Instrumentos antemodernos de mediação dos riscos: oposição e contributos da igreja para o desenvolvimento das protoformas dos seguros

In this paper we sought to develop an analysis where are explained some of the strategies that human beings used, since immemorial time, to protect their resources against the contingencies, insecurities resulting from unknown space. We will highlight some of the instruments mediators of "risks" associated with the maritime activities. We will also take into account how the religious discourse understood these instruments, with the intention to demonstrate the incompatibilities that, for centuries, existed between this discourse and experience. Based on the connections established between risks and experience, the argument of usury will be analyzed, with the intention to show that, although, in a first moment, it could be considered as an element that conditioned the implementation and development of some of the strategies engendered by human being with the intention of management the contingent, in the end it is transformed in a driving force behind the action of individuals in the search for new ways of sharing the risks that escaped the penalties resulting from this same usury.