This December, the “Entail of the Month” initiative is featuring the entailment Cristóvão de Brito, a nobleman who sat on the King’s Council, established in 1560 in Lisbon. Despite having married twice, Cristóvão reached the end of his life without children, therefore deciding to bequeath his estate in favour of his nephew, João de Brito, son of his brother Lopo. Cristóvão lived a long life, which included serving the king in India alongside his brothers, from where he returned in 1516. He was the son of João de Brito and Beatriz de Lima, descending from a lineage of founders and administrators of various estates and chapels, with particular property holdings in the collegiate of São Lourenço de Lisbon.

Membership of a family circle involved in the foundation and management of entailment bonds certainly provided Cristóvão de Brito with deep knowledge on this legal solution. This reflects in the complexity of the founding document, and the application of the juridical statute of a bond to serve both lineage and spiritual purposes.

The property bound over by Cristóvão also depicts the state of 16th century social evolution, aggregating land assets, a residence in São Lourenço, Lisbon (as mentioned above, a parish to which Cristóvão’s ancestors and relatives were linked), and 400,000 réis in standard interest.

Applying part of the income from these assets, Cristóvão de Brito ordered two masses to be said daily, one in the Madre de Deus Convent in Lisbon. To support and adorn the services interceding for the salvation of his soul, the founder also destined liturgical implements – including a candlestick with the motto of Queen D. Leonor -, and a retable of Our Lady of the Assumption for the altar.

Cristóvão de Brito’s project is thus an example of the aggregation, under binding entailment structures, of a set of issues and objectives that were inseparable in Portuguese society during the Ancien Régime: lineage, family, religion and devotional practices, all deeply intertwined through this legal solution.

To find out more details about this entail, go to this page with all the Entail of the Month information. Here, you may also find out about the other entails made available in the meantime, at: https://www.vinculum.fcsh.unl.pt/entail-of-the-month

You can also contribute to this initiative by making suggestions for future entails of the month and any details you may be able to provide. To this end, please contact the project at: vinculum@fcsh.unl.pt.

The VINCULUM project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Professor of NOVA FCSH and researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies, awarded the first ERC Consolidator Grant to a Portuguese researcher in the field of History.