This study discusses what was understood as intermediate strata in the Early Modern period. To identify the social visions in the reference period (1600-1850), we used heterogeneous sources. The main objective is to emphasize, on one hand, the multiplicity of schemes of social representation and the coexistence of taxonomies, and, on the other, to prove that, although foreign to legal discourse and framework, the notion of intermediate strata and the visions of the society that included it were quite widespread in Portugal at the time.