lavrin, Asunción, “Sexuality in Colonial Mexico: A Church Dilemma,” in idem, (ed.), Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 47–95.Google Scholar

9 Venâncio, Renato Pinto, Ilegitimidade e concubinato no Brasil colonial: Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo, ESTUDOS CEDHAL #1 (São Paulo. CEDHAL/USP, 1988)Google Scholar; Londoño, Fernando Torres, El concubinato y la iglesia en el Brasil colonial, ESTUDOS CEDHAL #2 (São Paulo: CEDHAL/USP, n/d (1988?)Google Scholar; Zenha, Celeste, “Casamento e ilegitimidade no cotidiano da justiça,” in Vainfas, ed., História sexualidade, pp. 125–42Google Scholar; and Soihet, Rachel, “É proibido ser mãe; opressão e moralidade da mulher pobre,” in Ibid., pp. 191–212.Google Scholar Novinsky, llana W., “Heresia, mulher e sexualidade (algumas notas sobre o Nordeste Brasileiro nos séculos XVI e XVII),” in Bruschini, Maria Cristina A. and Rosemberg, Fúlvia (eds.), Vivência; história, sexualidade e imagens femininas, vol. 1 (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1980), pp. 227–56.Google Scholar See also O’Neill, Brian Juan, Jornaleiras e Zorros: Dimensões da ilegitimidade numa aldéia transmontana, 1870–1978 (Paris: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1985).Google Scholar

10 Eugene H. Korth, S.J., and Della M. Flusche recently commented regarding colonial Spanish America:

Despite a growing interest in the history of women … Castilian legislation which defined female juridical status has received scant attention … The law itself, relegated to a secondary position, has remained a maze of confusing mandates to all but a few Histórians who have wrestled with its directives.

“Dowry and Inheritance in Colonial Spanish America: Peninsular Law and Chilean Practice,” the Americas, 43:4 (1987), 395. Cf. Lavrin, Asunción and Couturier, Edith, “Dowries and Wills: A View of Women’s Socioeconomic Role in Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640–1790,” HAHR, 50:2 (1979), 280–304 Google Scholar; Arrom, Silvia Marina, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford University Press, 1985),Google Scholar chaps. 2 and 5; Socolow, Susan M., “Acceptable Partners: Marriage Choice in Colonial Argentina, 1778–1810,” in Lavrin, , (ed.), Sexuality and Marriage, pp. 209–51.Google Scholar

11 “Inheritance” (herança) and “heirs” (herdeiros) are used in Portuguese legal texts to refer to “succession” and “successors.” N.B.: “Herder” means “to succeed,” as well as “to inherit.”

12 Necessary heirs were exempt from inheritance taxes, but testamentary successors were not, unless previously recognized by escritura pública or legitimized by a local judge. Imperial Treasurer’s Order to Inspector of the Treasury, Province of Maranhão, Dec. 19, 1839; Colecção das leis do Imperio do Brasil desde a Independencia, vol. 20 (1839) (Ouro Preto: Typ. de Silva, 1840), p. 307.

13 “No momento em que a personalidade jurídica cessa de existir, destaca-se deia o seu patrimonio que lhe sobrevive, mas que passa a outro proprietario. Diz-se então, que a successão está aberta.” Bevilaqua, Clovis, Direito das Successões, (Bahia: José Luiz da Fonseca Magalhães Editora, 1899), p. 18.Google Scholar My thanks to Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who first called my attention to probate’s irrelevance for the passage of succession in civil law societies.

14 Ab intestato succession takes precedence over a will's dispositions, which can only confirm, but not appoint, successors. The exception is the appointing of a legitimized illegitimate offspring (or the legitimized natural offspring of a noble) as a testamentary successor (herdeiro por testamento). See below.

15 Surviving spouses first gained a place in the rank order of ab intestato succession during the reign of Pedro I (1357–1367), but until 1907 they hardly ever succeeded as spouses because they were called only after all descendants, ascendants, and collateral heirs to the tenth degree. Ordenações do Senhor Rey D. Affonso V, Book V, Título 95; Ord., Bk. IV, Tit. 92 and 94. NOTE: Widows could accept or refuse an inheritance, i.e., sign partilhas and inventories. Normally, they succeeded to a parent’s or a child’s estate, not a husband’s.

16 Brazilian widows indeed have enjoyed a “customary right” to their husbands’ property (as dower), but via his terça, not their community. It had to be established contractually, by prenuptial agreement (arrás) and/or in the husband’s will (legado); contrary to Anglo-American tradition, Brazilian widows could alienate dower. Moreover, husbands enjoyed “customary” right to their wives’ terças (as legados). [Cf. Dietz, Toby, Property and Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 125.]Google Scholar

17 The expectation that Emperor Pedro I’s name should appear in the inventory of his ex-mistress’ (Domitila de Castro Couto e Melo, the Marquise of Santos) estate, “as the father of Santos’ children,” reflects such gender bias regarding what is a document of matrilineal succession. [ Pang, Eul-Soo, In Pursuit of Honor and Power: Noblemen of the Southern Cross in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988), p. 254.]Google Scholar

18 “We have legitimate [i.e., natural or intestate] succession … but when it is the result of human will … then it is testamentary or contractual [succession].” Bevilaqua, , Successões, p. 22.Google Scholar “Heirs by virtue of a will” (i.e., herdeiros por testamento), are “testamentary heirs,” not legatees. They are opposed to “herdeiros ab intestados.”

19 Mattoso recognizes testamentary succession (sucessão por testamento), but she too confounds it with a disposition of a bequest from the terça. de Queirós Mattoso, Katia, Família e sociedade na Bahia do século XIX (São Paulo: Corrupio/Brasília: CNPq, 1988), p. 57.Google Scholar

20 Goody, , Development Family Europe, p. 7.Google Scholar

21 In illustrating a number of points that follow, I have drawn examples demonstrative of error or misinterpretation from secondary works. These works often reflect superlative research and break new ground in scholarship. I do not wish to condemn fine scholarly research on the basis of random example, but, rather, to make readers aware of how inheritance law has been neglected or misunderstood even where otherwise scholarship is expert. Specific examples, even when in error, can tell us much.

22 Dictionary definitions compound scholarly confusion. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (New York, 1973) defined “Natural” (meaning no. 17) as “related only by birth; of no legal relationship; illegitimate: a natural son” (p. 952).

23 Pereira, Lafayette Rodrigues, Direitos de família (Rio de Janeiro: B.L. Garnier, 1869), pp. 203–204 Google Scholar; 249–50.

24 Thus Pedro I’s “offspring of casual affection” were construed as “filhos naturais,” although “some years before his marriage to [Princess] Leopoldina, Pedro began to sire bastards.” Pang, , Pursuit Honor, pp. 132 and 30.Google Scholar

25 Iraci de Nero da Costa is among the few historical demographers to distinguish natural from other illegitimate offspring in parish registers and to disaggregate abandoned children (expostos). In the 1804 census for the Province of Minas Gerais (combined populations of Vila Rica, Mariana, and Passagem), of those children under age 14 (3,044 individuals), 50.8 percent of all freeborn offspring (and 62.2 percent of all free and slave) were natural. Minas Gerais: Estructuras populacionais típicas (São Paulo: EDEC, 1981), p. 109. Maria Luiza Marcilio found that 18 percent (1.4 percent of whom were foundlings) of Caiçara’s children were born to “unmarried parents. ” This is the lowest rate of illegitimate birth in late colonial Brazil (1790–1830) to be recorded in the scholarly literature through 1985. Caiçara: terra e população; estudo de demografia histórica e da história social de Ubatuba (São Paulo: CEDHAL, 1986), p. 172.

26 NOTE: References in legal commentaries to “filhos ilegítimos de toda espécie” pertain to both natural (naturais em especie) and spurious (espúrios em especie) offspring.

27 Fathers of natural children could be unmarried either at “the moment of conception” or at the birth of the child. Candido Mendes, Ord., p. 940 (n.l); Lafayette (citing Carneiro, Borges, Diretto civil de Portugal, L. 1, Tít. 20, Art. 179), Direitos família, p. 250 Google Scholar; Bevilaqua, Clovis, Direito da família (2nd ed.; Recife: n.p., 1904), p. 440.Google Scholar

28 When I collected oral history in the Brazilian Northeast, elderly informants offered the corrective that an individual was not “illegitimate” but “natural.”

29 Ord., L. 4, Tít. 92: “Se algum homem houver ajuntamento com alguma mulher solteira, ou tiver huma só manceba, não havendo entre elles parentesco ou impedimento, por que não possam ambos casar, havendo de cada huma dellas filhos, os taes filhos se havidos por naturaes. E se o pai fôr peão [commoner], succeder-lhe-hão e virão sua herança igualmente com os filhos legítimos, se os o pai tiver. E não havendo filhos legítimos, herderão os naturais todos os bens e herança de seu pai, salvo a terça, se a o pai tomar …” NOTE: “Esta ordinação somente trata da filiação paterna …” Candido Mendes, Ord., p. 939 (n.6). Histórians have either overlooked this key ordenação or not understood “… os taes filhos se havidos por naturaes.”

30 Schwartz, Stuart, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 319–20Google Scholar and n.20 (p. 551), citing MHN/CWP, pacote 1 (Santo Amaro, 1766).

31 Ibid., p. 320.

32 “The outcome of the two cases need not concern us, but the fact that legal unions between slaves and free feitores [slave drivers] could be imagined demonstrates the lack of social distance between the two.” Ibid, and p. 551 (n.21), citing Juiz de Orfãos de São Francisco (1760), IHGBa, pasta 27, n.9. (Schwartz offers no terms in Portuguese.)

33 Ord., L. 4, Tít. 92 (see n.29, supra). Gouvêa Pinto, Antonio Joaquim, Tratado regular, e prático de testamentos e successões ou compendio methódico das principaes regras, principios que se podem deduzir das leis testamentarias, tanto patrias, como subsidiarias, illustradas, e aclaradas com as competentes notas (Lisbon: Thaddeo Ferreira, 1813), p. 147 Google Scholar (n.l). NOTE: Gouvêa Pinto’s Tratado testamentos remained the outstanding authority on wills and succession throughout the nineteenth century.

34 Ord., L. 4, Tít. 92. (See text, n.29, supra.)

35 Cameiro, Manuel Borges, Diretto civil de Portugal, contendo tres livres …, vol. 2 (Continuação do Livro I) (Pernambuco: Typ. da Viuva Roma e Filhos, 1851), p. 254 Google Scholar; (L. I, Tít. XX, Art. 180, no. 5). The key issue was the mother’s exclusivity of sexual union with the presumed father (no. 3). See “Regras sobre esta prova,” pp. 253–55. NOTE: All references herein are to vol. 2.

36 Ibid. Law favored those whose paternity was presumed in the community: “A prova da filiação incumbe ao autor: porem se está na quasi posse della, é havido por filho em quanto não se provar o contrario.” Ibid., p. 255 (no. 10).

37 Where the legal proceeding was initiated by the father (or mother), the offspring would be illegitimate, not natural (unless the parent were noble). As “perfilhação solemne,” it was synonymous with legitimization. da Rocha, M.A. Coelho, lnstituições de direito civil portuguez, vol. 1, (3rd(?) ed.; Rio de Janeiro: H. Gamier, 1907), pp. 203–04Google Scholar (including unnumbered note on p. 203).

38 “A prova da mãi pode a filiação provar-se com facilidade e com certeza.” Carneiro, Borges, Direito civil, p. 255 Google Scholar (n.ll). “A maternidade, mesmo para os filhos naturaes, é habitualmente manifesta.” Bevilaqua, , Direito família, p. 454.Google Scholar “A maternidade revela-se por signaes exteriores inequivocos: a gravidez e o parto …” Lafayette, , Direitos família, pp. 205–206.Google Scholar

39 Manuel Garcia’s 1750 will “… recognized his illegitimate children … and they inherited equally with his other [two legitimate] children &” Nazzari, Muriel, “Women, the Family and Property: The Decline of the Dowry in São Paulo, Brazil (1600–1870)” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1986), p. 184.Google Scholar But “recognition” is tied to succession, and they “inherited.” So the presumption must be that the two daughters born of the woman who was not his wife were instead natural. Nazzari subsequently verified this was so. Born before their father’s marriage, they were baptized “de pai incógnito.” Personal communication, March 1989.

40 da Rocha, Coelho, Inst, direito portuguez, vol. 1, p. 202.Google Scholar

41 This is deduced logically from Ord., L. 4, Tít. 92, and legal commentaries that 1) always list natural offspring with legitimate offspring as a dual category of heirship on the ladder of ab intestato succession; 2) refer to testimony by members in the community as valid evidence in confirming natural paternity in proceedings to establish filiação; and 3) fail to mention legally declared recognition as mandatory prior to 1847. See also [Antonio Ribeiro de] Teixeira, Liz, Curso de direito civil portuguez ou commentario ás Inst … Mello Freiré, Pt.2, Div. 1, (3rd ed.; Coimbra: Casa de J. Augusto Orcel, 1856), pp. 499 and 506.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., pp. 339–40. Thanks to Nazzari for supplying the key clause in the contract, not available in the dissertation.

43 Inventário and partilna of Francisco Inácio da Silveira Cahûete, No. 191 of 1842 (October 24-November 4); 1° Cartóno, Teixeira, Paraíba. I am very grateful to Notary Raimundo Xavier for generous access to his cartório.

44 “Aos filhos naturaes dos nobres ficam extensivos os mesmos direitos hereditarios que pela Orde-nação, L. 4, Tít. 92, competem aos filhos naturaes dos plebeus” (Par. 1).

45 “O reconhecimento do pai, feito por escritura publica antes de seu casamento, é indispensavel para que qualquer filho natural possa ter parte na herança paterna, concorrendo ele com filhos legitimos do mesmo pai” (Par. 2).

46 “A prova de filiação natural, nos outras casos, só poderá fazer por um dos seguintes meios, escritura publica ou testamento” (Par. 3).

47 The law’s final paragraph (no. 4) revoked all dispositions contrary to the first 3 paragraphs.

48 Ord., L. 2, Tít. 3, Art. 1; Tít. 35, Art. 12; L. 4, Tít. 36, Art. 4. Ord., Tít. 93, specifies: “… cuando algum filho de Clérigo, ou de algum outro dañado ou punido coito [i.e., incestuous or adulterous union], per nossas Ordenações ou Direito Comum, a que o pai ou a mãe não pode suceder por assim ser nascido de coito dañado ou puni vel …”).

49 Resolution of 16 November 1798, quoted by [Manoel de Almeida e Sousa de] Lobão (in Addicional ao Tractado dos morgados, chap. 11, Art. 62): “As legitimações não se costumão conceder neste reino em prejuizo dos herdeiros legitimos; e não tendo ellas as qualidades de restituição plenaria, mas d’urna mera dispensa …” Cited in Lafayette, , Direitos família, pp. 269–70Google Scholar (n.4). See esp. da Silva, Maria Beatriz Nizza, “A documentação do Desembargo do Paço e a história da família,” Ler história, 20 (1990), 70, 72.Google Scholar

50 Alvará of 22 April 1808; Law of 22 Sept. 1828, Art. 2, Par. 1; Regulamento of 15 Mar. 1842, Art. 2, Par. 5. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of the archive of the Mesa do Desembargo do Paço is unknown, Nizza da Silva’s search in the Torre do Tombo (Lisbon) having failed to locate it. “Desembargo Paço,” p. 61.

51 Ord., L. 2, Tít. 35, Art. 12.

52 Ibid. Resolution of 16 December 1798, Provision of 18 January, 1799; cited in [Lourenço] de Loureiro, Trigo, Instituições de direito civil brasüeiro, extrahidas das Instituições do Direito Civil Lusitano do Eximo Jurisconsulto Portuguez Paschoal José de Mello Freire … augmentadas … corn a substancia das leis brasileiras, vol. 1 (Recife: Typ. da Viuva Roma & Filhos, 1851), p. 38.Google Scholar

53 “N’este reino costumam os paes fazer … testamento em que reconhecem serem seus filhos os que pretendem sejam legitimados; declaram as pessoas de quem os houveram; as qualidades e vicios da espuriedade … e na mesma escriptura se supplica á magestade (ou no testamento) que haja por bem legitimar e dispensar esse filho para ser seu herdeiro conforme o costume do reino … Tambem em testamento se póde instituir herdeiro o espurio com a condição ‘Si a principe legitimetur’ … para se provar a vontade do pae e se poder impetrar á legitimação para succeder na sua herança.” Lobão, , Notas de uso pratico e criticas … á Mello Freiré, Part. II (Lisbon: Imp. Nac, 1865), pp. 157–58Google Scholar (glossing Mello Freire’s Instituições direito civil, L. II, Tít. V, Pt. I, Arts. 17–19, Section II).

54 Ord., L. 2, Tít. 35, Art. 12, refers to the testator’s “perfilhação confirmado” [i.e., by Desembargo do Paço]. de Loureiro, Trigo, Inst, direito civil, p. 38.Google Scholar Pinto, Gouvêa, Tratado testamentos, pp. 151–52Google Scholar (n.2). Lafayette, , citing Lobão (Acç. Sum., Art. 18), Emphasized, “Os espurios não podião ser instituidos herdeiros por seus pais.” Direitos família, p. 269 (n.2).Google Scholar

55 Decree-Law of 11 August 1831, Art. 1:

… Nem a Ordenação do Liv. IV, Tít. 93 [i.e., excluding spurious offspring from parental ab intestato succession] nem outra alguma Legislação em vigor, prohibe que os filhos ilegítimos de qualquer especie, sejam instituidos herdeiros por seus pais em testamento, não tendo estes herdeiros necessarios.

Collecção das leis do Imperio do Brasil de 1831, Part 1 (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Nacional, 1878), pp. 42-43. NOTE: This law permitted noble parents without legitimate issue to institute natural offspring as testamentary heirs without legitimizing them before a local judge.

56 Confusion reigned until the Provision [Provisão] of 23 February 1848 declared natural offspring would share a maternal legítima with legitimate offspring, independently of escritura pública, taking the baptismal registry as equivalent to a father’s notarized recognition. Bevilaqua, , Direito família, p. 456 (n.3).Google Scholar But the Aviso of 17 December 1853 reiterated the ancient pre-1603 assumption that neither evidence or documents of recognition would be required to guarantee matrilineal ab intestato rights of natural offspring, where maternity was common knowledge (simples notariedade). Ibid., p. 455 (n.2).

57 Bevilaqua, , Successões, p. 99, in reference to the Law of 6 October 1835 ending (agnatic) entail and primogeniture.Google Scholar

58 A papal bull of 26 January 1790 granted Brazilian bishops the power to dispense with canonical prohibitions for all degrees of blood and affinal kinship up to the first degree, i.e., second degree (siblings) in civil law. Mesquita Samara, “Família paulista, p. 48. See also Lavrin, , “Sexuality, Church, Mexico,” pp. 66–70.Google Scholar

59 Ord., L. 4, Tít. 93. See n.48, supra, … for relevant text.

60 “ … Nada podião dispôr em pró de tais filhos, sendo lhes lícitos apenas deixá-lhes legados, e dar-lhes alimentos.” Candido Mendes, Ord., p. 944 (n.3).

61 Confession of adulterine paternity constituted a guilty plea to a criminal act, where a married man committed bigamy or kept a concubine. Confession of maternity by any married woman would constitute a plea of guilty to adultery, also a criminal offense. Codigo Penal de 1831, Arts. 249 and 251, Art. 250, respectively. Cf. “Treating Adultery as a Crime: Wisconsin Dusts Off An Old Law,” which reports that adultery is still a felony in that state and in Massachusetts and Michigan, and a misdemeanor in twenty-three other states. New York Times, 30 April 1990, p. 1; and “The Libertine Must Die: Sexual Dishonor and the Unwritten Law in Nineteenth-Century United States,” Journal of Social History, 23:1 (1989), 27–44.

62 Donald Ramos has carefully noted the proportion of abandoned children (enjeitados) and their late eighteenth-century increase in his analysis of the Vila Rica census of 1804. They accounted for 8.7 percent of all offspring born of agregados, or household dependents in de Ouro Preto, Vila Rica, suggesting their parentage was known in the community. “Marriage and the Family in Colonial Vila Rica,” HAHR, 55:2 (May 1975), 233 Google Scholar. Maria Odila Leite da Silva Dias noted that São Paulo’s municipal council linked the early nineteenth-century establishment of that city’s foundling wheel to the wide dissemination of consensual unions (casamentes de uso costumeiro). Quotidiano e poder em São Paulo no século XIX (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1984), p. 20. Evidence from Portugal establishes that the foundling wheel’s role was not necessarily confined to concealing the parentage of illegitimate expostos but also to sheltering temporarily both legitimate and illegitimate offspring of poor mothers whose identity was tacitly acknowledged. See Brettell, Caroline B. and Feijó, Rui, “The Roda of Viana do Castelo in the 19th Century: Public Welfare and Family Strategies,” Cadernos vianenses, 12 (1989), 5–30.Google Scholar

63 Iraci de Nero da Costa found that 162 of the 1187 natural freebom children in the 1804 census data he examined were abandoned. Minas Gerais, p. 109. Does this suggest knowledge in the community of their parentage? On the advantages of abandoning white natural offspring, see Socolow, , “Acceptable Partners,” p. 227.Google Scholar Ann Twinam offers the best analysis extant of concealed maternity with reference to Latin America: “Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America,” in Lavrin, ,(ed.), Sexuality and Marriage, pp. 118–55.Google Scholar

64 Karasch, Mary, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1800–1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 350 (n.46).Google Scholar

65 Alvará of 31 January 1775, Arts. 7 and 8; de Loureiro, Trigo, Instituições de direito civil brasileiro, vol. 1, p. 47.Google Scholar Socolow refers to the royal cédula of [February 19] 1794 granting all expósitos legitimacy in La Plata and notes its retroactive application. “Acceptable Partners,” p. 227. On Charles III’s 1794 decree, see Martínez Alier, Verena, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 83–84 (n.15).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 In the republic notaries were guilty of a criminal offense if they recorded a father’s name in the civil registry without his personal appearance and authorization. Bastos, José Tavares, O Registro Civil na República (Rio de Janeiro: H. Gamier, 1909), Google ScholarArts. 59 and 61; Bevilaqua, , Successões, p. 300 Google Scholar; Souza, Aguiar, Posição juridica dos filhos naturaes emface do nosso direito (São Paulo: Typ. Hennies Irmãos, 1916), pp. 4, 45–47.Google Scholar

67 Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 943 (n.7).Google Scholar

68 Pinto, Gouvêa, Tratado testamentos, p. 146.Google Scholar “ … filhos denominados espurios, que são todos cujo pai he ou reputa-se incognito, porque não he confessavel ou perante a sociedade ou perante a lei, pela illegalidade ou reprovação do coito de que procedem …” Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 943 (n.7).”Google Scholar

69 Irony lay in the term’s original meaning: “O filho natural havido de mulher que tinha ajuntamento com muitos homens no mesmo tempo é insucessivel ao pai … Cameiro, Borges, Direito civil, p. 310 (no.7).Google Scholar

70 Ibid.

71 Ord., L. 4, Tít. 36, Art. 4: “E o filho espurio não poderá haver o dito fóro [i.e., matrilineal succession], salvo sendo legitimado por Nós [the crown], em tal forma que possa succeder ab intestado, e não doutra maneira.” Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 814 (n.2).Google Scholar Pinto, Gouvêa, Tratado testamentos, pp. 151–52 (n.2).Google Scholar

72 Russell-Wood, A.J.R., Fidalgos and Philanthropists: The Santa Casa de Misericórdia of Bahia, 1550–1755 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 180–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The implication that a disclaimer of no offspring, “natural or spurious,” meant that male relatives could not inherit confounds bequests with succession. (Forced heirship was fixed and gender-neutral, so natural offspring could not be excluded according to gender.) Evidence is skewed ipso facto toward nieces (women), for it is extracted from bequests from the terça pertaining only to endowments of orphaned females.

73 Ibid. For a variant disclaimer, see “Will of Francisco Nunes de Moraes,” reproduced in de Queirós Mattoso, Katia M., To Be a Slave in Brazil, 1550–1888 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), p. 215ff (Par. 5).Google Scholar

74 Mattoso recounts that in today’s Salvador family anxiety can run high after a father’s or a grandfather’s death, due to the appearance of half-siblings “whose existence was completely unsuspected.” Família Bahia, p. 56 (n.54).

75 “Todo o illegitimo que não é espurio, entra na classe dos naturaes, e vice-versa …” Lafayette, , Direitos família, p. 250.Google Scholar

76 Law presumed legitimate all individuals born 180 days following the parents’ marriage or 302 days after the father’s death. da Rocha, Coelho, Instituições direito portuguez, vol. 1, pp. 198–99.Google Scholar

77 Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, Thorne, Samuel E., translator, vol. 2 (Cambridge: The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press in association with the Selden Society, 1968), p. 186 Google Scholar; Jones, William Carey, (ed.), Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone, K.T., 2 vols. (San Francisco: Bancroft Whitney Company, 1915), vol. 1, pp. 29, 635, 649–51.Google Scholar Although in the United States many states adhered to the strict common law rule denying legitimization by subsequent marriage, late eighteenth-century Virginia set the example for adoption of the civil and canon law principle upholding it, with a number of states following in the nineteenth century. Ibid., p. 635. For Spanish America, Twinam discusses legitimization of natural offspring by means of subsequent marriage, situating this legal notion in “a long European tradition, with roots in Roman and Canon law, and codified in the Spanish medieval code, the Fuero Real” [Opúsculos legales del Rey don Alfonso el Sabio, 2 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1836), vol. 2, p. 79] “Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy,” pp. 125, 152–53, and n.13.

78 Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 945 (n.4).Google Scholar Cf. Lobão, , “Analyse da Ord., L. 2, Tít. 35, Art. 12,” in Collecção de dissertações jurídicas, e praticas (Lisbon: Imp. Regia, 1826), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar; and de Loureiro, Trigo, Inst, direito bras., vol. 1, pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

79 Carneiro, Borges, Direito civil, vol. 2, p. 250.Google Scholar See Mendes, Candido, Ord., pp. 947–48 (n.7).Google Scholar Cf. n. 69, supra. Discussion of the broadening definition of filho natural has been left for my book.

80 [Paschoal José de] Mello Freire [dos Reys], Inst. direito lusitano, L. 1, Tít. V, Art. 77, quoted in de Loureiro, Trigo, Inst, direito bras., vol. 1, p. 44.Google Scholar

81 “O nome de Bastardo … é que aliás entre nós é muito usado para exprimir em geral o filho ilegitimo, não tem a propriedade de Espurio, i.e., o filho que não tem pai certo ou confessavel.” Mello Freire, Inst, direito lusitano, L. 2, Tít. 6, Art. 4; quoted in Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 943 (n.7).Google Scholar

82 Direito civil, p. 250.

83 Direito família, p. 439. Cf.: “Children are of two sorts, legitimate and spurious, or bastards.” Jones, , (ed.), Commentaries Blackstone, vol. 1, p. 635.Google Scholar

84 Tratado testamentos, p. 146.

85 Mello Freire, Inst, direito lusitano, L. 1, Tít. V, Art. 79; quoted in de Lxmreiro, Trigo, Inst, direito bras., vol. 1, p. 45.Google Scholar

86 O’Neill, , Social Inequality, p. 338 Google Scholar; see chaps. 5 and 6. Idem, “Family Cycles and Inheritance in Rural Portugal,” Peasant Studies, 12 (Spring 1985), pp. 199–213, esp. p. 205; and Metcalf, “Strategies, Families,” chap. 3.

87 “Honor, Sexuality, Illegitimacy,” pp. 134-42. Among women from higher social orders in colonial Mexico, “illegitimacy” rates did not differ significantly from those of women from lower social orders. Patricia Seed, “Narratives of Don Juan: The Language of Seduction in Hispanic Literature and Society” (unpublished paper, 1990), p. 1 (n.l); idem, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 26, 98 (n.l).

88 The Masters and the Slaves (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 7. Karasch, , Slave Life Rio, p. 297.Google Scholar Cf. Mattoso, , To Be a Slave: “Common-law marriage may have discouraged childbearing,” p. 108.Google Scholar

89 Rugendas, João Maurício, Viagem pintoresca através do Brasil (8th ed.; Belo Horizonte: Ed. Itatiaia, 1979), p. 130.Google Scholar

90 Hajnal, J.H., “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective,” in Glass, D.V. and Eversley, D.E.C. (eds.), Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography (London: Edward Arnold, 1965), pp. 100–43.Google Scholar In his sequel, which clearly recognized the geographical confines of north-west Europe appropriate to his 1965 discussion, Hajnal called attention to the lack of household data on the Iberian peninsula: “Two Kinds of Pre-Industrial Household Formation Systems, ” in Family Forms in Historic Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), (eds.), Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett, p. 66. And Laslett, in setting forth “tendencies” fora “Mediterranean” family pattern remarked on the “illknown” or “entirely unknown” familial systems in countries like Spain. “Family and Household as Work Groups and Kin Groups: Areas of Traditional Europe Compared,” in ibid., p. 531 (n.15). See also Kertzer, David I. and Brettell, Caroline, “Advances in Italian and Iberian Family History,” Journal of Family History, 12 (1987), 1–3, 85–120,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a review of recent literature.

91 The problem is not any more that a southern or Mediterranean European family must be distinguished from that of north-west Europe, although agreement over the characteristics of the former remains elusive. Rather, the methodological presumption of either marriage or celibacy inherent in European family reconstruction methodology means that significantly high rates of illegitimacy will not receive appropriate attention, including their relevance to heirship. On Portugal’s historically large illegitimate population see: Brettell, Men Who Migrate, pp. 42–58; O’Neill, Social Inequality, chap. 5 [reviewing Massimo Livi Bacci’s A Century of Portuguese Fertility (1972)], p. 332.

92 Flandrin, Jean-Louis, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household, and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 4–6, and 9.Google Scholar Nizza da Silva has also pointed out that “legitimate marriage confronted illegitimacy as a matter of course,” citing the will of Lino José do Amarai, who recognized posthumously his natural son Firmino and appointed his widow and inventariante the boy’s legal guardian. “Desembargo Paço,” p. 64.

93 “Concubinage, where a man takes a partner other than his wife to ensure an heir, is not characteristic of historic Europe.” Goody, , Development Marriage Europe, p. 9(n.l3).Google Scholar Cf. Karasch’s reference to Antonio Joaquim de Mello’s manumission, recognition, and adoption (jointly with his wife) of his own adulterine daughter by his slave woman so that the daughter would become the childless couple’s testamentary successor. Slave Life Rio, p. 350 (n.45) On Laslett, see also Patricia Seed, Love, Honor, Obey, chap. 4 (n.8).

94 de Loureiro, Trigo, Inst, direito bras., vol. 1, pp. 33–34.Google Scholar See n.61, supra.

95 Goody, , Development Marriage Europe, p. 9 (and n.13).Google Scholar Other than one reference to “mantle children,” Goody never mentions natural offspring, despite his emphasis on canon law.

96 See the case of Cristóbal Jiménez de la Chica, who, after 22 years of concubinage sought to marry the mother of his eight children over his brothers’ objections. Seed, , Love, Honor, Obey, pp. 72–73.Google Scholar

97 Klein, Herbert S., “The Colored Freedmen in Brazilian Slave Society,” Journal of Social History, 3:1 (1969), 40, 48–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 “Iberian Spanish society … had the highest levels of pregnancies outside marriage in Western Europe …” Seed, Love, Honor, Obey, p. 63. “ … rates among Spanish women in Iberian cities regularly reached between ten and thirty-three percent, and floated between twenty and forty percent among urban New World Spanish women (whites).” Idem, “Don Juan,” p. 1 (and n.l).

99 Preface to Bastardy and Its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, North America, Jamaica, and Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen, and Richard M. Smith (eds.), p. 5.

100 Goody, , Development Family Europe, pp. 41 and 76.Google Scholar A study of late medieval Portugal revealed that, of the 1,284 illegitimate offspring legitimized by the crown, 912 were the children of priests. Viegas, Valentino, Subsídios para o estudo das legitimações joaninas (1383–1412) (Lisbon: Hueris, n.d.), p. 21,Google Scholar cited in Lewkowicz, Ida, “A fragilidade do celibato,” p. 63 (and n.31).Google Scholar

101 Posthumous recognition of paternity by a clause in a will manumitted such offspring, however, and equipped them for ab intestato succession, where they were natural. Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 942 (n.l).Google Scholar Ord., Bk. 4, Tít. 92. By the 1830s jurisprudential debate emerged. Teixeira de Freitas, Consolidações, Art. 212 (n.2).

102 Personal communications, December 1989 and April 1990. Nor has Karasch discovered slave wills in nineteenth-century Goiás.

103 Arquivo Nacional, livro 210, 6 July 1814, folha 163, 1/2, cited in Karasch, , Slave Life, p. 348 (n.41).Google Scholar

104 The key test case was in 1832. Mendes, Candido, Ord., p. 942 (n.l).Google Scholar On slaves’ incapacity to make wills, see Pinto, Gouvêa, Tratado testamentos, pp. 51–52, 96Google Scholar; and [Augusto] Teixeira de Freitas’ updated (Brazilian) edition of Tratado de testamentos (Rio de Janeiro: B.L. Gantier, 1881), pp. 286ff. Cf. de Queirós Mattoso, Katia M., Testamentos de escravos libertos do século XIX: Urna fonte para o estudo de mentalidades, Estudos Bahianos, No. 85 (Bahia: UFBa, 1979).Google Scholar For a testator’s declaration that his child’s unnamed mother was free, see Lauderdale-Graham, Sandra, House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 75.Google Scholar

105 See Mattoso, , To Be a Slave, p. 168.Google Scholar

106 Klein, , “Colored Freedmen,” pp. 40, 48–49.Google Scholar

107 “Fragilidade do celibato,” p. 63.

108 Lafayette, , Direitos família, pp. 267 Google Scholar (n. 1), citing Lobão, Notas á Mello, L. 2, Tít. 5, Art. 19 (n.7): “ … se obtiver legitimação.” See notes 52–54, above. Recently, M. Beatriz Nizza da Silva has also argued that the Desembargo do Paço’s legitimization certificate was indispensable for all spurious offspring (or natural offspring of a noble parent) to succeed or enjoy their parent’s honors and privileges. “Desembargo Paço,” pp. 70–71. She counted forty-five priests who between 1808 and 1822 petitioned Brazil’s Desembargo do Paço for the legitimization of their “sacrilegious” offspring in order to declare them (testamentary) heirs (in succession). Ibid., p. 75.

109 Personal communication from Muriel Nazzari, March 1989.

110 Readers are not told if the will referred to an escritura pública for Helena, but her younger age (than her half-brother) suggests that she was adulterine, not natural.

111 Caldwell, Helen, Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Master and His Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 52–54.Google Scholar

112 “Os filhos legitimados gozam dos mesmos direitos que os legítimos?” Direito, vol. 50 (1889), p. 321.

113 “Applicação da lei de 2 de setembro de 1847 ao caso de filhos naturais de viuvo reconhecidos legalmente,” Direito, vol. 49 (1989), p. 351.

114 Pang, , Pursuit Honor, p. 259.Google Scholar Meiações (meias) belonged only to surviving spouses, not bachelors; no one could “leave” [bequeath] one-half an estate, only one-third. So the characterization of sixteen natural offspring as co-heirs is suspect–the will barred them from using their father’s name. Were not Juparanã’s brothers the ab intestato (collateral) heirs?

115 Personal communication from Nazzari, March 1989.

116 The interest of the state “in taxing bequests and inheritance led to the requirement that all estates be settled judicially” (Alvará of 17 June 1809 and Regimento of 28 April 1842). “Women, Family, Property,” pp. 241–242 (n.8).

117 Lauderdale-Graham, , House and Street, p. 75.Google Scholar Although Eni de Mesquita found a significant number of unmarried women drawing up wills in nineteenth-century São Paulo, Muriel Nazzari found fewer wills were written then than in earlier centuries. (Personal communication to the author, December 1989.)

118 Considerable convergence between those traditions can be found. Cf. Ditz’ “extended cognate ties of kinship” for “subsistence-plus” communities in Connecticut. Property and Kinship, p. 27; and Moura, , Herdeiros terra, pp. 28–29, 41, 53.Google Scholar