Image of Our Lady of Charity in banner of Archicofradia or Lay brotherhood in Miami hermitage.
Cofradia's banner in the hermitage of Miami
|
 |
< 6 >
The hermitage of Miami houses a cofradía or Catholic lay brotherhood honoring the Virgin of Charity. It was founded in 1968 alongside a Committee to raise funds for the construction of the hermitage. Lay brotherhoods have a long history in Christianity going back to the Medieval world. Everywhere they had custody of an image housed in a church or chapel often built with funds collected by the lay brothers and dedicated solely to its cult. Cofradías had their most spectacular manifestation in the baroque Catholic world of the 16th and 17th centuries and they found their way into the New World with Iberian colonization. The Holy Week processional spectacles that the lay brotherhoods of Seville mount to this day, and that have become such a strong tourist attraction, approach what the baroque ceremonial world of cofradías may have once looked like elsewhere too (see video below).
Cofradías were important markers of social identity and they existed among elite and popular sectors of society. In the Iberian and colonial worlds there were also cofradías for free people of African ancestry, for slaves and throughout Latin America--and to this day--Native Americans had their own lay brotherhoods too. Although their significance has declined (and changed) in the modern world, cofradías continue to play a role among smaller active Catholic groups in Latin American societies today. The lay brotherhood in the hermitage of Miami constitutes one such modern case (there is no analogous cofradía in the Sanctuary of El Cobre). The image of the Virgin in this hermitage's cofradía banner is unambiguously racially white, a projection perhaps of the lay brotherhood's self image and of its membership's racial identity.
OF RELATED INTEREST
|
