Party Days at Sea: maritimity, hierophanies and urban heortology in nineteenth-century Salvador

Abstract

The nineteenth-century Salvador was deeply dependent on the sea: he extracted construction material, wealth and daily sustenance from it and from its coast, with the Bay of All Saints as his mare nostrum. One aspect of this particular maritimity was religious
beliefs and celebrations. Sea workers were the most loyal believers, but it was a shared interest by defenseless society in the face of weather on land and especially in the inevitable voyages
by sea. This explained the appearances of hierophanies at the seashore, celebrated within an annual calendar, guiding the worldly and spiritual economy of that society. In the open possibilities of an Urban Heortology, the study of the relations between
Feasts and Cities, we research the articulations between parts of the city, its surroundings and more distant places, through different types of displacement: processions, pilgrimages, races and offertories.
First, we identified the extraterrestrial powers that were linked to the sea worshiped in Salvador in the XIXth century, in the Catholic cult and that of the Mother of Water (Mãe d´Água),
which merged African beliefs with a previous Amerindian matrix, in addition to its ambivalent relationships with denominations of Our Lady, manifesting in fountains, lakes and and caves at seashore. The next step was to track the specific parties. Some in the Harbor of the town, like the Feast of Stairs (Festa das Escadas)
and the feast to Bom Jesus dos Navegantes. Others were distant from the city, implying an impressive nautical pilgrimage across the bay, the most important being the celebration to Our Lady of Purification (Nossa Senhora da Purificação) and, later, that of Our Lady of Lamps (Nossa Senhora das Candeias). The solidarity between the fishermen’s localities was expressed at the festivals, during the processions and their rituals, which went from one sanctuary to another, however simple they were. In the Itapagipe Peninsula, the ancient cult of saints dedicated to the sea found a
larger audience, leading to the so-called “passing the feasts”, a precursor and propellent of modern summer vacations, around N. Sr. do Bonfim, with regional scale in Bahia. And, more discreetly on the peninsula’s coast, the Offertory to the Mother of Water in
Ribeira, the great celebration of this deity at the time, than in the first decades of the XXth century went to Montserrat, nearby. In the locations of the Atlantic coast, the retreat during the summer, in something moved by health issues, led to the visibility of those parties that were previously marginal and their adoption by vacationers, with the contribution of resources and an increase in the public. It occurred from Barra to the distant village of Itapuã, especially in Rio Vermelho, which became the main summer resort at the end of the XIXth century and as the end of the summer festive cycle, harbinger of Carnival. In this way, the festivities explain a more hierophanic approach to the sea, a central component for the habits and values of the city, which have even guided its urbanization, favoring coastal areas before the modern valorization of the seaside.