On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the AmericasAuthor(s): John K. ThorntonReviewed work(s):Source: The Americas, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Jan., 1988), pp. 261-278Published by: Academy of American Franciscan HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1006906 .Accessed: 05/02/2012 18:28

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ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO: AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS

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 Herskovitts2 or art historians such as Robert Farris Thompson.3 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.

Generally, most approaches to cultural amalgamation have assumed that the process took place in the Americas, with slaves arriving directly from Africa, carrying with them memories of their own religion, meeting a so- ciety which insisted with greater or less determination on converting them to Christianity. Ultimately, however, the emergence of Afro-Christian practices represented either the failure of the Europeans to Christianize the slaves fully, or alternatively as a defiant resistance on the part of the slaves to forced conversion to the religion of their masters and oppressors. Thus the degree of the survival of African beliefs and the nature of modern Christianity among American people of African descent is seen as a direct result of the effectiveness of the attempt to alter their basic religious beliefs. The shortage of interested priests, inability to control the inner lives of

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).

261

262 ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO

slaves, and power of African religious concepts are all viewed as deterrents to the realization of full conversion.

This paper will approach the problem from a different angle, and suggest a modified view of the development of New World religions that blended African and Christian elements. Instead of looking solely at the New World situation, I will focus on the religious developments in the New World as an

outgrowth of the prior conversion of a portion of Africa, and the develop- ment there of an African variant of Christianity. The development of an African Catholic Church (for Protestants played almost no role in its devel-

opment, which largely preceeded the Reformation in any case) took place especially in the Central African Kingdom of Kongo,4 but also in a number of other places along the West African coast. It provided the philosophical underpinnings which clergy in the African ports and the New World largely took whole and disseminated among those slaves who were not already cognizant of African Christianity. The clergy in America, overworked and

lacking opportunities to engage in substantial teaching in any case, found African Christianity acceptable, while Africans who came from non-Chris- tian parts of Africa found it comprehensible and adapted it easily. Much of the philosophy that underlies the "syncretic" or "mixed" religious cults of the New World can be traced to African Christianity, and even much of the action taken by American clergy to suppress some types of religious prac- tice among slaves came from African Christianity.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY

In this regard, it is essential to outline the development of Christianity in Africa from the fifteenth century onwards, for much of the early evangeli- zation of Africa preceeded European voyages to America by as much as half a century, and the initial conversion of Kongo took place the year before Columbus set out from Spain. Of course, the Portuguese monarchs who led the European expansion into Africa in the mid-fifteenth century placed converting local people among their priorities, and thus made some efforts to effect conversion." There were a number of attempts to win Af- ricans to Christianity by both royal agents and private individuals, right from the very start of the contacts. Alvise da Mosto, a Venetian sailor in Portuguese service, and one of the first Europeans to make sustained con-

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

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

JOHN THORNTON 263

tact with Africans in West Africa, spent considerable time in a debate with the ruler of the Senegalese Kingdom of Jolof in 1455-56 over the relative merits of Christianity and Islam.6 Since Islam had already developed a strong presence in West Africa, Moslem figures represented the most im- portant competition. This is illustrated in the Portuguese ambassador Diogo Gomes' startling success with a ruler on the Gambia river in 1462. After hearing a debate between Gomes and a Moslem "bishop" in the ruler's presence, the African king determined that he "believed in only the Living God, and there was no other God but the one in which the Infante Dom Henrique [the Navigator] believed." He wanted baptism immediately, but Gomes, being a layman could not satisfy him, although he promised to send a priest.'

The interest that African rulers showed in Christianity, even when under Moslem influence, encouraged the Portuguese kings to continue their ef- forts, and by the end of the fifteenth century, according to the German visitor Heironymus Miinzer, they had invited many noble West Africans to come and live in the court in Lisbon, being taught "in our rites and laws," in hopes of sending them back to Guinea as missionaries.8 It was through such channels that the Portuguese king managed to convert a pretender to the throne of Jolof in 1488, though this and other attempts to win a clear victory against the Moslems in Africa bore no long range fruit.9 Neverthe- less, the strategy did pay off in Kongo where there was no Moslem compe- tition, whose conversion in 1491 was the crowning achievement of nearly half a century of missionary efforts in western Africa.'0

Dramatic and formal conversions of rulers, and by extension, their states, were rare and relatively insignificant after the Kongo episode. The kingdom of Warri in modern Nigeria was converted in the late sixteenth century by

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

7 Diogo Gomes, "De Prima Inuentione Guinee" (ca. 1490) in Valentim Fernandes, "Descrigh de Cepta e sua costa," (MS of circa 1506-1509), mod. ed. Ant6nio Baiio, O Manuscrito 'Valentim Fer- nandes' (Lisbon, 1940), fols. 279-79v.

8 Heironynmous Miinzer, "De Inventione Africae Maritimae et Occidentalis . . . " (23 November 1494), revised edition with Portuguese translation, Ant6nio Brisio (ed.) Monumenta Missionaria Afri- cana (2d series, 5 vols., Lisbon, 1958-81) 1: 247, 249-50.

9 On his career and fate, see Avelino Teixiera da Mota, "D. Joho Bemoim e a expedigio portuguesa ao Senegal em 1489," Boletim Cultural da Guind Portuguesa 26 (1971): 63-111. Also issued as a separata by the Agrupamento de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga, Secqgo

de Lisboa, series separata 63 (Lisbon, 1971).

'o The events are described in one independent source, Rui da Pina, "Chronica del Rei D. Joham Segundo . . . "(ca. 1505), revised edition in Brisio, Monumenta, 1st series, (14 volumes, Lisbon, 1952-85) 1: 56-9.

264 ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO

Augustinians from the Portuguese island colony of Sao Tome in the Gulf of Guinea." Jesuits working from a base in island colonies of the Cape Verdes made similar conversions among the rulers of Sierra Leone in the early seventeenth century, following the ardent request of several rulers made to the bishop of Cape Verde, Ant6nio Velho Tinoco in 1574.12 More signifi- cant, perhaps, were the conversions of many African rulers in and around the emerging Portuguese colony in Angola, founded in 1575, and a seat of regular missionary activity in the surrounding areas. However, the Portu- guese in Angola often linked conversion to acceptance of Portuguese sover- eignty. Many of the independent states accepted or rejected clerical minis- trations and baptisms depending on their relations with Portugal.13

The general shortage of missionary priests that plagued these efforts, and the reluctance of many African rulers, especially those of major states, to accept formal conversion and baptism has generally caused scholars to pro- claim the efforts of Portugal as being fruitless.14 While this is not a com- pletely fair judgment in the light of Portuguese efforts and success in Cen- tral Africa, and the fact that many scholars overlook their West African successes, there were certainly large areas of West Africa that had no formal Christian population. However, the conception that Christian ideas spread only by formal acceptance of Christianity through baptism or the exortations of ordained missionaries greatly underestimates the degree to which Christianity was propagated in western Africa, or the development of African interest in Christianity shaped by Portuguese influences.

In fact, lay people from the two Portuguese colonies in West Africa (the islands of Sao Tome and Principe on one side, and the Cape Verdes on the other) regularly engaged in informal missionary activity in the coastal areas where they traded and frequently resided. The trading communities on the coasts, in particular, were important in spreading Christian ideas. Although the development of Portuguese settlements on the Atlantic coast of Africa

" Alan Ryder, "Missionary Activity in the Kingdom of Warri to the Early Nineteenth Century," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2 (1960): 1-26.

12 The original report, written sometime around 1585, "Relagio da Gente que vive desde o Cabo dos Mastos t6 Magrabomba na Costa da Guin6," fols. 352-3, published as an appendix in Avelino Teixeira da Mota E.H. Hair (eds. and trans.), Descrigdo da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guind do Cabo Verde

(1625) by Andr6 Donelha (Lisbon, 1977), pp. 331-57. Early Jesuit work is described in Fernto

Guer- reiro, Relagam annual das cousas que fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus nas partes da India Oriental etc (Lisbon, 1611, republished in 3 vols. with modernized spelling by Artur Viegas, Coimbra, 1930-42), passim. Other documentation has been published in Brisio, Monumenta, ser. 2, vols. 3-5.

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

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

JOHN THORNTON 265

outside of one or two very restricted points was technically illegal according to Portuguese law, this was not much of a barrier to the development of the communities. The numerous Portuguese communities on the west coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone has often been studied as an interesting ex- ample of Afro-European contact.'5 The communities in the Gulf of Guinea (from modem Ghana to Nigeria) are much less well known, but the case of important Portuguese settlements in Allada (an African state in the modem Republic of Brnin) in the mid-seventeenth century, attested by early Dutch accounts of the area, suggest that their presence was long standing and probably similar to that on the coast opposite the Cape Verdes.16

These communities, which were largely mixed in both race and culture, typically described themselves as "Portuguese" to foreign travellers, and were also accorded the special status within the African societies that was given to Moslem trading enclaves. This is well illustrated by the comments of an early English traveller to the Gambia river region, Richard Jobson, who described both types of commercial communities.'7 Christianity and speaking Portuguese were the most important distinctive features of the Gambian community and probably of those elsewhere. Missionaries who occasionally visited the coast were regularly required to marry and baptize these residents, who often went for many years without sacraments.18

But more apropos to our concerns, they also considered themselves lay missionaries to the Africans, and in time a sizable community of Africans who had accepted Christianity developed around their settlements.19 Not surprisingly, they were occasionally instrumental in persuading an African ruler to invite priests to come and baptize him. They may well have inspired the rulers of various states of Sierra Leone to seek to become Christians in 157420 Similarly, it was probably as a result of the prompting of the local Christian community from Sao Tom6 that caused the ruler of Allada to send

'5 See among others, Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (London, 1970), pp. 71-94.

16 Universitatsbibliotek Leiden, Biblioteca Publica Latina, MS 927, "Aenwijsingese van diversche Beschrijvingen van de Noort-Cust van Africa" (ca. 1654), fol. 12v. The text specifies that "Portu- guese" must receive gifts before trading can begin.

17 Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade (London, 1623), p. 30 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 "Relagio," fols. 352-52v in Teixeira da Mota and Hair (eds.), Descrigdo da Serra Leoa, and the French Capuchin, Alexis de Saint-L6's in 1635, published as Relation du Voyage au Cap Verte (Paris, 1637), pp. 13-17.

9 Cf. among others, "Relagio de Lopo Soares de Albergaria sobre a Guin6 do Cabo Verde," (ca. 1600), Brisio, Monumenta 2d series, 4: 3-5; Saint-L6, Relation, p. 13-14.

20 Cf., Baltasar Barreira to Jesuit Provincial, 20 February 1606, in Brisio, Monumenta, 2d series, 4: 110-12; "Relagio," fols. 352-52v in Teixeira da Mota and Hair (eds.), Descripgdo.

266 ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO

to Europe for missionaries to baptize him in 1658.21 Even when they were not successful in anything this dramatic, they often preached and considered it important to try to spread Christianity. Nicholas Villault, Sieur de Bell- fond, a French traveller who visited the coast of West Africa in 1667, noted that in general, the Portuguese communities were vigorous, if informal, missionaries.22

It is probably safe to say that in spite of the lack of missionaries and the often half-hearted way in which the Portuguese crown pursued its religious policies in Africa, there had developed a considerable body of Christians there, supplemented by many more people who were cognizant and perhaps even sympathetic to Christianity, even if not yet willing (or perhaps able) to partake of the sacrament of baptism. Such communities were strongest, of course, in Central Africa, where Kongo had an institutionalized church structure and where the Portuguese colony insured the continuous dissemi- nation of Christianity to its subjects and neighbors. But they could also be found here and there in West Africa, outside of the officially Christian countries of Warri in modern Nigeria and in Sierra Leone, wherever there were Portuguese settlements even if the number of formal Christians was limited.

These statements must bear the crucial rider, however, that the actual practice of Christianity was highly mixed with African religions, even in areas like Kongo and Angola where institutional churches existed and an on-going educational establishment was operating. Of course, in the Central African situation, the Church and European missionaries who worked there accepted much of this broadly syncretic Christianity as being orthodox or at least acceptable. Indeed, their toleration of syncretism went beyond what their nineteenth-century successors and probably even modern missionary practice would allow.23 The Portuguese settlements in West Africa (Upper Guinea, Sierra Leone, Allada and elsewhere) also practiced a syncretic form of Christianity, even if they originated from European Christian settlers. Clerical travellers, like the early seventeenth century Jesuit Manuel Alvares often found reason to complain that their practices made them just

21 See the basic account of this mission in Carlos de Hinojosos and Atanisio de Salamanca, n.d. (ca. July 1662), in Brisio, Monumenta, ser. 1, vol. 12: 378-85. See the mention also of the local Catholic community in "Journal du voyage du sieur Delb6e . . . aux Isles, dans la coste de Guyn6e pour l'etab- lissment du commerce en ces pays, en l'ann6e 1669 ... ," in Clodor6 Relation de ce qui s'est passi dans les Isles et Terre-Ferme de l'Amerique (Paris, 1671), p. 446.

22 Sieur [Nicholas] Villault, sieur de Bellefondl, A Relation of the Coasts of Africk called Guinde (2d ed. London, 1670, first French edition, 1669), pp. 85-6.

23 Thornton, "African Catholic Church."

JOHN THORNTON 267

as "superstitious" as the Africans regularly participating in African rain- making ceremonies, seeking advice from oracles and following African marriage customs.24

For all this, however, the church was willing to tolerate syncretism. We can gauge the degree to which the Church was willing to tolerate it in the West African region by examining the catechism prepared in Spain in 1658, and accepted by the Inquisition, for the Capuchin mission to Allada. This catechism allows the generic Fon word for god, "Vodu" (Voodoo in the New World) to be identified with the Christian God, and more importantly, allows the term "Lisa" to be used to refer to Jesus Christ.25 In the modern cosmology of Allada, Lisa, a white male figure,is linked with a god named Mawu, a black female, to form a paired deity (whose explanation would not be terribly dissimilar to Catholic attempts to explain the three-in-one nature of the Western Christian Trinity). Thus, the Church was willing to accept the Allada conception of deity as being on a par with that of Christianity, and left the door open for other such "translations," which, as we know from the modem study of Voodoo in the New World, paired African gods with Christian saints. Moreover, as the missionaries to Allada themselves noted, they were willing to describe themselves as "vodonu' '-a term used locally for priest or spirit medium. Further, these missionaries were per- fectly aware of the equivalence of their own terms to local ones.26 Thus, we can only assume that the Church was willing to go quite far in West Africa. In Central Africa, the earlier catechism and literature reveals similar atti- tudes. For example, the Kikongo term Nzambi a Mpungu (Highest Nzambi) was used to translate God, where Nzambi ("Zombie" in the New World) refers to an ancestor or other diety. Similarly, priests referred to themselves as "nganga"-a word used locally for a spirit medium or priest just as vodonu was used in Allada.27

24 See Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia, Lisbon, MS, Manuel Alvares, "Etiopia Menor e De-

scrilio Geografica da Provincia de Serra Leoa" (1616), fols. 15v-16, 25-25v, 65v, (my thanks to P.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 Brfisio, Monumenta ser. 1, vol. 12, pp. 379-80 among others.

25 The catechism is reprinted in facsimile with a transcription, partial linguistic interpretation and analysis in Henri Labouret and Paul Rivet, Le royaume d'Ardra et son ivangdlisaton au XVII sidcle (Paris, 1929). 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 Jose de Naxera, Espejo mystico en que el Hombre Interior se mira (Madrid, 1672), pp. 35-6, 96. For use of the terms in the catechism, see Labouret and Rivet, Rovaume de Ardra, p. 4.

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

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AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY IN THE NEW WORLD

In view of this, it would hardly be surprising that a certain number of slaves arriving in the New World were baptized Christians, and another quite sizable group would have fairly strong ideas about Christian doctrine and be generally in favor of it, even if slave shippers and owners showed no interest in converting the slaves at all. This was particularly true, of course, of slaves from Kongo, where Christianity was so well established. The French Jesuit Jean Mongin, working on St. Christophe in 1678-82 reported this rather matter-of-factly.28 One inventory of slaves in French Guyenne made by the captain and traveller Jean Goupy des Marets in 1690 noted that all the Kongo slaves on the estate were Christians, having been "baptized by the Portuguese in Angola."29 But this description is somewhat mis- leading, for the slaves were probably acquired, considerably to the north of

modern Angola from an area outside Portuguese control by a Dutch ship whose captain and crew would not have baptized them. Their baptisms must have been performed either by the secular clergy of the Kongo church or the numerous Italian Capuchin missionaries who worked in Kongo in the late seventeenth century.30 One of these Italian Capuchins, Dionigio Carli da Piacenza, received some advance warning of the deep respect that the

Kongolese had for their order when he stopped in Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1667 on his way to Kongo. There, while walking down the street, he was

greeted with deep reverence by a Kongolese woman, who, he discovered, had been baptized by the Capuchins in Kongo.31 Central African Christians were found in North America as well as in the Caribbean or South America.

An anonymous writer, describing the origins of the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 noted that in that area there "are a people brought from the Kingdom of Angola. . .many thousands of the Negroes there pro- fess the Roman Catholic Religion."32 This presence of Angolan Catholics

provided, according to the author, opportunity for the Spanish of Florida to entice them to run away or rebel from the English masters in the Carolinas.

28 Jean Mongin g une personne de condition du Languedoc, St. Christophe, May 1682, in Marcel Chatillon (ed.) "L'6vangeIlisation des esclaves au XVIIe sibcle. Lettres du R.P. Jean Mongin," Bul- letin du Socidtd d'histoire de la Guadeloupe 60-62 (1984): 86.

29 Jean Goupy des Ma.tts, published in Gabriel Debien, "Les Origines des esclaves des Antilles," Bulletin de lInstitute Foundamentale de l'Afrique Noire, ser. B, 26 (1964): 178-80, 182.

3o 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 John Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (Madison, 1983), pp. 84-96.

31 Dionigio Carli da Piacenza, II Moro trasportato nell'inclita cittcd di Venetia (Bassano, 1687), p.23. 32 Anonymous, "An Account of the Negroe Insurrection in South Carolina," (1739) in Allen D.

Candler, William J. Northern (eds.) Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta, 1904-16, re-

printed New York, 1972) vol. 22, pt. 2, p. 233.

JOHN THORNTON 269

The Moravian missionary, Oldendorp, working on Saint Thomas in the mid-eighteenth century was also impressed by the devotion of his Kongo parishioners who had, in his opinion, a good knowledge of the Christian faith.33

Of course, many slaves from other regions would be baptized as well, although those baptisms gave contemporaries more cause for concern. Even if the Dutch merchants who transported slaves to the Caribbean in the sev- enteenth century showed no desire to convert or baptize the slaves, the Iberian powers always did. Ever since the early days of the Atlantic slave trade, Papal Bulls and royal orders required that slaves be given religious instruction, and baptized as quickly as possible after purchase, a task which ships' captains could perform.34 The Portuguese religious establishment at- tempted to organize this system of religious instruction from their various colonial posts in Africa, either on the islands of Sio Tom6 or the Cape Verdes, where many ships making the crossing were required to stop, or at Luanda in Angola. Here, an attempt was made to insure that slaves received some Christian instruction, although the personnel and time to do it were limited.

Not surprisingly, this instruction was often inadequate or skipped, and scholars who believed that this was the slaves' first introduction to Chris- tianity have generally felt that it was unlikely to be very effective.35 This impression is strengthened by the complaints made in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by Spanish Jesuits that their Portuguese compa- triots in Africa were not providing adequate religious instruction. Alonso de Sandoval, one of the Jesuit priests in charge of slave instruction at Carta- gena in the early seventeenth century, articulated this complaint fully in his widely read book on the conversion of Africans in America, published in 1627, including many documents from Jesuit sources in other parts of America to support his claims.36 However, such complaints made by Span- iards in America against the Portuguese concerning the slave trade must be

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

34 Ordenagoes 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 Brisio, Monumenta, ser. 2, 2: 63, 69, 115-17.

35 See the observations of Frederick Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1560-1650 (Stan- ford, 1974), pp. 235-6.

36 Alonso de Sandoval, Naturaleza, policia segrada i profana . . . de todos Etiopes . . . (Seville, 1627), modern edition, ed. Angel Valtierra, Instauranda Etiopia Salute: El mundo del esclavitud negra en America (Bogoti, 1957), pp. 347-72.

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taken with a grain of salt, in view of the serious attempts by various Spanish interests to take over the slave trade from Portugal during the period of the union of the crowns.37 For all that, however, their inquiries seem to be diligent and some of their allegations well founded.

On the other hand, the presence of large numbers of African Christians among the embarked slaves made the hastily performed baptisms not quite as ludicrous as it appears from a cursory reading of the Jesuit documents. Thus, Sandoval made it his business to inquire of the slaves he met in Cartagena as to their knowledge of Christianity. While the results of this inquiry might appear scandalous to one expecting all the slaves to be ade- quately instructed upon their arrival in America, they are not as bad as a modern reader of the report might expect. Thus, we can hardly be surprised that Sandoval found almost all the Central African slaves were adequately instructed by the time they arrived, and nearly half of those passing through Cape Verde. Only the slaves arriving from the Gulf of Guinea, and presum- ably passing through Sio Tom6, were almost never adequately instructed,38 although one should note that in the 1620s when he wrote, this area was just beginning to export slaves in quantity and a strong organization was just forming.39

One reason why scholars have generally been suspicious of the ability of the Portuguese to provide an adequate religious instruction to slaves in Africa or the Atlantic islands before shipment to America is the difficulty that they would face in dealing with the wide variety of African languages, and the impossibility of adequately explaining Christian cosmology to Af- ricans in such a short time. In fact, however, African Christianity and Af- rican Christians played a major role in making this possible, both in the Atlantic ports and in the Americas. Slaves were instructed, not by European clergy, but by African Christians who knew their languages and cosmo-

logies intimately, and moreover had already developed formulae to convert one system to the other along the lines pioneered in Central Africa.

Certainly, it must have been African catechists who provided the main instruction to the slaves embarking for the transatlantic journey and not the

clergy. Rather, the clergy was present simply to perform the one role that,

37 Bowser, African Slave, pp. 36-38.

38 Sandoval, Instauranda (ed. Valtierra), pp. 372-77, 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 (drawn largely from bills of sale on the Lima market).

JOHN THORNTON 271

in Christian theology, must be performed by an ordained priest, that is, baptizing the slaves. Hence, the gripping image of the bishop in Angola sitting on his throne in the harbor of Luanda and baptizing hundreds of slaves by aspersion represents not the priest as instructor, but simply as an administrator of sacraments. The actual work of insuring that the slaves knew what was the significance of the rite was up to catechists who in- structed the slaves on the elements of the faith.

This was precisely the role that the ordained clergy regularly played in the African Church, and was a way of meeting the extreme shortage of ordained clergy faced by the Church in Kongo. Thus, in Kongo, priests were regularly carried on tours through villages of the country once a year to perform sacraments (particularly baptism, which they performed by the hundreds, occasionally by the thousands), while the real work of main- taining an understanding of the faith was performed by large numbers of catechists, who travelled more frequently, stayed longer and remained at work even when there was no priest or missionary.40 The fact that the cate- chists were Africans helped to insure that doctrine was "naturalized" and, of course, contributed to the syncretic nature of the resulting interpretation of Christianity.

We know relatively little about the catechists that worked on the African side of the Atlantic outside of Kongo in the Portuguese colonies. But in any case, those Africans who had not yet been converted by the time they reached America were greeted by another batch of catechists, who like their African counterparts, performed the main line functions of converting the slaves, or at least reinforcing the conversion in Africa. We can know some- what more of their origins and methods in America, thanks to the inquest conducted into the life of Pedro Claver, the Catalan Jesuit priest who man- aged the Cartagena mission along with Alonso de Sandoval. Since Claver, who died in 1654, long had a reputation for saintliness during his many years of ministering to the slaves, the authorities decided to conduct an inquest upon his death prepatory to submitting him for canonization.41 This inquest, in which a number of catechists who worked with him testitified, gives us a good idea of the methods employed by catechists in the Jesuit service in Cartagena, and probably also those in Jesuit service elsewhere in the Americas. Moreover, it is perhaps a reasonable reflection of the methods of catechists in the whole Atlantic world.

40 Thornton, "Development," pp. 164-6. 41 An Italian translation dated 24 January 1671 of the original survives in the Biblioteca Nacional de

Colombia, Bogoti, cited as "BN Colombia, Claver Inquest." The inquest was convened on 2 April 1658 and headed by the Jesuit Diego Ramirez Farifia.

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Andr6 Sacabuche (perhaps Nsaka Mbuke), the most experienced of Claver's catechists, provided a detailed description of the Jesuit practice at Cartagena, which was enthusiastically seconded by other witnesses and ca- techists. According to Sacabuche, the Jesuits and their catechists met each ship as it arrived, and were the first to enter it in order to give baptism after a quick catechism and then Last Rites to those who were dying. Then, once the slaves had been unloaded, they were gathered in the plaza near the harbor, divided by sex and then into "nations." These nations were ethno- linguistic groups, and each ten slaves from one nation were assigned to a catechist of their own nation, so that they could receive instruction in their own language, or in one likely to be intelligible to them (or ultimately comprehensible to some of their countrymen who might then re-explain it in their language).

Claver then stood in their midst on a makeshift altar decorated with two striking pictures: one showed Christ suffering on the cross with blood flowing from his wounds, while a priest used the blood to baptize Africans. The other showed various Popes, Emperors and Kings bowing down before the cross. There he preached a sermon in Spanish and went through a brief discourse on Christian doctrine with them, while the catechists translated and expanded on it.42

The points of doctrine covered, according to Fr. Juan del Valle, one of Claver's other assistants, were drawn from a simplified version of the Christian catechism approved by Pedro de Castro y Quifiones, Archbishop of Seville, for use with people from Africa, America and others outside the European-Mediterranean culture zone.43 The catechists began by teaching the slaves the sign of the cross, going to them one by one and often taking up to an hour with the whole group-who showed themselves quick to learn were rewarded with a bit of tobacco, while those those who were slower received "some knock on the head as a penance." This was fol- lowed with explanations of the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and the Nicene Creed, leading into a rather lengthy discourse on the nature of the Trinity, complete with a three-headed staff as a teaching aid. Then, the catechists employed a picture book showing the life of Christ, and other points of doctrine which included a vivid picture of souls burning in Hell while demons tortured them. Finally, they were given the Laws of God and the Church, the Ten Commandments and the hierarchy of the Church.44

The significance of these teachings (and similar ones undoubtedly given

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.

44 Ibid., Sachabuche, fols. 103-104.

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in Africa or later in their life in America) were largely determined by the sense that the catechist made of them in his act of translating them from Latin, Spanish or Portuguese for the slaves. This sense was, of course, the essence of African Christianity, for which there can be little doubt for those from Central Africa. It would not be hard to find close to the exact words that Sacabuche, an Angolan and probably a speaker of Kimbundu, would have used in the Jesuit-produced catechism in that language published in Lisbon in 1642, but probably in use in Angola and among Jesuits since about 1630.45 Before that, instruction was likely to have been in Kikongo, the language of the Kongo Church, for it was Kikongo that was widely regarded as the "Language of Angola," the only African language that Claver himself ever studied.46 Although catechismal literature in Kikongo dates back to the mid-sixteenth century, the Jesuits would surely have used Mateus Cardozo's 1624 catechism, which was published in an American edition, in Lima, the very next year.47

But even without a catechism conveniently produced for the African mis- sions at hand, the slaves who came to serve as catechists would spread the specifically African interpretation of Christianity similar to those of the cat- echisms from their own African experience. As one might expect, the Je- suits at Cartagena, and surely elsewhere as well, chose as catechists those who were already familiar with Christianity or had some aptitude for lan- guages. Jose Monzolo, a Kongo slave, told the inquest that he had been born a Christian in Nzolo (a province in eastern Kongo) and had learned the catechism as a child in Africa, both in Kikongo and Kinzolo, a dialect of Kikongo, and this was the reason that Claver chose him to be a catechist.48

Such backgrounds would obviously be even more helpful for slaves from those areas where there was no catechismal literature close to hand. Manuel de Capo Verde, for example, was already baptized in his home (the Cape Verde islands) before coming to Cartagena, and presumably could speak languages of Africa as well.49 We can be reasonably sure that Claver's

45 Francisco Pacconio, Gentio de Angola sufficientemente instruido nos mysterios de nossa Sancta Fd (ed. Ant6nio do Couto, Lisbon, 1642). Pacconio probably composed the catechism shortly after founding the mission in Ndongo, principal kingdom of the Mbundu speaking people, in 1626. Ant6nio 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 Angel Valtierra, Peter Claver: Saint of the Slaves (trans. Janet Perry and L.J. Woodward, West- minster, Maryland, 1960), p. 116.

47 Franqois Bontinck and D. Ndembe Nsasi (ed. and trans.) Le catichisme kikongo de 1624: reddition

critique (Brussels, 1978). 48 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, Witness 19, Giuseppe Monzolo, 22 October 1658, fol. 140v. 49 Ibid., Witness 25, Emanuele di Capoverde, fol. 150v.

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choice of catechists from the West Africans would include many who, even if not baptized, were certainly cognizant of Christianity, by virtue of their African background. For example, Francisco Jolofo, for the Jolof Kingdom in modern Senegal, was chosen because he could speak Portuguese and Jolof, Mandinga and Serer upon his arrival, and thus could serve as a cate- chist for slaves from those countries.50 A person with this linguistic back- ground almost surely had travelled widely in West Africa, probably in com- mercial ventures, and thus had extensive contacts with the Portuguese trading communities of the coast of Senegal. As such he would have been exposed constantly to their conceptions of Christianity, and even if he had not been baptized would have found it easy to take up and explain the tenets of the faith as he had been told in Africa.

The Moslems also had trading networks in that area, but often remained Moslems in captivity, as the testimony of Francisco de Jesus, also a Jolof reveals. He was only converted to Christianity after remaining faithful to Islam for ten years, in spite of Claver's insistent arguing with him, when he witnessed Claver perform a striking act of charity on behalf of a condemned prisoner.5' Given the Moslems' insistence on retaining their own faith, we should have no doubt that many of the catechists whose multilingualism was due to participation in commerce from such areas were likely to have been closer to the coastal Christian communities than the Moslem ones far- ther inland.

The conceptions of African Christianity from the Gulf of Guinea region are well illustrated in the history of the Allada catechism of 1658. Toxonu, king of Allada, sent an ambassador, known as Bans, to Portugal to seek baptism, after, we have argued, being persuaded to convert to Christianity by his Christian subjects, mostly from Sao Tom6. On the way to Europe, however, Bans stopped in Cartagena, where the Spanish governor, realizing the potential of this contact for Spanish interests in Africa, diverted him to Spain (the Spanish king still claiming, through the now-dead union of the thrones to be also king of Portugal), and provided him with an interpreter. This interpreter, whose name is not given in any of the documents, was most likely one of Claver's catechists, who would, of course, have been ideally suited for such a mission.52 That he was probably responsible for the catechism is suggested by the fact that the text was approved and printed in a very short time after his arrival in Europe. It is unlikely that anyone in

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

'51 Ibid., Witness 20, Francisco di Giesu, fol. 143-143v. 52 Hinojosos and Salamanca, Brisio, Monumenta ser. 1, vol. 12: 378.

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Spain could have provided such a work simply from interviews with an African ambassador in Portuguese creole or through an interpreter.

The interpreter-catechist's conceptions of Christianity may well have been themselves the product of the Allada Christian community, trans- ported across to America when the interpreter was enslaved, and then en- larged and ultimately printed overseas. In any case, the catechism returned to Africa with the Capuchin missionaries in 1660, where it was immediately received with great joy. Travellers half a century later were still reporting seeing copies of it in Allada being carefully maintained.53

The catechism, or at least a variant of it, seems to have eventually re- turned from Africa to America, for in 1708 a Portuguese Jesuit, Manuel de Lima, reported that he had produced a catechism in the language of Allada for use in Brazil, probably as a result of his experience in the mission of Sio Tom6 in the late seventeenth century.54 Thus, African Christianity con- tinued to be used in the instruction of slaves in the New World there as well, formally as well as informally. The significance of the Allada cate- chism increased, of course, as during the course of the seventeenth century and the next, slaves from this part of Africa became more and more promi- nent in the slave communities of the New World.

This information can then allow us to see how African slaves were con- verted so rapidly in the Americas. They were not given hasty instruction in a complex and foreign religion in a language they could barely understand, but rather they were told how best to make a syncretic blend of their own tradition and what was "essential" to being a good Christian. The cate- chisms, from Central Africa (Kikongo and Kimbundu) and from West Africa, provide us with some ideas as to how this synthesis was created in two fairly distinct African religious cultures, and modern studies of Afro- Christian cults emphasize the two distinct elements: a West African one based on the Aja group of languages and cultures (which included Allada and its neighbors, the numerous Yoruba communities and some of the Lower Niger societies), and a Central African one based on Kongo and Mbundu cultures.5

Perhaps most interesting about this synthesis is that the Church played such an important role in promoting African Christianity in the Americas as

53 Labouret and Rivet, Royaume de Ardra, pp. 20-4. 54 Serafim Leite, Hist6ria da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (10 vols., Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro,

1938-50), 7:274. 55 Bastide, African Religions, pp. 60-2. The Aja group includes Allada, Yoruba and Dahomey.

Kongo and Mbundu would be contained in Bastide's "Bantu" group.

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well as in Africa. It is hardly surprising when the Inquisition and metropol- itan Church authorities approved texts of catechisms that the ideas and blending of religion contained in them would be accepted in the mission field. The catechists did not fool an intolerant European clergy into ac- cepting African Christianity as orthodox, the Jesuits were a conscientious order in this regard. We must accept that in America as in Africa, the reli- gious blend was consciously and knowingly accepted as being legitimate.

"FETISHISM" AND AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY

Of course, Christian clergy did suppress a considerable amount of Af- rican practice, some of it apparently religious, in the Americas, including a good deal of the sort of nocturnal dancing and funeral celebration which is often taken as typical of Afro-Christian cults today, and is often perceived in the popular media as the essence of Voodoo. To take just one example, Claver was constantly on the lookout to suppress such activities which he felt were tinged with "fetishisms" or the slaves' old "heathen days." He would seize their drums and force them to pay fines to recover them, and often brought a whip with him to break them up.56 Surely a clerical group that opposed such cultural mixing activities would also oppose the develop- ment of African Christianity in the Americas.

In fact, however, this behavior and the suppression of "fetishism" in the New World was an extension of African Christianity as well. In Kongo, for example, priests regularly struggled against "fetishers," who were appar- ently practicing the pre-Christian religion, even if at times they employed Christian symbols and prayed to saints. But this struggle was not based on an attack on the cosmology of the Kongolese, but rather on the clergy's insistence that only an ordained priest could mediate with the supernat- ural.57

As the sixteenth century Spanish demonologist Pedro Ciruelo explained it, no matter how serious and deep the Christian conviction of those who claimed the power to mediate with God or other members of the Heavenly Host might be, if they tried to reach them they would only succeed in con- tacting the Devil. This contact made the person attempting supernatural mediation a witch, (in Portuguese a feiticeiro, or as modern writers on Af- rican religion would say, a "fetisher") regardless of whether they contacted the Devil willingly or not, and regardless of whether they signed a Diabolic

56 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, del Valle, fol. 40. 57 Thornton, "Development," pp. 157-58.

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contract. The Devil or his demons might even grant them the miracles in his power, but no member of the Divine party would allow it.58 Cireulo's writing was directed against the Ritual Magicians, or various kinds of faith healers, astrologers and the like of early modern Europe and not at a popu- lation that was historically non-Christian, but his understanding of Christian dogma was applied just as rigorously in African Christianity.

This is clearly the approach the clergy used in Africa even outside the traditional Christian areas like Kongo. Manuel Alvares, a Jesuit who worked for many years in Sierra Leone in the early seventeenth century wrote a detailed description of local religion which systematically explored demonology as developed by Cireulo to explain it.59 He clearly saw the adherence to Christianity in this newly converted area not in terms of sup- pression of local religion, but in terms of the suppression of witchcraft.

Thus, nocturnal dances, or the various fortune-telling and healing activi- ties that one can find Africans accused of in New World Inquisition texts,60 were suppressed, not because they represented remnants of the old African religion which was being attacked, but because their practitioners were in- tervening with the supernatural as non-ordained lay people. Since Africans generally understood that mediation with the supernatural might be done for evil ends (the normal African conception of witchcraft, since these religions did not possess the kind of God-Devil duality of early modern Christianity), they could understand the suppression of such activities in the name of witchcraft eradication. They could accept this type of suppression on a theoretical level, even if they might disagree with the specific charges lev- eled in a specific incident, or, moreover even if they harbored suspicions that the accusations were more concerned with power and control than with genuine witchcraft eradication. Such use of religion for purposes of main- taining power and control was common in Africa as well.

This is confirmed by considerable testimony from Sierra Leone and sur- rounding areas in seventeenth century materials, where the suppression of witchcraft by local authorities often involved sham trials, which were widely perceived as such by the local people. Missionaries who reported these trials saw them as directly linked to judicial enslavement of the guilty

58 Pedro Ciruelo, Reprouacion de las supersticiones y hechizerias (Seville, 1530), mod. ed. Alva Ebersole from Salamanca edition of 1547 (Valencia, 1978), pp. 67-72 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 Colin Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).

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and thus linked to the Atlantic slave trade.61 If those enslaved also saw them as a part of the enslavement process, they could hardly have been shocked to see the same rationale applied in America by the ultimate recipients of the slaves.

African Christianity allowed the Africans to retain their old cosmology, their old understanding of the structure of the universe and the place of the gods and other divine beings in it. Its most important demand was that they only use ordained priests in their attempts to appeal to the Divine, or benefit from the knowledge that such gods might give them. Thus, one must look not to the imperfections of religious instruction or to the insistence of the slaves that they hold on to their old religion to find the roots of modern Afro-Christian cults in America. One must look instead to the complex historical trans-Atlantic interactions between European and African reli- gions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-an interaction, much more syncretic and tolerant than one might imagine, which gave us African Christianity.

Millersville University Millersville, Pennsylvania JOHN K. THORNTON

61 See, among others, Baltasar Barreira, "Dos Escravos que saem de Cabo Verde" (1606), Brisio, Monumenta, 2d series, 4: 195-6 and Andr6 Alvares de Almada, "Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guin6" (1594) in ibid. 3: 263, 295, 332. For American testimony, see Mongin to personne de condition, May 1682, p.77.