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Actos de caridad: women's charitable work in eighteenth-century Spain.

Article Excerpt
Este ensayo examina el concepto de caridad en la España ilustrada y su aplicación especial a las mujeres del dieciocho. Como se prueba en las numerosas representaciones de caridad hecha por y para las mujeres--desde los actos históricos de la Junta de Damas hasta las acciones dramáticas de los personajes femeninos en el melodrama Zinda de María Rosa Gálvez--la caridad llegó a ser para las mujeres privilegiadas tanto un modo de activismo político, dejándolas participar activamente en las reformas sociales de la Ilustración, como una manera de unir las divisiones de clase y raza mientras intentaron mejorar las vidas de sus hermanas menos afortunadas.

This paper examines the concept of charity in Enlightened Spain and its special application to Spanish women in the eighteenth century. As evidenced in numerous depictions of acts of charity done by and for women --from the historical actions of the Junta de Damas to the dramatic actions of female characters in the melodrama Zinda by María Rosa Gálvez-- caridad became for privileged women a means of political activism, allowing them to participate actively in Enlightenment social reforms, as well asa way to bridge class and racial divisions as they sought to improve the lives of their less-fortunate sisters.

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In a speech given in 1787 to the members of the newly formed Junta de Damas, Josefa Amar y Borbón praises Spain's first civic organization for women, contrasting their membership to their male counterparts in the Royal Economic Society of Madrid. While the men tend to take on seemingly impossible tasks in their attempts at Enlightened reform of Spanish society, Amar comments on the women's more practical approach to improving Spain:

No así Vuestras Excelencias que ciñéndose a trabajar en asuntos peculiares, y propios de su calidad y sexo, renunciarán gustosas una parte de la gloria presente, por asegurar el acierto en lo sucesivo, conociendo que no será haberse fatigado en vano, ni malogrado, si se mejora y reforma la generación siguiente, la posteridad futura. ("Oración gratulatoria" 591)

The Junta was the first of several women's civic groups whose main activity involved charitable work. Charity, deemed an acceptable form of women's participation in Enlightened social reform, became increasingly more prominent for Spanish women of the upper classes during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and yet their charitable acts carried with them many layers of religious, social, and political significance both for the women committing these charitable acts as well as for the women (and children) who found themselves as recipients. In the above quote from Josefa Amar y Borbón, women's work in the Junta was considered to be important to future generations, but to exactly which women--the benefactors of the recipients of their benevolent acts? This paper will examine the concept of charity in Enlightened Spain and its special application to Spanish women in the eighteenth century. As we shall see in numerous depictions of acts of charity done by and for women --from the historical actions of the Junta de Damas to the dramatic actions of female characters in the melodrama Zinda by María Rosa Gálvez-- caridad became for women a means of political activism, allowing them to participate actively in Enlightenment social reforms, as well as a way to bridge divisions of class and race through charitable work.

Eighteenth-century notions of charity in Spain were heavily influenced by its deep Catholic tradition, in which charity, or caritas, was held up as one of the tenets of religious faith. For Catholics in Spain and Latín America, San Ignacio de Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Company of Jesus, probably represented best the example of Catholic caridad --of denying oneself in service to Christ by communing with and serving the poor:

First of all, that love which moves me and brings me to give altos should descend from above, from the love of God our Lord, in such a way that I perceive beforehand that the love, whether greater or less, which I have for the persons is for God, and that God may shine forth in the reason for which I have greater love for these persons. (129)

Loyala encouraged his followers to follow the footsteps of Christ by serving the needs and saving the souls of those around them, which led them through the years to establish numerous institutions of learning, and of aid to the poor throughout the world. This was especially true in Loyola's native Spain, and later in the Spanish colonies where the Company of Jesus had great influence. But even before Loyola, medieval Spain already had a rather sophisticated network of charitable institutions. James William Brodman, in his study of medieval Cataluña, finds "an evolution from the occasional and ritualistic distribution of food to a few local poor into a complex and articulated system of assistance" (26). Still, Brodman also points out that "medieval charity in its various forms ... was intended to assuage the sins of the well-to-do and ameliorate the condition of the deserving poor. It was not until the sixteenth century ... that society seriously attempted to assist and reform the lives of the marginalized poor" (6). Still, the aim of these early charitable institutions in Spain was more...

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