Pobreza e a caridade: as esmolas nos discursos e nas práticas da Misericórdia do Porto, na Época Moderna

Abstract

This paper was driven by the perception of an ideal (regardingdiscourses) and real (regarding practices) society, approaching the moral discourseand the charity works, within the relations between Church and State, and theirresponsibilities in the distinction between the good and the bad poor, the (il)legitimacy of the alms, and the emergence of the value of work as a liberator ofsocial deviations. The contributes of historiography for the measurement andrelativity of poverty, frame a qualitative and quantitative methodological analysis.The Misericórdia of Porto is the empirical observatory for that dichotomy (idealand real), through the analysis of the meanings of the alms, in which time, serviceand devotion present themselves as behavioral parameters of accomplishment ofthe Mercy works. We demonstrated the ecclesiastical character of the brotherhood(considering the high number of priests) that certifies a Misericórdia of charitywork, face to face with the poor, in their multiple dimensions (illness, widowhood,shamefaced poverty, and unemployment). It has been proved that there was anorganizational structure, adapted to poverty transformations, in which discoursesare absent in favor of the practices, of an efficient governance of the poverty. Weobserved the numerical evolution of the alms and their weight in the generalincomes of the institution (ordinary and extraordinary alms) and its qualitativedimensions, as devotional expressions.