Beyond the (Holy) Shroud: A glimpse into Afro-Catholicism during the Haitian Revolution

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how Africans and Afro-Creoles used discourses shaped by Catholicism during the Haitian Revolution both to fight the prospect of re-enslavement by the French and to pursue alternative notions of freedom to those proposed by Toussaint Louverture. Specifically, it examines the appeals for Sunday rest and free days; and the use of protective amulets in pursuit of divinely-granted invulnerability in battle. Afro-Catholicism helped forge a sense of common identity during the colonial period, and enslaved people took a more active role in its dissemination than previously acknowledged. Free cultivateurs and soldiers later appropriated Catholicism as an effective language of resistance because they shared it with the French colonial authorities and the emerging Haitian élites. Arguments about Afro-Catholicism in West Central Africa and Ibero-America also apply to the French Caribbean and underscore the Atlantic entanglements in the development of Catholicism.

KEYWORDS:

• Haitian Revolution
• Afro-Catholicism
• amulets
• Saint-Domingue
• Holy Shroud
• invulnerability

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Damien Tricoire, Nicolas Sarzeaud, Pierre Moracchini, Lewis Clorméus, Jesús Ruiz for their valuable feedback, the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, the journal's editor Manuel Barcia for his kind assistance, and the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Paris for funding her archival research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Conduite du Père Julien, F19 325/A, Archives Nationales (hereafter: AN). A manuscript copy by Father Ermel d’Etel is in Bibliothèque Franciscaine des Capucins (hereafter: BFC), 2333/1, and is analyzed in Johnson, Philanthropy and Race, 49, 51–52.

2 The notion is taken from Eddins, Rituals, Runaways.

3 Although not common in the context of Saint-Domingue, the term Afro-Creole indicates here people of African descent born in Saint-Domingue to distinguish them from Africans, i.e., people born in the African continent. Enslaved Africans were called “bossales” to distinguish them from islandborn enslaved Creoles. The terms Africans and Afro-Creoles are here chosen to encompass the population of Saint-Domingue both during their enslavement in the colonial time and after they achieved freedom during the Haitian Revolution (1793).

4 For this notion of Afro-Catholicism, see Selka, “Afro-Catholicism”; Gerbner “Theorizing Conversion”; Dewulf, Afro-Atlantic Catholics; Piché, Du baptême à la tombe.

5 Fromont, “Penned by Encounter.” See also Dean, Leibsohn “Hybridity and Its Discontents.” On the need to break the archival silence and reconstruct African and Afro-Creole experiences, see the collection of essays edited by Connolly, Fuentes, “Introduction.”

6 Kazanjian, “Freedom's Surprise.”

7 Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives; Smallwood, “The Politics of the Archive”; Hartman “The Dead Book.”

8 Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’.” The same suggestion is also made in Etienne, “L'Église et la revolution”; Johnson, Philanthropy and Race. For an assessment of how Catholicism spread even after the expulsion of the Jesuits, see Franchina, “‘Effacés du nombre des chrétiens’.”

9 With a short-lived exception under Emperor Dessalines, 1804–1806, who however recognized Catholic priests’ influence on parts of the population. Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 161; Nérestant, Religion et politique; Gaffield, “The Racialization”; Racine, “Britannia's Bold Brother.”

10 Davies, Class, Culture, and Color.

11 Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 64–65.

12 Ibid., 84–85.

13 Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, For the role of religion in other revolutionary contexts, see Van Kley, The Religious Origins; Banks, Johnson, eds. The French Revolution; Paton, “Witchcraft, Poison, Law”; Lovejoy, Jihād in West Africa; Ballériaux, Tricoire, “Restorers of the Divine Law”; Landers, “Catholic Conspirators?”; Vainfas, “From Indian Millenarianism.”

14 Eddins, Rituals, Runaways. She occasionally considers also the effectiveness of Afro-Catholicism, Ibid. 118, 144, 293.

15 Fromont, “Penned by Encounter,” 1256. See also her The Art of Conversion, 15, which defines spaces of correlation as “cultural creations […] in which their creators can bring together ideas and forms belonging to radically different realms, confront them, and eventually turn them into interrelated parts of a new system of thought and expression.”

16 Fromont, The Art of Conversion.

17 Hurbon, “Le vodou et la révolution”; Nsondé, “Christianisme et religion,” Brown et al. “Black Catholicism”; Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 20, 52, 65, 84. Eddins describes repertoires as changeable according to perceived effectiveness in Rituals, Runaways, 116 and remarks that “Africans did not have fixed orthodoxies,” Ibid., 120.

18 Useful summaries are given in Frey, “The Visible Church”; Gerbner, “Theorizing Conversion”; Lovejoy, “Transatlantic Transformations”; Simonsen, “Moving in Circles.”

19 Childs, “Writing the Religious History”; Heywood, Central Africans; De Castelnau-l’Estoile, Un catholicisme colonial; De Carvalho Soares, Devotos da cor; Bennett, African Kings.

20 Dewulf, “Rethinking the Historical Development” and Afro-Atlantic Catholics. His latest work focuses especially on the Afro-Catholic roots of Haitian Catholicism, “Why Rara Burns.”

21 Berquist Soule, “Bonds of Affection?.”

22 José da Silva Horta also refers to Catholicism as a shared language in early modern Upper Coast and Cabo Verde, see “Evidence for a Luso-African Identity,” 99. On religion as a shared language with colonial elites, see Benavides, “Syncretism and Legitimacy.”

23 A further reason for the effectiveness of Catholicism, namely the alliance with Spanish Santo Domingo, is thoroughly examined in Yingling, Siblings of Soil, especially 63–99.

24 “Time and again, scholars narrowly reduced anti-colonial resistance to the attachment to pre-colonial traditions […] in many cases, the appropriation and reinvention of the idiom of the colonizer was a much more effective strategy in dealing with colonial aggression.” Dewulf, “From Moors to Indians,” 41.

25 Clossey, Salvation and Globalization; Becker, “Christentumsgeschichtsschreibung”; Voekel, Moreton, Jo, “Vaya con Dios”; Vanhee, “Central African Popular Christianity”; Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism.”

26 Gerbner, “Theorizing Conversion,” 140.

27 Mobley, “The Kongolese Atlantic,” 15, 282.

28 “We cannot focus exclusively on sacramental forms of Catholicism if we want to know something about how people of African descent encountered and transformed Catholicism. Instead, we will need to operate with a more flexible definition of Catholicism that accounts for the creativity of Catholicism, one that does not get bogged down in trying to gauge the degree of Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy of people of any color […], and one that treats Catholicism as subject to creolization,” Pasquier, “Creole Catholicism,” 274. See also Benavides, “Syncretism and Legitimacy,” 205–206.

29 This is one of the forms of historical silence analyzed in Trouillot, Silencing the Past.

30 Táíwò, Against Decolonisation. See also Thornton, “Refiguring Christianity.”

31 Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, 58.

32 Gerbner, Christian Slavery, 9. Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment; Lehner, Printy, A Companion; Paton, “Witchcraft, Poison, Law.”

33 Valerio, Sovereign Joy; Ditchfield, “Decentering the Catholic Reformation.”

34 Sometimes indicated as Julien de Rignosot. For his biography see D’Etel, “Les tribulations,” and during the Haitian Revolution see Johnson, Philanthropy and Race, 37–38; 51–52 and Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle.”

35 Julien de Bourgogne to Propaganda Fide. Besançon, 22 September 1797, Archivio Storico de Propaganda Fide (hereafter: ASPF), SC America Antille III, 147–149.

36 Chopelin, Gouverner une Église.

37 Toussaint Louverture to Abbé Grégoire, 29 November 1796, in Annales de la Religion (1797), 495–496.

38 Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle.”

39 Girard, The Slaves.

40 Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle”; Johnson, Philanthropy and Race, 36–38.

41 5 October 1802, AN, F19/326. Johnson, Philanthropy and Race, 49, 51–52 considers the manuscript copy at BFC. All references are taken here from the original at AN, hereafter: Conduite. The manuscript has no folio numbers.

42 His arguments resemble those of priests accused of connivance with the revolutionaries in 1791, see Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle,” 9–10.

43 These priests made their allegiance to Louverture and rejection of the Gallican Church clear in Profession de foi, 11 Apr. 1801, Archives départementales de la Gironde, 73J57. Julien's position was less compromised, yet by recanting his civil oath and obtaining his appointment from Rome, he had hampered French plans to extend a Gallican church to Saint-Domingue.

44 Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 12. Smallwood pledges for counter-history in “The Politics of the Archive”; and Trouillot calls for “alternative interpretation,” in Silencing the Past, 27.

45 Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’.”

46 Reglement [sic] pour la discipline des Nègres, Archives Nationales d’Outremer (hereafter: ANOM), F3/90, 110–121v., cited in Johnson, Philanthropy and Race, 36, 106; Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” 84–86. Details on the plan can be found in Franchina, “‘Effacés du nombre des chrétiens’.”

47 Geggus, “The French Slave Trade”; Davis, “Before They Were Haitians”; Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony. This otherwise widely accepted prevalence of enslaved West Central Africans with previous exposure to Catholicism is contested by Mobley in “The Kongolese Atlantic,” where she suggests that most enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue were from the non-Catholic Loango coast. Mobley does not find, however, that an African identity was in contrast with a Creole identity, Ibid., 345. The literature cited in the introduction contends the importance not so much of the numerical presence of Catholic West Central Africans but of “numerous West Central Africans who were conversant to varying degrees with aspects of a Catholic Christianity […] but who did not necessarily translate this engagement into any formal or confessional expression of Roman Catholicism either in West Central Africa or in the Atlantic diaspora,” Brown, “The Immersion of Catholic Christianity,” 250. Dewulf further contends that the earliest enslaved generations in Hispaniola, before Saint-Domingue became French, were Catholics and had a long-lasting influence on later slave culture, see his Afro-Atlantic Catholics, 128–136.

48 Connolly, Fuentes, “Introduction”; Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 4.

49 Thornton, “The Development of an African.”

50 Sweet, “Defying Social Death”; Gautier, “Les familles esclaves”; Ferreira, Guedes, “Apagando a nota.”

51 Roussier, Lettres du Général Leclerc, 62–63; Bénot, Dorigny, Rétablissement de l’esclavage.

52 Niort, Richard, “A propos de la découverte.”

53 Ordonnance by Etienne Polverel, 29 December 1792, transcribed in the parish register of Port-de-Paix, 1793, ANOM.

54 Colwill, “Freedwomen's Familial Politics,” 83.

55 “Livret sous le titre du St. Suaire, imprimé à Besançon, imprimerie soi-disante du St. Suaire,” in Conduite.

56 Julien's claims that his correspondence with Louverture had no political content, furthermore, is confirmed by his original letter on 4 June 1802, Rochambeau Papers, University of Florida.

57 On 17 December 1802, AN F19/325A.

58 The earliest advertisement is in Gazette politique et commerciale d'Haiti, 28 March 1805, 64. All others appeared in La gazette officielle de l’Etat d’Hayti, 1807 to 1811, available at https://lagazetteroyale.com/. The booklet was advertised alongside a novena to Saint Anthony of Padua, a saint widely worshipped in the kingdom of Kongo, see Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony.

59 Nerestant, Religions et politique, 59–100. Information on Church personnel after 1804 can be gleaned from reports in APF, SC America Antille, IV.

60 Smallwood, “The Politics of the Archive.”

61 Sarzeaud, “Copie et culte.”

62 Procès-verbal de reconnoissance.

63 In AN, 27AP/12, cited in Mobley Guyard, “Les images du suaire.”, “The Kongolese Atlantic,” 2. Mobley analyzes Kingué's case Ibid., 1–2. On Kingué see also: Pluchon, Vaudou, sorciers, 223–230; Houllemare, “Marie Kingué”; Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, 142–145.

64 Burkardt, L’économie des dévotions; Sarzeaud, “Reliques: mode de diffusion.” A similar relic was in use in Brazil in 1664, De Mello e Souza, The Devil and the Land, 130.

65 Fromont, The Art of Conversion; Silva-Santos, “Uma política de ossos”; Mobley, “The Kongolese Atlantic.”

66 Guerrero-Mosquera, “Bolsas mandingas en Cartagena”; and “Tomás y Tomás Francisco”; Barreto Rangel, “Facetas de um cristianismo africano”; Gomez, Black Crescent, 97. For the paquets (or garde-corps) in Saint-Domingue, see the memoirs in ANOM, F3/88 by De La Chapelle, 236–240; and by Courtin, 240–251. These memoirs are also analysed in Mobley, “The Kongolese Atlantic,” and Pluchon, Vaudou, sorciers.

67 Amulets can be considered “a kind of contact zone between Africans, African Muslims, and indigenous Afro-syncretic religions,” Khan, “Islam, Vodou,” 33.

68 Memoirs by Courtin and De La Chapelle. The ceremonies were called “faire diable” and the most powerful amulets were known as “charlots.”

69 Fromont, “Paper, Ink, Vodun”; Bostoen, Brinkman, “‘To Make Book'” Both works consider the use of amulets as Afro-Catholic practices, differently from Mobley, “The Kongoelse Atlantic.”

70 In the Archives Departementales du Doubs, 21FI6; and Bibliothèque du Centre Diocésain de Besançon. I am thankful to M. Tramaux and Lydie Besançon for providing scans of the images.

71 Etienne, “L’Église et la révolution”; Jean-François (Petecou) to Father Vázquez, 6 May 1793, Archivos Generales Simanca (hereafter: AGS), SGU,LEG,7157,22. The importance of holy water to activate the amulets is described in the memoirs by De La Chapelle and Courtin.

72 On the importance of orality and visuality, see Rappaport, Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City; Scott, The Common Wind. Enslaved painters are found in the runaway advertisements. Prayers-amulets may have also entered Saint-Domingue via lay believers, see Tempère, “Conversion, évangélisation.” On the importance of devotional objects, see Henryot, “La quête dans l’économie franciscaine.”

73 Jaque Hidalgo, Valerio, Indigenous and Black Confraternities; Bennet, Africans in Colonial Mexico.

74 Sapede, “Agência ritual Africana”; Guerrero-Mosquera, “Misiones, misioneros.”

75 Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’”; Zwartjes, Portuguese Missionary Grammars. For African interpreters and mediators in Spanish America, see Brewer-Garcia, Beyond Babel.

76 See Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” Roulet, “De l’instruction des Nègres,” Harrigan, Life and Death; Élisabeth, “Christianisation et monde colonial”; Dewulf, “Why Rara Burns.”

77 Based on reports sent from missionaries to Propaganda Fide, APF, SC America Antille, II and on the lists of priests printed in the Almanach Général de Saint-Domingue, digitized at Gallica.

78 Geggus, “The French Slave Trade.”

79 Report by Father Bellegarde, 27 November 1768, Archives des Missions etrangères de Paris, vol. 356, 228–230. The enslaved “mulâtre espagnol Joseph” had tattoos in the shape of a cross, a heart and some stars alongside the writing “Iesu Mari,” Affiches Américains, 25 August 1775, available at www.marronnage.info.

80 Ulrickson, “The Sacred Heart.”

81 Moreau de Saint-Méry, Médéric L.E., Arrêt du 18 fevrier 1761, Loix et constitutions, vol. 4 (1785): 352–356. Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” Roulet, “De l’instruction des Nègres,” Harrigan, Life and Death; Élisabeth, “Christianisation et monde colonial.”

82 This suggests that the involvement of enslaved people in pastoral care continued after the expulsion of Jesuits, differently from what is suggested in Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’.” For Capuchins’ methods and their enslaved collaborators, see Franchina, “‘Effacés du nombre des chrétiens’.”

83 On the exclusion of non-Whites from the religious status, see Giannini, “Il problema dell’esclusione.”

84 Taken in Saint-Domingue in 1773, ANOM, F5/A23. More than half of the enslaved domestics were described as “Congos” or “Créoles.” Johnson, Philanthropy and Race, 29–30 offers a chart based on these inventories. Data from the inventories are made available by Nathan Marvin at https://arcg.is/1y5inz.

85 Almeida, “Escravos da missão.”

86 In the second half of the eighteenth century, both European clerics and African catechists renewed Catholic missionary efforts in the area, Sapede, “Le royaume du Kongo,” 29–46.

87 Fromont. The Art of Conversion, 81; Advertisements in Affiches américaines for: Etienne Bouché, 8 June 1785; a “Nègre nouveau,” 31 December 1774; Pèdre, 24 Jun 1767; Francisque, 16 November 1785. Other maroons were indicated as “Congo” and had a “cross-shaped mark of their country,” advertisements for Balthazard, 3 June 1767; Pierre 27 January 1771; Ambroise 15 June 1776. All available at www.marronnage.info. A runaway of unknown name and nation had a “sort of scapular,” Supplément de la Gazette de Saint-Domingue, 12 October 1791, digitized by Brown University Library.

88 Advertisements in Affiches américaines for: Louis Bagatelle, 27 September 1769; Sévere, 27 June 1772; Damargue, 25 July 1772. Available at www.marronnage.info. The revolutionary leader Jean-François Petecou wore rosaries in battle, see Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 93. On Kongolese catechists (“mestres de Igreja”), Sapede, Le roi et le temps.

89 Thornton, A Cultural History, 421; Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles, 416, 465; Ricourt, The Dominican Racial Imaginary, 91.

90 The border was officially recognized by Spain and France in 1697. Dewulf underlines the long-standing cultural impact of early enslaved generations of “ladinos”– Africans and Afro-descendants who had been Catholic before crossing the Atlantic and shaped religious life in the Americas under the earliest Spanish colonization, see “Why Rara Burns.” On Afro-Iberian Catholicism, see also Ireton, “They Are Blacks.”

91 Yingling, “The Maroons of Santo Domingo.” For the significance of religion in shaping maroons’ identities, see Wilson, “The Performance of Freedom.” On maroons who crossed imperial and religious frontiers, see Rupert, “'Seeking the Water of Baptism’.”

92 L’Étang, “Des rassemblements d’esclaves”; Von Germeten, Black Blood; Miller, Voice of the Leopard.

93 Apodaca-Valdez, Cofradías afrohispánicas, 191. Catholic practices in use before the island of Hispaniola was divided between French Saint-Domingue and Spanish Santo Domingo may have had a particularly deep impact, see Dewulf, “Rethinking the Historical Development”; “Why Rara Burns.”

94 Élisabeth, “Christianisation et monde colonial.” Confraternities also formed in non-Catholic parts of the Americas at the initiative of local Black communities, see Dewulf, “From Papamientu.”

95 In 1793, Black insurgents officially allied with Spain by addressing an oath to the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, AGS,SGU,LEG,7157,22. Santo Domingo was assigned to French Saint-Domingue in 1795 and occupied by Louverture in 1801.

96 Father Cabello to Archbishop Portillo. San Rafael, 21 July 1793, AGS, SGU,LEG,7157,22. On Spanish priests in the Haitian Revolution, see Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 63–99; Franchina “From Slave.”

97 Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony, 64–66. See the reports of an incident between a Jesuit and a parishioner in Martinique, written by governor François Blondel, 18 July 1725, ANOM, C8A34, 281.

98 Fromont, Afro-Catholic Festivals. The spread of sangamento in Saint-Domingue has never been studied but hints of its presence can be found in a report by Captain Brideau, 16 February 1796, AN/DXXV/45, dossier 424. He commented on “Congos” that “staged a mock war” to threaten the French.

99 Further African elements may have been at play but gone undetected by Cabello, either for strategic purposes or because the priest's perception of what was “differently” Catholic did not match the modern perception. See Dean, Leibsohn “Hybridity and Its Discontents.”

100 Matias de Armona to Joaquín García, 30 August 1793, quoted in Ruiz, “I Burn My Nation.”

101 Father Lecun to Father Concanen. Kingston, 4 May 1804, in Saurel, La mission des Pères Dominicains, 169. Louverture was said to give sermons and celebrate Mass, see Girard, Toussaint Louverture, 123.

102 Adresse philosophique au Citoyen commissaire, 1793, AN, D/XXV/36, dossier 368, briefly cited in Bongie, “A Flexible Quill,” fn 39.

103 Ramsey, The Spirits, 31, fn 37.

104 Adresse philosophique, 14. For the shifting notion of what was considered profanation (and thus a punishable crime) in relation to the crafting of amulets, see Garrigus, “‘Like a Disease’.”

105 AN, D XXV/39, dossier 392.

106 On the Iberian influences on Afro-Catholicism in Saint-Domingue, see Dewulf, “Why Rara Burns.” Yingling similarly contends that Haitian revolutionaries were versed in “Spanish spiritual vocabulary,” Siblings of Soil, 98. On how Africans (enslaved and free) elsewhere in the Americas used inscribed papers as amulets and relics, see Guerrero Mosquera, “Tomás y Tomás Francisco.”

107 Adresse philosophique, 28.

108 Ibid., 18, 19, 28.

109 “Blanc pa conne,” Adresse philosophique, 28. This wording can be compared with the statement “Bondieu conné ce qui ça moi faire” reported as a prayer recited to activate amulets in Courtin's memoir.

110 He described Vodou as a sect initiated by the insurgent Fayette to make money, Adresse philosophique, 28. For the integration of Catholic symbols in amulets, see also Courtin's memoir.

111 Kazanjian, “Freedom's Surprise.”

112 Amulets in Saint-Domingue were to be fed some specific food and holy water in order to unlock their powers, see the memoirs by Courtin and De La Chapelle.

113 “Je donne six jours à travailler et le septième pour repos et assister au service divin. (…) Si vous suivez cette règle, vos champs et vos maisons seront remplis de bénédictions. Si au contraire vous ne le croyez pas, la malédiction, la peste, la guerre, la famine, les maladies, ma juste colère,” in Conduite.

114 Lyons, “Celestial Letters”; Oudin, “Lettres de Dieu.”

115 Skemer, Binding Words; Campos-Moreno, “La devoción de la oración.”

116 “Quiconque aura soin d’honorer mon Suaire […] ne sachant pas lire recitera le Pater et Ave 5 fois par jour, en pourtant sur soi ce livret pendant une année, je lui accorderai cinq graces […],” in Conduite.

117 Rey, The Priest and the Prophetess, 57–58.

118 Father Vázquez to Archbishop Portillo, 19 September 1793. SGU,LEG,7157,22.

119 Franchina, “‘Effacés du nombre des chrétiens’.” Eddins emphasizes that the “reclamation of time” underpinned marronage, Rituals, Runaways, 197.

120 Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, 204–205; 266–276; Eddins's conclusion that, through participating in ritual practices, Africans and Afro-Creoles “exchanged sacred forms of power, developing social relationships in ritual gathering that enhanced and politicized their collective consciousness,” Ibid., 24, can be applied to Catholic masses, too. Geggus “Slavery, War, and Revolution.”

121 Dubois also points out that on 25 August, the colonial assembly was to meet, in “‘Our Three Colors’.” The day of Saint Louis was celebrated in the territories under the insurgents’ control, as commanded by General Biassou,1792, in Benot, “Documents sur l’insurrection,” 9. On the chronology of the August 1791 events, see Geggus, “The Bois Caïman Ceremony.”

122 Article 6, in Dubois and Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 50; Instructions by Propaganda Fide to the Nonce of Portugal, see “Los capuchinos y la esclavitud,” 76.

123 Franchina, “‘Effacés du nombre des chrétiens’.” In 1722, missionaries requested an intervention from Rome to supervise enslaved labor on Saturdays to ensure that it would not be for the planters, Mémoire des préfets apostoliques, ANOM, F3/91, 5–10.

124 Gonzalez, Maroon Nation; Casimir, The Haitians.

125 Smith, “Remembering Mary.”

126 Similar reductions of festivities had been enacted in Spanish America to exempt “esclavos” and “Indios,” see Mémoire touchant les fêtes, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Gallia 106, 404–406v. See also Beck, Histoire du Dimanche; Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 28–29.

127 Ghachem, “Prosecuting Torture.” For similar coeval requests elsewhere, see Benot, Les lumières, l'esclavage, 221–229; Geggus, “Slavery, War, and Revolution.”

128 See Geggus, “The ‘Swiss’ and the Problem.”

129 Jean-François (Petecou) and Georges Biassou to the French Commissioners, 21 December 1791, in Dubois, Garrigus, Slave Revolution, 102.

130 Guiambois to Georges Biassou, 5 August 1793, AGS, SGU,LEG,7157,11.

131 Father Besson to Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, 12 June 1796, MS Français 8986, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter : BnF), 6–7. French commissioners resorted to cutting the wages of cultivateurs who worked on their personal plots on Saturday, see Blancpain, La condition des paysans, 66; Dubois, “Gendered Freedom.”

132 Blancpain, La condition des paysans.

133 Article 73.

134 Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus, 287–290.

135 Kafka, “Action, Reaction and Interaction”; Blancpain, La condition des paysans.

136 See their petitions to Louverture in Arrêtés des différentes communes de la colonie de St.-Domingue.

137 Reprinted in Aristide, Nesbitt, Touissant L’Ouverture. See also Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus, 294–295.

138 See the following letters by Sonthonax, Léger-Félicité, BnF, MS Français 8986: to Toussaint Louverture, 20 December 1795, 234, and 10 January 1796, 269; to Father Antheaume, 9 January 1796, 268. Geggus. The Haitian Revolution, 135.

139 Dubois, “Gendered Freedom,” 66. For female forms of resistance alternative to armed violence, see Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives.

140 Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, 114–116; 141–146; and the memoirs by Courtin and De La Chapelle.

141 Ramsey, The Spirits, 46–50.

142 As suggested in Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, 299–300.

143 On the Catholic arguments used by Louverture to uphold his vision of freedom, see also Pruit, “Black Atlantic Republicans,” 45–46.

144 To reinforce this interpretation, it is to be noted that Julien acted as an itinerant pastor in the areas controlled by Jean-Baptiste Sans-Souci, an African-born general who embodied and led the resistance against the Creole élites’ vision of a plantation economy. See Trouillot, “The Three Faces of Sans Souci.”

145 “Quiconque la portera sur soi […] ne mourra point injustement, sans confession, ni par le feu de la bataille […] ne mourra point de mort subite et ne tombera pas entre les mains de ses ennemis,” in Conduite.

146 Vanhee, “Central African Popular Christianity,” 254.

147 Adresse philosophique; Rey, Richman, “The Somatics of Syncretism”; Mobley, “The Kongolese Atlantic,” 305–307. On the meanings of the word ouanga, see Mobley, “The Kongolese Atlantic,” 307–308.

148 Ramsey, The Spirits, 39–40.

149 Cited in Jenson, Beyond the Slave Narrative, 90.

150 On the importance of portability, see Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, 105.

151 Father Bobadilla to Archbishop Portillo, 16 August 1793, AGS SGU,LEG,7157,22. Bobadilla had been active among the maroons from Saint-Domingue who had settled in Santo Domingo before the Haitian Revolution, see Yingling, “The Maroons of Santo Domingo.”

152 Rey, “Marian Devotion.”

153 Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 63–99; and Franchina, “From Slave.”

154 Julien de Bourgogne to Propaganda Fide, 22 Sep 1797, ASPF, America Antille III, 147. Julien referred to his success in Grand-Philippe Roussel.

155 Garrigus, “’Like an Epidemic’,” 639.

156 Eddins, Rituals, Runaways, 95–99. See also Ramsey, The Spirits, 45; Dayan, Haiti, History, 30; Revolutionary leader Biassou promised such rejoining to his soldiers, see Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 73.

157 The missionary Saccardo, Congo e Angola, 522 noted the cult of the Virgin also among non-Catholic Africans. These provisions were also common in prayer-amulets that circulated in the Spanish empire, see Campos Moreno, Oraciones, ensalmos. On the importance of a good death among Afro-descendants, see Vasconcelos, “Pela vontade de Deus.”

158 Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 63–99.

159 Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle”; Gaffield, “The Racialization.”

160 Gray, “A Kongo Princess.”

161 Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony, 68, 136.

162 Dubois, “‘Our Three Colors’”; Thornton, “‘I Am the Subject of the King of Congo’”; Ruiz, “Subjects of the King”; Victoria Ojeda, “Jean François y Biassou”; Franchina, “From Slave.”

163 Father Vázquez to Archbishop Portillo, 30 April 1793, AGS,SGU,LEG,7157,22. For the messianism of the Black revolutionaries, see Yingling, Siblings of Soil; Tardieu, Biassou.

164 Rújula, “Patriotisme monarchique”; Schettini, “18th-Century Crusaders.” For papal comments during the Haitian Revolution, see Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 91.

165 Yingling, Siblings of Soil, 89–90. Great Britain also attempted to recruit the Black Auxiliaries with similar rhetoric, and with tacit support from Rome. Ibid., 122–131. Independent Haiti was also involved in the Catholic-inspired “Reconquista” launched in Spanish Santo Domingo against Spain in 1807, Ibid. 165–169. According to a biographical account of his death, Pope Pious VI lamented the many innocent deaths in Saint-Domingue, see Merck, La captivité, 135. The author and then French guard of the pope (General Merck) was later stationed in Santo Domingo, as per an alleged prediction by the dying pope, Ibid., 79. This detail confirms that the news surrounding Pious’ death in captivity must have crossed the Atlantic.

166 Dubois, Avengers of the New World and “’Our three Colors’”; Jenson, Beyond the Slave Narrative. On the trasnationalizing implications of Catholicism adopted by the enslaved, see Cañizares-Esguerra, “The Imperial, Global.”

167 Simmons, “The African Adoption.”

168 “Je lui en ferais autant de mérite qu’aux martyres chrétiens,” in Conduite.

169 Rowe, Black Saints; Fiume, “Schiavitù e santità.”

170 Valerio, “Architects of their own Humanity.”

171 De la Perraudière, “Notes sur l’époque révolutionnaire”; Ilet, “Le culte clandestin.”

172 Sarzeaud, “Copie et culte.”

173 The expression is by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 37–40.

174 “L’indulgence plenière de tous les pêchés […] je les ferai plus blancs que la neige,” in Conduite.

175 Psalms 51:7.

176 Such distinction was further marked through segregated forms of burial, see Moreau de St. Mery, Loix et constitutions 5, 620–623.

177 Brewer-García, Beyond Babel; Rowe, “After Death.”

178 Brewer-García, “Negro, pero blanco de alma.”

179 Saint-Louis, “Le surgissement du terme.” For a comparative reflection on millenarism and regeneration among enslaved populations, see Metcalf, “Millenarian Slaves?.”

180 Available at https://haitidoi.com.

181 Casimir, Haïti et ses élites. See also Fick, “The Haitian Revolution and the Limits.”

182 Clormeus, Le vodou haïtien; Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods.

183 Gaffield, “The Racialization.” For the importance of Catholic festivities and sacraments among the Haitian population during the Boyer presidency, see Mollien, Moeurs d'Haïti, 127–131.

184 Ulrickson, “The Sacred Heart,” 601. See also: Rey, “Kongolese Catholic Influences”; Vanhee, “Central African.”

185 The negotiations between King Christophe and the Holy See can be found in ASPF, Antille vol. 4 and in AN 399AP/255. I am thankful to Marlene Daut for alerting me on the latter. Archbishop Brelle reminded the Holy See that Haitians were the earliest Christians in the New World on 24 Dec 1819, ASPF, Acta, vol. 184, 242–243v.

186 Adresse philosophique, 29.

187 Iyanaga, “On Hearing Africas,” 166.

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Miriam Franchina

Miriam Franchina received her PhD from the University of Halle, Germany and published Paul Rapin Thoyras and the art of eighteenth-century historiography based on her dissertation (Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment, 2021). She is currently a research fellow at the University of Trier, Germany, for the project “Religion, Slavery, and Race in the Age of Revolutions: Catholicism from Colonial Saint-Domingue to Independent Haiti” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.