Religion in Brazil has never been a matter for dissension or the cause of social upheaval: the original donatarios brought chaplains with them as a matter of course, missionary Jesuits and members of Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican and other Orders gradually founding establishments in the settlements. With regard to the natives their task was easy, since there existed no definite religion to be eradicated, and, except when the work of the missionaries interfered with the designs of the planters, cordial co-operation existed between the padres, colonists, and authorities; many of them had a hand in political matters, were emissaries between the mother country and Brazil, and enjoyed marked prestige. No Inquisition was ever established in Brazilian territory, and a bone of contention thus avoided. With the erection of the Republic in 1889 Church was separated from State, probably much to the betterment of conditions, for considerable criticism of clerical ways and habits had grown up, laxity following upon security; put upon her mettle as an independent organization, and faced with the competition of other permitted forms of belief, the Roman Catholic church in Brazil is said to have performed much needed purifying.
Tolerance is a long-established habit. Protestant forms of Christianity exist undisturbed, and although their temples are very generally attended exclusively by the foreign congregations responsible for their origin, and proselytizing is not encouraged, their social work is undoubtedly useful. In the southern organized settlements each community practises the form of faith of the home land, the Russians of the Greek church, Germans with their Lutheran establishments, and so on; there is not the slightest interference—religious intolerance is indeed unimaginable in Brazil. It has been said often of the Brazilian that this attitude arises from indifference, that the practice of religious observances is left to women and children and that the grown men of communities are cynical—next door to what used to be called “agnosticism” by the professional European unbelievers of the past generation. This is, I think, only apparently true. It has an appearance of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; it is common for Brazilian men in conversation to affect an airy amusement before the claims of religious bodies: but due allowance must be made for French influence. Almost up to the time of the European War there was a parade of emancipation from clerical leading strings by the intellectual French, yet the course of the conflict has witnessed a spiritual awakening, the resurrection of something dormant; the France of today is probably more sincerely religious than she has been for many a century. The cynicism of masculine Brazil may be no more deeply rooted.
As in France, there is in Brazil no reaching out after new religions comparable to the tendency in the United States which is so curious an indication of emotional phases: it is impossible to conceive Brazilian reception of Mormonism or Zionism, for instance. The only notable example of serious adoption of a new faith is found in the extreme South, where the principles of August Comte have taken root, and the riograndense of the educated ruling class is generally a Comtist.
In certain of the older, more northerly towns of Brazil the proportion of Roman Catholic churches to the population is remarkably large, particularly in Bahia, Pernambuco and its elder sister, Olinda. That they are able to exist is largely due to the negro and mulatto element, for here as in all other parts of the world where he has been taken the negro is a fervent admirer of almost any kind of religion. It is the swarming coloured people of Bahia, crowded in the cobble-paved, half-lighted rookeries of the lower town and the tilted streets leading to the upper town, who make it possible to keep open the doors of that city’s four hundred churches. In these centres all the many saints’ days are kept with fervour, but it is in the interior that tradition and a simple faith in “white magic” survive; here that the ceremonies of All Hallowe’en are performed by maids of the sertão, and spells invoked. St. John’s is one of the popular days, with its legends and traditional celebrations, when groups of boys and girls, mingling on this occasion as youth of Latin inheritance does not often mingle, crowned with leaves and flowers, go down to the river banks to wash, singing as they go, because as the verse says: “Nessa noite é benta a agua. Pará tudo tem virtudes.” Fires are lighted outside each house in homage to St. John, and at these green corn is roasted—the traditional milho assado na fogueira. Over the hot ashes of these fires the faithful walk barefoot without being burnt....
On this night lovers make their tests of the fidelity of the sweetheart, and girls try to discover their fate in marriage; St. John, however, is not the only aider of candidates for matrimony—there is “São Gonçalvo,” a great lover of lovers, and St. Anthony, famous in North Brazil for his power in binding uncertain swains. A well-used prayer to this saint is quoted by Pereira da Costa in his Folklore Pernambucano and begins: “Father St. Anthony of Captives, you who are a firm binder, tie him who wishes to flee from me; with your habit and with your holy girdle hinder the steps of Fulano as with a strong cage....”
St. Raymund is another helper of solitary maidens, and a guaranteed prayer of noted efficiency is addressed to him; translated freely it runs:
Miraculous Saint Raymund,
You who help everyone to marry,
Please tell Saint Anthero
That I wish to be married soon