The Brotherhoods of Penance of Seville
There is certainty of brotherhoods of lay in Seville, organized with different religious aims, from the first times of Reconquista. Nevertheless these first institutions did not make penitenciales processions, nor centered their meditations and cults in the Cross and other moments of the Passion. They were light brotherhoods, to distinguish them of that they will come soon, those of blood.

Some, as the one of Santa Cruz of Jerusalem (Silence), the one of Our Mrs. of Los Angeles (the Negritos), the one of Santa Faz and Our Lady of the Incarnation (the Valley), the one of the Santísimo Poder and Transpaso (the Great Power), it seems that they are based on centuries XIV and XV as light brotherhoods and approve rules of penance in century XVI, becoming since then blood corporations. Nevertheless he is not dismissable that some of them practiced the public discipline in collective acts of imploración and rogativa.

The hypothetical foundation of Silencio in 1340 and first procesional exit of the 1356 from the Parish of Omnium Sanctorum to the Hospital of San Lazaro (only testimony is indirect: the chronicle of the older brother of the Tomás corporation Perez Perez, of 1621) could be tie, as already it indicated Bermejo, to the epidemic of those years, and the culture of such rigors would not be rare.

Yes he is safe, however, the introduction of the cult to the Cross from half-full of century XV and the foundation of brotherhoods of the Side Cross in all Andalusia, like in Castile, the last decades of century XV and first years of the XVI (documented by Sanchez Blacksmith). In Seville the Side Cross could be the first brotherhood of penance, if we give credit to the words of Abbot Gordillo, for want of a documentary confirmation. Of being thus we would be speaking of year 1480.

But beyond the prurito of the antiguedad (the question is far from being solved with the present state of our knowledge) the certain thing is that the Brotherhoods of Penance are a phenomenon of century XVI, or at the most of end of century XV. The previous groupings, practiced or not the public discipline, little have to do in their organization, objectives and devocional culture with the new brotherhoods. These are distinguished by the cult to the cross, the blood of Christ, the stations of the Crucis Route and by extension all the mysteries of the Passion. There is one who has called them, in this sense, "devocionales Brotherhoods around the Passion", with which the sterile debate is avoided about the public discipline.

But in addition they are brotherhoods that actively exert one pedagogía of the Passion throughout the year, which they order its life according to a model of Christian militancy based on the purification (ritual of confession and comunión), the oration (litanies, meditation and sermon) and the penance (in private or public), according to the scheme of Matecón Movellán. The procession of Easter would be the act of greater public ejemplaridad of a whole life submissive rule. Finally, the penance brotherhoods, unlike the previous institutes that had a noticeable communitarian character, usually are opened institutions, which does not mean that with time they do not tend to be monopolized by professional corporations and unions.

In summary, a penance brotherhood was in Century XVI a grouping of lay with interclasista character, but predominance of popular sectors, that are instituted (generally equipping itself with rules) to imitate to Christ in some of the passages of their Passion, whose aim orders its communitarian life and its acts witnessed by notary public of devotion, between which are the cults and the procession of penance. Usually it represents the mystery of his invocation in an image that it imitates to natural the that moment of sagrada history. They also cover many with the functions that made the old brotherhoods of light, in agreement these disappear or are absorbed by those of penance: specially the attendance of widows, orphans and burials.