HST 498 - Project Proposal

  Deborah Sanders 

    HST 498 - Project Proposal 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                Confraternities: The syncretism of Catholic and African religions, a partnership of survival for African Slaves.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Thesis:

Historically religion and its institutions have been the backbone to many a human rights violation. The Inquisition and the Crusades are prime examples. However, various religious institutions played a more positive role during the Black African slave trading during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. From the initial slave trading begun in the Iberian Peninsula from the fifteenth century to the Atlantic Slave Trade which brought Black Africans to the New World. In each of these methods of forced migration of the Black African slave Catholic confraternities provided a means of assimilation into Spanish society or colonial life as is the case in the New World. From the perspective of the Catholics of Spain and Portugal, slavery provided salvation for the Africans. As the African population grew there were efforts to assimilate these individuals into Spaniard society and culture. The role of religion would have an important impact on the attempts towards enculturation of the African and Afro-Hispanic American communities.                                                                                                              

Enslaved and free Africans were able to create public social spaces for themselves as residents of Spain. This manifested itself by means of the development of ethnic enclaves. The ethnic enclaves thereby grew into the establishment of religious confraternities which contributed to the social networking of people of African descent. This is unique in that, traditionally, national leaders would determine it a threat to national security to allow enslaved groups to bond and organize together. Yet the Spanish Crown did not discourage the development of these Black African confraternities. This raises the following questions, what was the resultant benefit to the
Spanish Crown? What benefits if any did this provide the Black African slaves? Did this provide total conversion to Catholicism? What features of syncretism of the Black African culture and religious practices and Catholicism were created and do we find examples of this in modern times?                                             

I intend to address these questions by means of my chosen sources and associate a link between the Black African confraternities established in medieval Iberia and the level of syncretism allowed by the Catholic order present in the New World. The allowance under Spanish law to permit the Black African slave to retain a semblance of human rights promoted a productive response to their condition of slavery while residing on the Iberian Peninsula. The added benefit to Spanish society is proven by how instrumental Africans were in administering aid in the Hospital of Our Lady of the Angels which was an extension of a local cofradia in Seville that provided medical care for its members.

The African slave not only served his master’s needs but also served the needs of the community and the members of the fraternal organization that he or she might have been associated with. This practice of syncretism also resulted in the phenomenon of the creation of three new religions based in the New World, Candoble, Santeria and Vodun.

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