Benedictine monks, who settled in Portuguese America in the late sixteenth century, made it their tenet to always have death in mind. The article describes diverse aspects of the Benedictine approach towards death as displayed at an eighteenth-century monastery in Rio de Janeiro. Relying on documentation stored at the monastery and highlighting performance-like activities, the article analyzes hierarchical arrangements, the ways death was represented, and the forms of sociability manifested at the time of burials. Focusing on the relations that were established, including the reciprocities that were invented and re-invented throughout the rituals, it is demonstrated that these events provided a basis for the distinction earned by clerics in a society ruled in part by the logics of the Ancién Regime.
causa mortis; rituals; hierarchies; Benedictines; colonial Rio de Janeiro