The collection of Jesuit texts describing black interpreters’ lives and labor in seventeenth-century Cartagena demonstrates that the black men and women employed as evangelical linguistic intermediaries before and after the publication of Alonso de Sandoval’s 1627 treatise were far from the invisible and easily replaceable assistants Sandoval suggests. In fact, the texts analyzed in this chapter provide rich details regarding the biographies and roles assigned to and adapted by the black interpreters in Cartagena. The interpreters’ stories, told in part through highly mediated accounts given by some of the black interpreters themselves, present them as linguistic and spiritual intermediaries who are leaders of black communities in the city and influential participants in the Jesuit mission. The sources demonstrate that the interpreters took advantage of the space of negotiation provided by the mission to acquire privileges unique to enslaved laborers during this period and became avenues for newly arrived black men and women to make some successful demands through their participation in the Jesuit mission.

Kant is critical of many of the practices of Christianity in his time. But when we appreciate the dynamic relation between rational and revealed religion as Kant conceives them, the apparent opposition becomes more questionable and raises more questions than it answers. Kant’s project in the Religion bears important affinities with the religious philosophy of Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn’s philosophy of church and state and their relation involve a number of radical proposals expressive of Enlightenment religious consciousness. Mendelssohn’s concept of enlightened Judaism bears interesting comparison to Kant’s enlightened reflections on Christianity. Mendelssohn defends a form of evidentialism even more radical that Clifford’s. He also defends a conception of the freedom of religious conscience that inspires Kant’s treatment of that topic in part four of the Religion. Conscience is an important theme in Kant’s moral philosophy, which has special application to religious conscience and the freedom of conscience Kant and Mendelssohn both defend.