How a Portuguese Burial Law Triggered the Maria da Fonte Women's Revolt

The marble Maria da Fonte Sculpture, by Costa Mota (uncle), stands in the Jardim Teófilo Braga in Campo de Ourique, Lisbon. It represents the women of the Minho who fought against Costa Cabral's prohibition of church burials. The uprising began in 1846 and spread throughout the country and population, becoming a revolt against the government itself. It resulted in Cabral's dismissal two months later. (Photo @ Câmara Municipal de Lisboa)

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In defiance of the law, women buried the elderly Custódia Teresa from the Minho parish of Fontarcada in the church "amid insults and vociferations against public health workers and against burial certificates" in March 1846, according to a judge of the municipality of Póvoa de Lanhoso.

Four were arrested by the municipality administrator.

A few days later, a crowd of women, about three or four hundred, "armed with spears, brush cutters, sticks, iron pitchforks, axes and some with firearms, and amid chants, cheers, and threats, stormed the jail, broke down the doors and trapdoors with blows of axes, took out the prisoners and to the voices of cheers for the queen, new laws below, and old laws above, and deaths to one of the ministers of the Crown, and cheers to the women, they left in triumph", said the same judge, Domingos Carvalho de Abreu, according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

"The government, sensing a shift in public opinion, tried to discredit the episode as rural women's hysterical fanaticism -- and while it wasn't a mistake, per se, to call it a women's revolt, it certainly was a mistake to minimize it. The fact that rural women had chosen to bear arms for the right to provide their loved ones with what they believed to be a good death wasn't a bug in the system: it was a feature,"  wrote Rafaela Ferraz, in How Death Positive Women Kickstarted a Civil War  (December 3, 2019).

"In a time and place that tasked women with the near-sacred duty of nurturing and protecting entire communities, it's hardly surprising that so many would take it upon themselves to see the job through from cradle to casket."

The March prison break marked the first phase of the Revolt of Maria da Fonte, which spread throughout the North and the South of the country, becoming a revolt against administrative and tax reform, and the "shameless" government itself led by Costa Cabral, who was "hated by much of the country", according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

"It is unclear whether the revolt's name honors an individual, identifiable woman or an anonymous mass of revolutionaries whom history has chosen to remember as "Maria", wrote Rafaela Ferraz, in How Death Positive Women Kickstarted a Civil War. "Either way, the name is a testament to the power of popular sovereignty in life as well as death."

Two months later, in May 1846, Queen Maria II dismissed Costa Cabral, though he was reinstated after the Patuleia civil war in 1849 before being removed again in 1851.

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Viva a Maria da Fonte Long live Maria da Fonte

Com as pistolas na mão With pistols in hand

Para matas os cabrais To kill the Cabralists

Que são falsos a nacão Who are falso to the nation

O Hino da Maria da Fonte, or the Maria da Fonte anthem, also known as O Hino de Minho, is a patriotic anthem written in 1846 after the Revolt of Maria da Fonte by Angelo Frondoni with lyrics by Paulo Midosi. There are multiple historical variations in the lyrics. The anthem is still played today in formal civic and military ceremonies.

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The death of Custódia Teresa should have been a quiet affair, the deceased´s name unknown to those other than her friends, family and neighbors.

However, she died after the September 1844 Leis da Saúde, or Health and Hygiene Laws, which enforced the September 1835 law for the construction of cemeteries and prohibited burials in churches, requiring burial in cemeteries, according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

In addition to being forced to discontinue an ancestral religious practice, there was also the introduction of a health commissioner, who was the only person who could authorize burials by means of a bilhete de enterramento, or burial ticket, thereby causing a wait and an expense.

Part of the rationale for the change in burial place was the avoidance of cholera. Ten years before, an epidemic in Portugal had killed 40,000, more than the simultaneous Civil War (the Liberal War or the War of Two Brothers) (1828-1834), according to Cholera Comes to Portugal: Myths and Science, Conference at the University of Coimbra (October 2022).

At that time, miasma, or bad air, from decomposing bodies was believed to cause cholera. Today, it is known that the cholera bacteria are spread by fecal-oral contamination, reported The Lancet (November 14, 1998). Without adequate hand-washing, the women preparing the body for burial would have been more at-risk for contracting the disease.

"Custódia Teresa's death was a hands-on affair for the entire neighborhood," wrote Rafaela Ferraz, in How Death Positive Women Kickstarted a Civil War.

"First, the neighboring women rushed to Teresa's bedside and pronounced her dead, very dead, definitely dead. While that was, technically, the medical examiner's job, our heroines knew very well what a corpse looked like and didn't feel like waiting for a second opinion. It was the 1840s, and death was still firmly women's business. (Partly because churchgoing was women's business, and churchgoing was intrinsically connected to the cult of the dead; and partly because funeral arranging was really just a final act of domestic management.)

"Once the prep was over and done with, there was the whole matter of actually burying the body. The public cemetery had yet to be built, which could have complicated things had the women intended to abide by the law -- but they didn't. Instead, they hauled the casket containing Teresa's body to the nearby church of the monastery of Fontarcada, forced their way past the men guarding the double doors, and buried the unsuspecting woman under the flagstones."

Teresa's burial in March had not been the first to break the law.

"The first riots took place in January/February 1846 in parishes in the municipality of Póvoa de Lanhoso, and quickly spread to the neighboring municipalities of Braga, Fafe, Guimarães and Vieira, according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

"They consisted of attempts to forcibly bury the bodies of people who had recently died in those communities inside churches, sometimes successfully but, in other cases, prevented by the intervention of local authorities.

"These episodes began with the ringing of church bells, a signal to call, gather and instigate the population, and were led by groups of hundreds of women who used agricultural implements as weapons and shouted slogans against the new laws."

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Revolta da Maria da Fonte -- 1846 is an etching by Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro for A Ilustração (1846), via the Biblioteca Nacional. Manuel Maria was the father of Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, who designed the flag of the Portuguese Republic adopted after the October 5, 1910 revolution, which ended the Portuguese monarchy. Columbano was the younger brother of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, the caricaturist who drew Zé Povinho, an emotive symbol of the people, in 1875.

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António Bernardo da Costa Cabral had led the government since 1842. The son of a modest landowner and farmer, he was born in Fornos de Algodres, in Guarda District, and had studied law at the University of Coimbra.

Costa Cabral called for the executive power to be strong and the administration to be centralized in order to lay the foundations of a modern Portuguese state in an environment of political and social order, according to the History of Parliament.

"The opposition always encountered many difficulties in carrying out its activities, as the Minister of the Kingdom shamelessly resorted to the most extreme means to combat it. In addition to the irregularities committed in the electoral acts, he closed Parliament for months on several occasions, governing as a 'dictatorship', and persecuted the opposition press with the usual suspensions of publication, legal proceedings, fines, arrests and seizures of printing material.

"In 1843, when several municipal councils in the country sent representations to the Queen asking him to resign from the Government, Costa Cabral retaliated by dissolving them. In 1844, in response to the 'September ' revolt in Torres Novas, he suspended individual guarantees (the protection of rights afforded by legal provision) and granted the Government 'extraordinary and discretionary powers' for twenty days, having subsequently carried out a large number of arrests, deportations and purges of civilians and military personnel and decreed the shooting of all those caught with weapons or involved in the revolt."

The regime was hated, summed up RTP Ensinas.

"The state lived off taxes levied on the people, while at the same time granting monopolies or making contracts with large capitalists in exchange for loans. Large companies emerged, such as the Tobacco and Soap Companies, often fronts for speculative businesses. In April 1845, the 'tax on distributions' worsened the workers' discontent.

"They burned down notary offices to make the tax records, as papeletas da ladroeira (the thieves' papers) disappear," according to RTP Ensinas. "During the month of April, in clashes with the troops, both the people and soldiers died. When everything seemed to be under control, the columns led by José da Silva Cabral, the minister's brother, refused to fight against the people."

Costa Cabral's older brother, José da Silva Cabral, Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Justice since 1845, had crushed riots and conspiracies as former governor of Porto (1843) and Lisbon (1844), according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

By early 1846, the Cabralist regime had become authoritarianism, and intentions of modernization had led to huge public debt. In addition to fiscal reform, Costa Cabral had centralized administrative and judicial reform, significantly reducing the autonomy of municipalities and increasing the central government's ability to intervene in local affairs.

By mid-April onward, the Maria da Fonte Revolt began to take on a different form, involving women and men: the issue of burials was relegated to the background, and the main targets of the protests became the Costa Cabral government itself.

The revolt was becoming less spontaneous and more organized by the former local power-brokers. Guerrilla units were formed, commanded by political figures from the opposition, according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

"With the arrival of the guerrillas, the revolt lost its exclusively female character and became more bold: the municipal seats were invaded, the local administration buildings were invaded, the local administration buildings were destroyed and their archives burned, and the local authorities and officials were persecuted, dismissed and replaced by people trusted by the rebels.

"Between April and the beginning of May, groups of hundreds of armed people carried out attacks on Guimarães, Ponte da Barca, Barcelos, Fafe, Famalição, Santo Tirso, Póvoa do Varzim, Vila do Condo, among other places. There were also reports of riots in Amarante, Viana do Castelo, in some municipalities of Tras-os-Montes (Boticas, Chaves, Montalegre), and even in regions of the center and south of the country, such as Abrantes, Aveiro, Figueira da Foz, Peniche, Portalegre.

"There were at least six attacks on Braga, the first of which involved around 5,000 men and women, but the troops protecting the city always managed to repress the invaders, resulting in a significant number of deaths, injuries and arrests. As for Barcelos, it was unable to resist and became the rebel headquarters."

On April 20, the government presented two bills to the Chamber of Deputies, one which authorized it to use "extraordinary and discretionary powers, as circumstances require, to quell the rebellion which had begun in the Province of Minho" and another establishing the summary trial of the rebels in a Court Martial and shooting as the sole penalty for those found guilty.

The opposition had too few representatives in parliament the approval and subsequent promulgation of the bills. However, some, such as Joaquim António de Aguiar, voiced their disapproval:

"The laws of exception and blood, these military commissions, in which all rules and all forms of protection of justice and innocence are postponed, have only a momentary force. Tyranny resorts to these means but, sooner or later, it becomes a victim, often without prolonging its existence."

His words came true.

Costa Cabral sent the military to quell the unrest all over the country. However, with the support of the people, the guerrillas were unstoppable.

At the beginning of May, the opposition took power in several municipalities across the country and organized itself into governing councils, the first of which was in Vila Real, followed by Braga, Santarém, Leiria, Viseu, Lamego, Évora, Coimbra, and other cities and towns.

On May 20, 1846, Queen Maria II acquiesced to the requests of the opposition and dismissed Costa Cabral. The Cabral brothers went into exile in Spain.

The Emboscada, or Ambush, was a palace coup on October 6, 1846, in which Queen Maria II deposed the government of the First Duke of Palmela, which had been installed on May 20 as a result of the Revolt of Maria da Fonte.

The queen's action rekindled revolt, triggering the Guerra da Patuleia , or the civil war of Patuleia) two days later on October 8 and ending on June 30, 1847, after the intervention of foreign military forces under the Quadruple Alliance (April 22, 1834) in which Portugal, Spain, France and the United Kingdom aspired to impose liberal regimes in Portugal and Spain.

Liberalism was a philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.

(Patuleia is a deturpation of pata-ao-léu, or barefoot, in reference to the popular support enjoyed by the Oporto Junta, according to The Political History of Nineteenth Century Portugal, Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University (Summer 2003).)

The Liberals won the Patuleia (1846-1847) as they had the Civil War years before. Queen Maria II continued her reign until her death at age 34 in childbirth with her 11th child, a stillborn, in 1853.

In 1849, Costa Cabral returned to Portugal to take up his previous post as Minister of the Kingdom. However, he found the political climate to be hostile to him In April 1851, he was removed from power and never held a government position again.

The ideological factions in the Patuleia were the same as in the Civil War (1828-1834) between Pedro, Maria's father (liberal constitutionalists), and Miguel I, Maria's uncle who was Pedro's younger brother (conservative traditionalists) and who was king during the war. It was a war for royal succession. Pedro won and Miguel lived the rest of his life in exile. Four months later, Pedro IV of Portugal (also Pedro I of Brazil) died of tuberculosis.

Brazil

Why was their a fight over royal succession?

In 1807, in a fleet of 15 vessels, the royal family escaped to Brazil, Portugal's wealthiest colony, just two days before Napoleon's army invaded Lisbon. Pedro IV was nine. He was the fourth child of João VI and his wife, Carlota Joaquina of Spain.

Rio de Janeiro became the capital of the Portuguese Empire.

In 1821, Pedro ruled Brazil as regent when the Liberal Revolution of 1820 compelled his father to return to Portugal. The Portuguese government's threat to revoke Brazil's political autonomy was met with widespread discontent.

Pedro chose the Brazilian side. He declared the South American country's independence on September 7, 1822. On October 12, he was acclaimed Brazil's emperor, becoming Pedro I of Brazil, and, by March 1824, had defeated all armies loyal to Portugal.

After the death of his father in 1826, Pedro I of Brazil was appointed King of Portugal by the regent Isabel Maria, his sister, and he granted the Portuguese the Constitutional Charter (Carta Constitucional or Carta) of 1826. The Carta redefined the European liberal vocabulary, setting it apart from any revolutionary legacy and engaging in a 'middle way', equidistant between traditional royal absolutism and radical popular democracy, according to José Miguel Sardica, A Carta Constitucional Portuguesa de 1826, Historia Constitucional (2012).

Pedro I quickly announced abdication in favor of his eldest daughter, Maria, who was seven, on condition of her marriage to her uncle Miguel, Pedro's younger brother. Until the marriage, the regency of Isabel Maria would continue in the name of Pedro IV of Portugal, who was also Pedro I of Brazil, according to the History of Parliament, Assembleia da República.

However, Miguel had other plans. He took the throne of Portugal between 1828 and 1834.

Unable to deal with problems in both Brazil and Portugal simultaneously, in 1831, Pedro I abdicated his throne in Brazil in favor of his son. In April, he and his family sailed to Europe. In June, they arrived in France.

Finding himself in the awkward position of having no official position in either the Brazilian imperial house or the Portuguese royal house, he assumed his previously held title of Duke of Bragança. For the next few months, he shuttled between France and the United Kingdom, being well received but getting no support.

An American born in South Carolina, Neil W. Macaulay wrote in Dom Pedro: The Struggle for Liberty in Brazil and Portugal, 1798-1834 (1986):

“Criticism of Dom Pedro was freely expressed and often vehement; it prompted him to abdicate two thrones. His tolerance of public criticism and his willingness to relinquish power set Dom Pedro apart from his absolutist predecessors and from the rulers of today’s coercive states, whose lifetime tenure is as secure as that of the kings of old.”

In July 1932, Pedro entered Porto with a small Portuguese force composed of liberals, such as a writer and theater promotor Almeida Garrett and writer and historian Alexandre Herculano, as well as many foreign mercenaries and volunteers.

Pedro fought on the side of liberalism and against absolute monarchy, and he won the Civil War in May 1834.

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The people rose up against an authoritarian regime and won. (Photo @ Câmara Municipal de Lisboa)

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