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On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

John K. Thornton
John K. Thornton*
Affiliation:
Millersville University, Millersville, Pennsylvania
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Extract

Scholars have long taken interest in the conversion of African slaves to Christianity in the New World which have mixed, to one degree or another, African religious forms with Christianity. The process has been studied in greatest depth by sociologists, such as Roger Bastide, anthropologists like Melville Herskovitts or art historians such as Robert Farris Thompson. Although the most devoted of the scholars concerned with this have not been historians, and much of the basic research has been in current practices rather than historic origins of African and Afro-New World religions, all scholars share some vision of the historical process. In this vision African and European religions and world views meshed in a past which is far beyond the memory of modern informants and probably dates back to the early days of Afro-European contacts.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , January 1988 , pp. 261 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1988

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References

1 Perhaps the most subtle of these approaches is Roger Bastide, in many works, but especially in African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations (trans. Helen Sebba, Baltimore and London, 1978), originally published in French in 1960.

2 See, among others, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York, 1941).

3 Thompson also has a large bibliography, see Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York, 1983).

4 I have examined Kongo’s conversion and the development of the Church there in Thornton, John K., “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750,” Journal of African History 25 (1984):147–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See de Zurara, Gomes Eannes, Cronica dos feitos da Guiné (ca. 1447), cap. 8. There are many editions of this work, the best being that of Lisbon, 1978.Google Scholar

6 da Mosto, Alvise, “Novo Mondo” variorum edition of four recensions in Gasparrini-Leporace, Tullia (ed.), Le navigazione atlantiche di Alvise da Mosto (Milan, 1966), pp. 56–8.Google Scholar This title for the work is taken from one of the fifteenth century recensions.

7 Diogo Gomes, “De Prima Inuentione Guinee” (ca. 1490) in Fernandes, Valentim, “Descriçã de Çepta e sua costa,” (MS of circa 1506–1509), mod. ed. Baião, António, O Manuscrito ‘Valentim Fernandes’ (Lisbon, 1940),Google Scholar fols. 279–79v.

8 Münzer, Heironynmous, “De Inventione Africae Maritimae et Occidentalis …” (23 November 1494),Google Scholar revised edition with Portuguese translation, Brásio, António (ed.) Monumenta Missionaria Africana (2d series, 5 vols., Lisbon, 1958–81) 1: 247,Google Scholar 249–50.

9 On his career and fate, see da Mota, Avelino Teixiera “D. João Bemoim e a expedição portuguesa ao Senegal em 1489,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa 26 (1971): 63–111.Google Scholar Also issued as a separata by the Agrupamento de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga, Secção de Lisboa, series separata 63 (Lisbon, 1971).

10 The events are described in one independent source, da Pina, Rui “Chronica del Rei D. Joham Segundo … ”(ca. 1505), revised edition in Brásio, , Monumenta, 1st series, (14 volumes, Lisbon, 1952–85) 1: 56–9.Google Scholar

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12 The original report, written sometime around 1585, “Relação da Gente que vive desde o Cabo dos Mastos té Magrabomba na Costa da Guiné,” fols. 352–3, published as an appendix in Avelino Teixeira da Mota Ε.H. Hair (eds. and trans.), Descrição da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde (1625) by André Donelha (Lisbon, 1977), pp. 331–57. Early Jesuit work is described in Guerreiro, Fernão Relaçam annual das cousas que fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus nas partes da India Oriental etc (Lisbon, 1611,Google Scholar republished in 3 vols, with modernized spelling by Viegas, Artur Coimbra, 1930–42), passim.Google Scholar Other documentation has been published in Brásio, Monumenta, ser. 2, vols. 3–5.

13 The most detailed survey now is Saccardo, Graziano [da Leguzzano], Congo e Angola con la storia dell’antica missione dei Cappuccini (3 vols., Venice, 1982–3).Google Scholar

14 See the comments of Boxer, C.R. in The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion (Bloomington, 1982)Google Scholar

15 See among others, Rodney, Walter A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (London, 1970), pp. 71–94.Google Scholar

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17 Jobson, Richard The Golden Trade (London, 1623), p. 30 Google Scholar and passim. Colorful details of the life of these communities can be found in a series of contemporary Portuguese documents as well.

18 To take just two examples, Tinoco’s visit of 1575 as related in “Relação,” fols. 352–52v in da Mota, Teixeìra and Hair (eds.), Descrição da Serra Leoa, and the Capuchin, French de Saint-Lô’s, Alexis in 1635, published as Relation du Voyage au Cap Verte (Paris, 1637), pp. 13–17.Google Scholar

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20 Cf., Baltasar Barreira to Jesuit Provincial, 20 February 1606, in Brásio, , Monumenta, 2d series, 4: 110–12Google Scholar; “Relação,” fols. 352–52v in Teixeira da Mota and Hair (eds.), Descripção.

21 See the basic account of this mission in Carlos de Hinojosos and Atanásio de Salamanca, n.d. (ca. July 1662), in Brásio, , Monumenta, ser. 1, vol. 12: 378–85.Google Scholar See the mention also of the local Catholic community in “Journal du voyage du sieur Delbée … aux Isles, dans la coste de Guynée pour l’etablissment du commerce en ces pays, en l’année 1669 … ,” in Clodoré Relation de ce qui s’est passé dans les Isles et Terre-Ferme de l’Amérique (Paris, 1671), p. 446.

22 Sieur [Nicholas] Villault, sieur de Bellefond, , A Relation of the Coasts of Africk called Guinée (2d ed. London, 1670, first French edition, 1669), pp. 85–6.Google Scholar

23 Thornton, “African Catholic Church.”

24 See Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia, Lisbon, MS, Manuel Alvares, “Etiopia Menor e Descrição Geografica da Provincia de Serra Leoa” (1616), fols. 15v–16, 25–25v, 65v, (my thanks to Ρ.E.H. Hair for lending me his copy of the transcript of this MS made by Luis de Matos and Avelino Teixeira da Mota) and Hinojosos and Salamanca in Brásio, , Monumenta ser. 1, vol. 12, pp. 379–80Google Scholar among others.

25 The catechism is reprinted in facsimile with a transcription, partial linguistic interpretation and analysis in Labouret, Henri and Rivet, Paul Le royaume d’Ardra et son évangélisaton au XVII siècle (Paris, 1929).Google Scholar See pp. 31–5 for the significance of terms in the modern religion of the area.

26 Much of the spiritual practice and considerable observation about local religion is found in de Naxera, Jose Espejo mystico en que el Hombre Interior se mira (Madrid, 1672), pp. 35–6,Google Scholar 96. For use of the terms in the catechism, see Labouret and Rivet, , Royaume de Ardra, p. 4.Google Scholar

27 Thornton, , “Development,” pp. 156–7.Google Scholar For the definition of Nzambi in modern Kongo cosmology, see MacGaffey, Wyatt Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Bakongo of Lower Zaire (Chicago, 1986), pp. 75–76.Google Scholar

28 Jean Mongin à une personne de condition du Languedoc, St. Christophe, May 1682, in Chatillon, Marcel (ed.) “L’évangellisation des esclaves au XVIIe siècle. Lettres du R.P. Jean Mongin,” Bulletin du Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe 60–62 (1984): 86.Google Scholar

29 Jean Goupy des Maets, published in Debien, Gabriel “Les Origines des esclaves des Antilles,” Bulletin de l’Institute Foundamentale de l’Afrique Noire, ser. Β, 26 (1964): 178–80,Google Scholar 182.

30 For a thorough examination of the Capuchin mission, see Saccardo, Congo e Angola. For the religious and political situation in Kongo at the time, see Thornton, John The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718 (Madison, 1983), pp. 84–96.Google Scholar

31 da Piacenza, Dionigio Carli Il Moro trasportato nell’inclita città di Venetia (Bassano, 1687), p.23.Google Scholar

32 Anonymous, “An Account of the Negroe Insurrection in South Carolina,” (1739) in Candler, Allen D. Northern, William J. (eds.) Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta, 1904–16, reprinted New York, 1972) vol. 22, pt. 2, p. 233.Google Scholar

33 Oldendorp, , Geschichte des Missionen der Evangelischen Brüder auf den Inseln S. Thomas, S. Croix und S. Jan (Barby, 1777),Google Scholar partial English translation in Brown, Soi-Daniel W. “From the Tongues of Africa: A Partial Translation of Oldendorp’s Interviews,” Plantation Society 2 (1983): 51.Google Scholar

34 Ordenaçoes do Senhor D. Manuel, Book IV, title 99, 24 March 1514; and Pope Leo X, Eximiae devotionis, 7 August 1513 and Praeclarae tuae, 10 January 1516, all in Brásio, Monumenta, ser. 2, 2: 63, 69, 115–17.

35 See the observations of Bowser, Frederick The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1560–1650 (Stanford, 1974), pp. 235–6.Google Scholar

36 de Sandoval, Alonso Naturaleza, policía segrada i profana … de todos Etiopes … (Seville, 1627),Google Scholar modern edition, ed. Valtierra, Angel Instaurando Etiopia Salute: El mundo del esclavitud negra en America (Bogotá, 1957), pp. 347–72.Google Scholar

37 Bowser, , African Slave, pp. 36–38.Google Scholar

38 Sandoval, , Instaurando (ed. Valtierra), pp. 372–77,Google Scholar 380. Jean Mongin made a similar survey in 1682, but was somewhat more pessimistic about the results, though even he agreed on the issue of Central Africans. Mongin to personne de condition, 1682, pp. 86–7.

39 One can judge the percentage of slaves from the Gulf of Guinea region by examining the table of ethnic origins in Bowser, , African Slave, pp. 41–44 Google Scholar (drawn largely from bills of sale on the Lima market).

40 Thornton, , “Development,” pp. 164–6.Google Scholar

41 An Italian translation dated 24 January 1671 of the original survives in the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, cited as “BN Colombia, Claver Inquest.” The inquest was convened on 2 April 1658 and headed by the Jesuit Diego Ramirez Fariña.

42 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, Witness 9, Andrea Sachabuche, 22 October 1658, fols. 102–103.

43 ibid., Witness 1, Fr. Giovanni del Valle, S.J., 18 May 1658, fol. 32v.

43 Ibid., Sachabuche, fols. 103–104.

45 Pacconio, Francisco Gentío de Angola sufficientemente instruido nos mysteries de nossa Sancta Fé (ed. António do Couto, Lisbon, 1642).Google Scholar Pacconio probably composed the catechism shortly after founding the mission in Ndongo, principal kingdom of the Mbundu speaking people, in 1626. António do Couto, who has often been mistaken by bibliographers as the author of the text, was born in the kingdom of Kongo (and hence had native proficiency in Kikongo) and probably edited a MS that was long in use.

46 Valtierra, Angel Peter Claver: Saint of the Slaves (trans. Janet Perry and L.J. Woodward, Westminster, Maryland, 1960), p. 116.Google Scholar

47 Bontinck, François and Nsasi, D. Ndembe (ed. and trans.) Le catéchisme kikongo de 1624: reédition critique (Brussels, 1978).Google Scholar

48 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, Witness 19, Giuseppe Monzolo, 22 October 1658, fol. 140v.

49 Ibid., Witness 25, Emanuele di Capoverde, fol. 150v.

50 Ibid., Witness 36, Francesco Jolofo, fol. 177.

51 Ibid., Witness 20, Francisco di Giesu, fol. 143–143v.

52 Hinojosos and Salamanca, Brásio, Monumenta ser. 1, vol. 12: 378.

53 Labouret and Rivet, , Royaume de Ardra, pp. 20–4.Google Scholar

54 Leite, Serafim História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (10 vols., Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, 1938–50), 7:274.Google Scholar

55 Bastide, , African Religions, pp. 60–2.Google Scholar The Aja group includes Aliada, Yoruba and Dahomey. Kongo and Mbundu would be contained in Bastide’s “Bantu” group.

56 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, del Valle, fol. 40.

57 Thornton, , “Development,” pp. 157–58.Google Scholar

58 Ciruelo, Pedro, Reprouacion de las supersticiones y hechizerias (Seville, 1530), mod. ed. Ebersole, Alva from Salamanca edition of 1547 (Valencia, 1978), pp. 67–72 Google Scholar and passim.

59 Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia, Lisbon, MS, Alvares, “Etiopia Menor,” Book 2, Caps. 19–24.

60 See the detailed examination of the records of the Mexican Inquisition in Palmer, Colin, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 See, among others, Barreira, Baltasar, “Dos Escravos que saem de Cabo Verde” (1606), Brásio, Monumenta, 2d series, 4: 195–6Google Scholar and de Almada, André Alvares, “Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné” (1594) in ibid. 3: 263,Google Scholar 295, 332. For American testimony, see Mongin to personne de condition, May 1682, p.77.