Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism

Explores the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church.

Erin Kathleen Rowe (Author)

9781108421218, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 December 2019

316 pages, 18 b/w illus. 79 colour illus. 7 maps
25.2 x 17.8 x 2 cm, 0.85 kg

'… this book is an indispensable contribution to Black Catholic history.' Bianca Lopez, Comptes Rendus

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Spanish and Portuguese monarchs launched global campaigns for territory and trade. This process spurred two efforts that reshaped the world: missions to spread Christianity to the four corners of the globe, and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. These efforts joined in unexpected ways to give rise to black saints. Erin Kathleen Rowe presents the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church. By exploring race, the Atlantic slave trade, and global Christianity, she provides new ways of thinking about blackness, holiness, and cultural authority. Rowe transforms our understanding of global devotional patterns and their effects on early modern societies by looking at previously unstudied sculptures and paintings of black saints, examining the impact of black lay communities, and analysing controversies unfolding in the church about race, moral potential, enslavement, and salvation.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on terminology
Introduction
Part I. Devotion: 1. The emergence of black saints
2. Salvation, black confraternities, and saints in global Catholicism
3. 'Black like me': community formation and white backlash
Part II. Illumination: 4. Beautiful blackness: representing black saints in Baroque sculpture
5. Brilliant blackness: hagiography and metaphors of light
6. The practice of humility and spiritual authority in the lives of black women
Afterlife
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church [HRCC7], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], History of the Americas [HBJK], African history [HBJH], European history [HBJD]