The aim of this article is to show that overseas, as well as in metropolitan Portugal, the Misericórdias (Catholic lay assistance orders) were fundamental institutions, which played several relevant roles. They came to be guarantors of a public assistance system, moralizing instruments for the communities, local power nuclei and, consequently, homogenizing structures of an empire geographically discontinuous and whose specific characteristics were as varied as those found in its institutional and administrative models. This article also analyzes the conflicts that overseas Misericórdias went through when they tried to keep the monopoly of assistance activities, always with the help of the government, which could so guarantee its sovereign power over institutions that were real centers of power and, consequently, constantly beset by representatives of the Catholic Church. However, not even royal support was capable of keeping the Misericórdias from declining or starting the 18th century in death agony everywhere in the empire, but in Brazil.
Portuguese Empire; Misericórdias; Catholic lay assistance orders; public assistance