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Philanthropy and Race in the Haitian Revolution pp 23–67Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Faith in Humanity: Philanthropists in the Colonial Clergy

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Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

Abstract

The Catholic religieux promoted liberty and equality in revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Scholars have suggested that after the colonial government expelled the Jesuits for being sympathetic to slaves in 1763, other members of the Catholic religieux did not advocate for people of African descent. However, the Capuchin order, whose province extended over two-thirds of the island, was active before 1789 in promoting slave well-being and religious instruction. After the revolution erupted, the Capuchins first called for equal rights for free people of color and then emancipation. The humanitarianism of the colonial religious contributed to the development of an alliance with the revolutionaries, allowing the Catholic religieux to take an active part in the political and social upheaval during the Haitian Revolution.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    George Amitheat Breathett, “Religious Missions in Colonial French Saint Domingue” (Ph.D. diss., State University of Iowa, 1954); J. M. Jan, Les Congrégations religieuses à Saint-Domingue, 1681–1793 (Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 1951); and R. P. Joseph Janin, La Religion aux Colonies Française sous l’ancien régime (de 1626 à la Révolution) (Paris: D’Auteuil, 1942). One exception is Sue Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’: Catholic Missions in the French Antilles, 1625–1800” French Historical Studies vol. 25, no. 1 (Winter 2002): pp. 53–90.

  2. 2.

    Breathett, “Religious Missions,” p. 154.

  3. 3.

    Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 57.

  4. 4.

    It is important to note that the primary sources in which Hurbon refers are commonly used by scholars of the Haitian Revolution, such as Colonial Committee member Charles Tarbé’s Rapport sur les troubles à Saint-Domingue and Jean Philippe Garran de Coulon’s Rapport sur les troubles de Saint-Domingue.

  5. 5.

    Laënnec Hurbon, “Church and Slavery in Saint-Domingue,” The Abolitions of Slavery: From Léger Félicité Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, Marcel Dorigny, ed. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), p. 62.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., p. 64.

  7. 7.

    “Commission donnée par le Cardinal de Richelieu aux Sieurs d’Enamuc & de Rossey, pour établir une Colonie dans les Antilles d’Amérique,” 31 October 1626, and “Lettres-Patents du Cardinal de Richelieu, qui donnent octroient au sieur de Caen en propriété les Isles de Inaque, Ibaque et autres situées aux Indes Occidentales, avec pouvoir d’y établir des Colonies de François,” 28 January 1633, in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions des Colonies Françoises de l’Amérique sous le vent, vol. 1 (Paris: Moreau de Saint-Méry, n.d.), pp. 20–22, 24–25.

  8. 8.

    Pierre de Vaissiere, Saint-Domingue: La Société et la vie créoles sous l’ancien régime (1629–1789) (Paris: Perrin, 1909), p. 155; Georges Scelle, “Histoire politique de la traite négrière aux Indes de Castille, contrats et traités d’asiento; étude de droit public et d’histoire diplomatique puisée aux sources originales et accompagnée de plusieurs documents inédits,” vol. 2 (doctoral dissertation, University of Paris, 1906), pp. 181–182.

  9. 9.

    “Code noir ou Edit servant de Réglement pour le Gouvernement et l’Administration de la Justice et de la Police des Isles Françoises de l’Amérique, et pour la Discipline et le Commerce des Negres et Esclaves dans ledit Pays,” in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 415.

  10. 10.

    “Code noir,” in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 415.

  11. 11.

    “Pouvoirs accordés par le Pape à quatre Dominicains, Missionnaires aux Isles Françoises,” 12 July 1635, in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, pp. 39–40.

  12. 12.

    The Council of Cap Français did not initially register the patented letter Louis XIV had issued the Jesuits in 1651. “Lettres-Patentes contenant les Privileges accordés aux Pere de la Compagnie des Jesus, dans l’une et l’autre Amérique Septentrionale et Méridionale,” in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 71; George Breathett, The Catholic Church in Haiti (1704–1785): Selected Letters, Memoirs and Documents (Salisbury, NC: Documentary Publications), pp. 1–2; Breathett, “Jesuits in Colonial Haiti,” The Historian, vol. XXIV, no. 2 (1962), p. 154. Peabody provides an extensive table of the religious personnel in the Antilles from 1685 to 1786 based on information compiled from several primary sources. Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 73.

  13. 13.

    Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description, vol. 1, p. 107, 352, 374; “Lettres-Patentes, portant Etablissement des Religieux de la Compagnie de Jesus dans l’Isle Saint-Domingue,” October 1704, in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions des Colonies Françoises de l’Amérique sous le vent, vol. 2 (Paris: Moreau de Saint-Méry, n.d.), pp. 18–20.

  14. 14.

    “Lettre du Ministre à M. l’Abbé de la Roque, sur la Préfecture Apostolique de la Partie du Nord de Saint-Domingue,” du 22 janvier 1764, in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions des Colonies Françoises de l’Amérique sous le vent, vol. 4 (Paris: Moreau de Saint-Méry, n.d.), pp. 642–644; Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description, vol. 1, p. 107, 353.

  15. 15.

    “Ordre du Roi, qui chasse les Juifs des colonies,” 30 September 1683, and “Extrait de l’Ordre du Roi à MM. de Blénac et Begon, touchant les Religionnaires,” 30 September 1683, in Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 388, 390.

  16. 16.

    “Code noir,” in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 415.

  17. 17.

    Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 66.

  18. 18.

    Pierre-François-Xavier Charlevoix, Histoire de l’isle espagnole ou de S. Domingue, vol. 2 (Paris: François Baris, 1731), p. 502.

  19. 19.

    Many scholars have misrepresented Romaine Rivière as a runaway slave. For a biographical sketch of Romaine Rivière, see Rob D. Taber, “The Issue of Their Union: Family, Law, and Politics in Western Saint-Domingue, 1777 to 1789,” (doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 2015), pp. 137–143. See also David P. Geggus, “Marronage, Vodou, and the Slave Revolt of 1791,” in Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 72, 74, 78; and Terry Rey, “The Virgin Mary and Revolution in Saint-Domingue: The Charisma of Romaine-la-Prophétesse,” Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 11, no. 3 (1998): pp. 341–369.

  20. 20.

    Serge Larose, “The Meaning of Africa in Haitian Vodu,” in Symbols and Sentiments: Cross-Cultural Studies in Symbolism, Ioan Lewis, ed. (London: Academic Press, 1977), pp. 85–116. Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 127–28; Rey, “The Virgin Mary and Revolution in Saint-Domingue,” pp. 341–369. For more on the significance of the cross African Christianity, see Fromont, The Art of Conversion, pp. 65–108.

  21. 21.

    The Code noir was specific about Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, but did not directly mention Islam. Perhaps this was because the Code noir was directed at the existing religions of the free population in the colonies, while overlooking the possibility of the exposure of slaves to various religions while in Africa, including Islam. For information on Muslim slaves in Saint-Domingue, see for example Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1998). For more on Muslim slaves in the Atlantic World, see for example James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

  22. 22.

    Sébastien Jacques Courtin, “Mémoire sommaire sur les prétendues pratiques magiques et empoisonnements prouvés aux procès instruits et jugés au Cap contre plusieurs Nègres et Nègresses dont le chef nommé François Macandal, a été condamné au feu et exécuté le 20 janvier 1758,” p. 210, ANOM F3 88, quoted in Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 79; for more on the Makandal affair, see also Relation d’une conspiration tramée par les Nègres dans l’Ile de S. Domingue; défense que fait le Jésuite Confesseur, aux Nègres qu’on suplicie, de révéler leurs fauteurs & complices (Paris? 1758?), pp. 1–8, “Arrêt du Conseil du Cap, touchant l’Empoisonneur Macadanl et ses Complices, et qui ordonne la publication de l’Edit du mois de Juillet 1682, sur les Poisons,” 20 January 1758, “Arrêt de Règlement du Conseil du Cap, qui défend aux Nègres de garder des paquets appelés Macandals, ni de composer et vendre des drogues,” 11 March 1758, in Loix et Constitutions, vol. 4, pp. 217–218, 222–223; and Trevor Burnard and John D. Garrigus, The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 101–122. For more on Sébastien Jacques Courtin, see E96, ANOM.

  23. 23.

    “Extrait d’une lettre écrite du Cap François, le 24 juin 1758,” Relation d’une conspiration tramée par les Nègres dans l’Ile de S. Domingue, p. 7; Fick, The Making of Haiti, p. 65. Fick translated and printed excerpts of Assam’s interrogation from 27 September 1757 as well as an extract from the minutes of the registry of the Tribunal of le Cap from 9 November 1757 in Appendix A, pp. 251–59. Gisler also excerpted portions of a letter from 24 June 1758.

  24. 24.

    “Lettres-Patentes, portant Etablissement des Religieux de la Compagnie de Jesus dans l’Isle Saint-Domingue,” October 1704, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 2, pp. 18–20.

  25. 25.

    Jane Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 58.

  26. 26.

    This is less than one percent. The estimate of 240,000 is from Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 78.

  27. 27.

    “Inventaire de l’habitation de la mission à Léogâne,” 22 June 1773, “Inventaire des meubles et papiers appartenant au père Colomban, préfet apostolique de la mission des Capucins au Cap, et au prêtre desservant la curé,” 23 June 1773, and “Inventaire des curés des Cayes, de Torbeck, des Cotteaux, et du Cap Tiburon,” 22 June 1773, F5A 23, ANOM.

  28. 28.

    Inventaire des biens des missions des Dominicains, des Capucins et de toutes les cures desservies par des réguliers (22 juin–15 août 1773), F5A 23, ANOM.

  29. 29.

    John Francis Maxwell, Slavery and the Catholic Church: The History of the Catholic Teaching Concerning the Moral Legitimacy of the Institution of Slavery (London: Barry Rose Publishers, 1975), p. 73.

  30. 30.

    Breathett, “Religious Protectionism and the Slave in Haiti,” The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 55, no. 1 (1969), p. 26.

  31. 31.

    Janin, La Religion aux Colonies Française sous l’ancien régime, p. 130.

  32. 32.

    Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 90.

  33. 33.

    Moreau de Saint Mery, Description, vol. 1, pp. 373, 426–429, 431–432; “Déclaration du Roi, qui fixe à 18 le nombre des Religieuses du Cap,” 27 December 1779, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 5, pp. 925–926.

  34. 34.

    Mauricette Bécoulet, “Les Bayon de Libertat à Saint-Domingue,” Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, vol. 30 (September 1991), p. 386.

  35. 35.

    Marie le Masson le Golft, Lettres Relatives à l’éducation (Paris: Chez Buisson, 1788), pp. 156–157, 162. The topic of convent education of women was debated in France in the late eighteenth-century. See Mita Choudhury, Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 129–154. Colonists in the British Caribbean also claimed that white women were negatively influenced through interactions with women of color. See for example, Zacek, “Searching for the Invisible Woman,” pp. 332–333.

  36. 36.

    R. P. Cabon, “Les Religieuses du Cap à Saint-Domingue (suite et fin),” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, vol. 3, no. 3 (1949), p. 402.

  37. 37.

    “Notices historiques sur la Communauté des Religieuses Filles de Notre-Dame (Saint-Domingue) fondée en 1733,” Lettre annuelle de l’Ordre de Notre Dame (Bordeaux: Coussan et Constalet, 1889), cited in Cabon, “Les Religieuses du Cap,” p. 403.

  38. 38.

    Moreau de Saint Mery, Description, vol. 1, p. 431.

  39. 39.

    Journales des séances de l’Assemblée coloniale de Saint-Marc, cited in Cabon, “Les Religieuses du Cap à Saint-Domingue,” p. 417.

  40. 40.

    “Arrêt de Règlement du Conseil du Cap, sur les abus, en matière de Religion, de la part des Gens de couleur,” 18 February 1761, in Loix et Constitutions, vol. 4, pp. 352–356.

  41. 41.

    “Arrêt définitif du Conseil du Cap, qui prononce l’Extinction des Jésuites, et leur expulsion hors de la Colonie,” in Loix et Constitutions, vol. 4, pp. 626–628.

  42. 42.

    See C9B34, C9B37, and F5A 25/4, ANOM.

  43. 43.

    Breathett, The Catholic Church in Haiti, p. 16.

  44. 44.

    Churchwardens served alongside and provided a check on priests in administering the finances of the colonial churches. Typically, lay members of the community appointed marguilliers, and their political and social opinions influenced how they fulfilled their functions.

  45. 45.

    “Extrait de la Lettre du Ministre à M. Auger, concernant les Capucins établis à Saint-Domingue,” 27 February 1704 “and Lettres-Patentes, portant Etablissement des Religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus dans l’Isle Saint-Domingue,” October 1704, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 2, p. 2, 18–20.

  46. 46.

    Inventaire des biens des missions des Dominicains, des Capucins et de toutes les cures desservies par des réguliers (22 juin–15 août 1773), F5A 23, ANOM.

  47. 47.

    According to Moreau de Saint Mery, the Jesuits owned five sugar refineries before their expulsion, and sugar required substantial slave labor for production. Description vol. 1, p. 157.

  48. 48.

    See for example Fick, The Making of Haiti, pp. 93–94, 241–42, 264–65; Dubois, Avengers of the New World, pp. 100–102; Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, pp. 86–87; Robin Law, “La Cérémonie du Bois-Caïman et le ‘pacte de sang’ dahoméen,” in L’Insurrection des esclaves de Saint-Domingue (22–23 août 1791), ed. Laennec Hurbon (Paris: Karthala, 2000), pp. 131–47; Léon-François Hoffman, “Un Mythe national: La cérémonie du Bois-Caïman,” in La République haïtienne: Etat des lieux et perspectives, eds. Gérard Barthélemy and Christian Girault (Paris: Karthala, 1993), pp. 434–48; Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods; and Hein Vanhee, “Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion,” in Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, Linda M. Heywood, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 243–264.

  49. 49.

    For examples of the role of Protestantism in slave resistance in the British Atlantic, see for example Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 289–318; Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and the Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 174–212; and John W. Catron, Embracing Protestantism: Black Identities in the Atlantic World (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016), pp. 183–192.

  50. 50.

    John K. Thornton, “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750,” The Journal of African History, vol. 25, no. 2 (1994): pp. 147–167; Thornton, “On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas,” The Americas, vol. 44, no. 3 (1988): pp. 261–278; Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684–1706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Sweet, Recreating Africa; James Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Cécile Fromont, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of the Kongo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

  51. 51.

    See Charlevoix, Histoire de l’isle espagnole ou de S. Domingue, vol. 2, p. 501.

  52. 52.

    The missionaries also had a little success on the Slave Coast with the Allada and Whydah. See Robin Law, “Religion, Trade and Politics on the ‘Slave Coast’: Roman Catholic Missions in Allada and Whydah in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 21 (1991): pp. 42–77.

  53. 53.

    Alan Ryde, “Missionary Activity in the Kingdom of Warri to the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, vol. 2, no. 1 (1960), pp. 1–2.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., p. 5, 7.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 21.

  56. 56.

    The Bight of Benin also included Allada. Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 65.

  57. 57.

    While John K. Thornton makes this connection, Sue Peabody fails to acknowledge that Kongolese Christians were enslaved in Saint-Domingue. See Thornton, “On the Trail of Voodoo” and Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal.’”

  58. 58.

    John K. Thornton, “African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution,” The Journal of Caribbean History, vol. 25, no. 1 & 2 (1991), p. 61.

  59. 59.

    Thornton also emphasizes the use of catechists in the Spanish Americas, specifically Cartagena, by Jesuits missionaries. Thornton, “On the Trail of Voodoo,” pp. 270–71.

  60. 60.

    Breathett, “Catholic Missionary Activity,” p. 281.

  61. 61.

    “Règlement de discipline pour les nègres adressé aux curés des îles françaises d’Amérique,” excerpted in Gisler, L’esclavage aux Antilles françaises, p. 186.

  62. 62.

    Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 85.

  63. 63.

    Geggus notes that some lesser figures of the uprising were runaway slaves. Geggus , “Saint-Domingue on the Eve of the Haitian Revolution,” p. 5.

  64. 64.

    The term for runaway slaves has different spellings in different sources. Caroyln Fick uses “maroon,” and George Breathett uses “maron,” but Jean Fouchard alternatively spells it “marron.” I will utilize Fouchard’s spelling.

  65. 65.

    “Arrêt de Règlement du Conseil du Cap, sur les abus, en matière de Religion, de la part des Gens de couleur,” 18 February 1761, in Loix et Constitutions, vol. 4, pp. 352–356; Fick, The Making of Haiti, p. 65.

  66. 66.

    “Du Père Margat, Missionnaire de la Compagnie de Jésus, au Procureur-Général des Missions de la même Compagnie aux îles de l’Amérique,” 20 July 1743, printed in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses écrites des missions étrangères, vol. 7 (Toulouse: Sens & Claude, 1810), pp. 145–200.

  67. 67.

    In The Making of Haiti, Carolyn E. Fick argues the Haitian Revolution grew out of maronnage.

  68. 68.

    Jean Fouchard, Les Marrons de la Liberté (Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 1988), p. 301.

  69. 69.

    “Lettre du Ministre aux Administrateurs, sur la Mission des Jacobins,” 5 November 1772, in Loix et constitutions, vol. 5, pp. 415–417; “La lettre suivante du P. Maubert, Préf. Ap., à M. de Sartines, Ministre de la Marine, expose le déplorable relâchement des missionnaires Jacobins et l’organisation défectueuse de leur Mission (1er janv. 1776),” in Ignace Marie Le Ruzic, Documents sur la mission des Frères-Prêcheurs à Saint-Domingue (Lorient: Bayon-Royer, 1912), pp. 245–249.

  70. 70.

    Charles-Damien Duguet, Mémoire sur le spiritual de la mission des ff. prêcheurs à Saint-Domingue (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de Bourdon & Imprimerie de Mozard, 1790), p. 28. For more on Damien Duguet see E150, ANOM.

  71. 71.

    “Règlement de discipline pour les nègres adressé aux curés des îles françaises d’Amérique,” excerpted in Gisler, L’esclavage aux Antilles françaises, p. 185.

  72. 72.

    “Ordonnance du Roi, concernant les Missions dans les Colonies Françoises de l’Amérique,” 24 November 1781, in Loix et Constitutions, vol. 6, pp. 178–80.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., p. 179.

  74. 74.

    Duguet, Mémoire sur le spiritual, p. 28.

  75. 75.

    “Séance du lundi 3 août 1789,” Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 recueil complet des débats, vol. 8 (Paris: Dupont, 1792–1894), p. 335.

  76. 76.

    “Séance du lundi 12 juillet 1790,” Archives parlementaires, vol. 17, pp. 50–51, 55–60.

  77. 77.

    Letters from P. Constantin, apostolic prefect of the Capuchin missions in Northern Saint-Domingue, 3 July 1790 and 7 October 1790, Ms. 1970 B, Bibliothèque Franciscaine des Capucins [hereafter cited as BFC].

  78. 78.

    “Séance du samedi 27 novembre 1790, au soir,” Archives parlementaires, vol. 21, pp. 74–81.

  79. 79.

    Janin, La religion aux antilles françaises sous l’Ancien régime, pp. 225–226. In the years preceding the French Revolution, Capuchins and Dominicans had similar numbers of representatives in Saint-Domingue. In comparing a range of sources, Sue Peabody concludes that there were twenty-five Dominicans in 1773 and twenty-one Capuchins in 1785, as well as ten other clergy representing other orders or serving as secular priests. However, these calculations do not include the nuns in Cap Français, who were under Capuchin authority. Though it is possible the overall figures changed by 1790, with religious authority divided in the island between the two dominant orders, it is likely the Capuchins and Dominicans attempted to maintain balanced representation. In regards to the French Revolution, if Dominicans refused to take the Oath, considering Peabody’s calculations, nearly half of the clergy in Saint-Domingue were non-juring. Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’,” p. 73.

  80. 80.

    Jean Claude Paul Dessirier de Rignosot, Dossiers du Tribunal Révolutionnaire, W138, Archives Nationales de France [hereafter cited as AN].

  81. 81.

    Ibid.

  82. 82.

    “Extrait des registres des délibérations de l’assemblée provinciale du Nord. Séance du 20 mai 1790 au soir,” cited in J. M. Jan, Les Congrégations religieuses à Saint-Domingue, 1681–1793 (Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 1951), p. 174.

  83. 83.

    Dessirier, W138, AN.

  84. 84.

    Although the monk did not identify himself as Capuchin, it is likely that he was. He published his sentiments in a newspaper in Le Cap, which was under Capuchin spiritual leadership. Further, he made reference to the Capuchin superior going to France to bring more constitutional priests to the colony. Un ex-moine Républicain, Le Moniteur général de la partie française de Saint-Domingue, 5 January 1793, vol. III, no. 50, p. 198.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., p. 199.

  86. 86.

    Ibid., p. 198.

  87. 87.

    “Du Cap-Francais, Mercredi, 8 du courant, le clergé s’est. présente chez le citoyen Gouverneur général, pour lui rendre ses hommages, le citoyen Cibot, curé, a prononcé les discours suivant,” Affiches Américaines, 13 May 1793, p. 76.

  88. 88.

    In addition to King Louis XVI’s execution for treason in January 1793 and the September Massacres of counterrevolutionaries in 1792, priests within the French empire had faced deportation for not taking the Oath since May 1792. See “Séance du dimanche 27 mai 1792” and “Séance du mercredi 30 mai 1792, au soir,” Archives parlementaires, vol. 44, pp. 156–157, 348; “Séance du mercredi 1 août 1792, au matin,” Archives parlementaires, vol. 47, pp. 367–368; Alfred Lallie, La Déportation des Prêtres Emprisonnes à Nantes, 8–15 Septembre 1792, Eugene Lafoyle, ed. Revue de l’Ouest (Vannes: [np], 1888), p. 3; and Adolphe Cabon, “Le Clergé de la Guyane sous la Révolution,” Revue d’histoire des colonies vol. 37 (1950), pp. 181–182.

  89. 89.

    Ibid., p. 76.

  90. 90.

    Dwain C. Pruitt argues that persons of color also found allies in the Catholic Church in Nantes, the French slaving port city. See “Nantes Noir: Living Race in the City of Slavers” (doctoral dissertation, Emory University, 1999), pp. 194–236.

  91. 91.

    M. François Ouvière, 2 June 1792, Archives parlementaires, vol. 44, p. 494.

  92. 92.

    Anonymous, Précis de la révolution de Saint-Domingue, depuis la fin de 1789, jusqu’au 18 juin 1794 (Philadelphia: Imprimerie de Parent, 1795), p. 153.

  93. 93.

    Pierre Pinchinat to Julien Raimond, 9 April 1792, in Correspondance de Julien Raimond, avec ses frères, de Saint-Domingue, et les pièces qui lui ont été adressées par eux (Paris: Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1793), p. 65.

  94. 94.

    Dubois and Garrigus , Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, p. 21.

  95. 95.

    Fick, The Making of Haiti, p. 121. While a concordat is usually an agreement reached with the Church, in this case, it was used to describe a union between races.

  96. 96.

    M. Grouvel, Faits historiques sur St.-Domingue, depuis 1786 jusqu’en 1805 (Paris: Renard et Delauny, 1814), p. 30.

  97. 97.

    Fick, The Making of Haiti, p. 128.

  98. 98.

    Anonymous, Précis de la révolution de Saint-Domingue, p. 153.

  99. 99.

    Lieutenant-Général Baron Pamphile de Lacroix, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la révolution de Saint-Domingue, (Paris: Pillet Ainé, 1820), p. 142; Pamphile de Lacroix, La révolution de Haïti, ed. Pierre Pluchon (Paris: Karthala, 1995), p. 498.

  100. 100.

    Romaine Rivière and Colonel General Elie to Abbé Ouvière, 24 October 1791, DXXV 110, AN.

  101. 101.

    Garrigus , Before Haiti, p. 263.

  102. 102.

    Affiches Américaines, 10 May 1793, 69, ADXXA 6, AN.

  103. 103.

    Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique, L’Ancienne Cathédrale de Port-au-Prince: Perspectives d’un Vestige de Carrefours (Port-au-Prince: Editions Henri Deschamps, 1991), p. 50.

  104. 104.

    Cabon, “Les Religieuses du Cap,” pp. 418–419.

  105. 105.

    While the Jesuits founded the convent, after their expulsion in the 1760s, the Capuchins took over control of the convent. Ibid., p. 403.

  106. 106.

    Jan, Les Congrégations religieuses à Saint-Domingue, p. 225.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., p. 419.

  108. 108.

    Cabon, “Les Religieuses du Cap,” pp. 419–420.

  109. 109.

    Ibid., p. 420.

  110. 110.

    Ibid., p. 421.

  111. 111.

    Anonymous, “La Révolution de Saint-Domingue, contenant tout ce qui s’est. passé dans la colonie française depuis le commencement de la Révolution jusqu’au départ de l’auteur pour la France, le 8 septembre 1792,” p. 300, F 3 141, ANOM [hereafter cited as Clément manuscript].

  112. 112.

    Fouchard, Les Marrons de la Liberté, p. 392. Both the priest’s and colonists’ actions contradicted the Code noir, which specified in Article XIV that baptized and unbaptized slaves were to be “buried at night in some field near the place where they died.” While he may have been baptized at some point in his life, Dutty probably was not Christian, as he was the leader of the Voudou ceremony at Bois-Caïman. “Code noir,” in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 417.

  113. 113.

    Clément manuscript, p. 268.

  114. 114.

    Ibid., p. 269.

  115. 115.

    Ibid.

  116. 116.

    Ibid., p. 277.

  117. 117.

    Le Clerc, “Campagne de Limbé, et détail de quelques événemens qui ont eu lieu dans ce quartier (ou commune) jusqu’au 20 juin 1793, époque de l’incendie du Cap, ville capitale de la Province du Nord, distante de 7 à 8 lieues du Limbé,” translated and printed in Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, p. 99.

  118. 118.

    Clément Manuscript, p. 278.

  119. 119.

    Le Clerc, “Campagne de Limbé,” quoted in Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, p. 101.

  120. 120.

    Clément Manuscript, p. 278.

  121. 121.

    Le Clerc, “Campagne de Limbé,” quoted in Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, p. 101.

  122. 122.

    For more on “colonial rape culture,” see Marlene L. Daut, Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 263.

  123. 123.

    “La mort du chef noir Boukman et du prêtre blanc Philemon,” in Jacques Thibau, Le Temps de Saint-Domingue: L’esclavage et la révolution française (Paris: J. C. Lattès, 1989), p. 319.

  124. 124.

    Dubois , Avengers of the New World, p. 125.

  125. 125.

    Pamphile de Lacroix, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la révolution, p. 147.

  126. 126.

    J. Ph. Garran, Rapport sur les Troubles de Saint-Domingue, fait au nom de la Commission des Colonies, des Comités de Salut Public, de Législation et de Marine, réunis vol. II (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1796), p. 312.

  127. 127.

    “A Priest Who Stayed with the Insurgents: The Interrogation of the Abbé de la Haye, curé of Dondon,” “Interrogation of 1 December 1793,” DXXV 5, AN, translated and printed Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, p. 160.

  128. 128.

    Yves Benot, Les lumières, l’esclavage, la colonization (Paris: Edition la Découverte, 2005), p. 240.

  129. 129.

    Michel Etienne Descourtilz, Histoire des désastres de Saint-Domingue, précédée d’un tableau de régime et des progrès de cette colonies, depuis sa fondation, jusqu’a l’époque de la révolution française (Paris: Chez Garnery, 1795), pp. 262–630.

  130. 130.

    In his appended biographical index, Pierre Pluchon identifies Abbé Delahaye as aumônier to Biassou , La Révolution de Haïti, p. 484.

  131. 131.

    “A Priest Who Stayed with the Insurgents” in Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, p. 163, 159.

  132. 132.

    “Armée du Nord,” Le Moniteur général de la partie française de Saint-Domingue, 31 January 1793, p. 76, 303.

  133. 133.

    Georges Biassou and Toussaint Louverture also accepted the Spanish offer. Jane Landers, “Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals: Arming Slaves in Colonial Spanish America,” in Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age Christopher L. Brown and Philip D Morgan, eds. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 130–131; Jeremy Popkin , A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution (Oxford: John Wiley & Sonds, 2012), pp. 55–56. Various sources list Vásquez with other first names. In his biographical index to Pamphile de Lacroix’s account, Pierre Pluchon lists him as Juan Vasquez. In his documentary history of the Haitian Revolution, David Geggus lists him a José Vasquez. See La Révolution de Haïti, p. 511 and The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2014), p. 212.

  134. 134.

    Report by Paul Cadusch and “Examinations taken before the Council of the Môle respecting the massacre at Fort Dauphin,” National Archives, London, Co., pp. 137–93, 182, 236–237, printed in Geggus , The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, p. 115.

  135. 135.

    Pamphile de Lacroix , Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la révolution, p. 290.

  136. 136.

    Father Josef Vásquez to the Vicar of Santiago, December 12, 1793, ES 11 doc. 98, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain, quoted in Landers, “Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals,” p. 131.

  137. 137.

    “La mort du chef noir Boukman,” Le Temps de Saint-Domingue, p. 318.

  138. 138.

    M. Gros, “Récit Historique sur les événements qui se sont succédés dans les camps de la Grand-Rivière, du Dondon, de Sainte-Suzanne & autres, depuis le 26 octobre 1791, jusqu’au 24 décembre de la même année,” in Isle St. Domingue, Province du Nord (Paris: np., 1793), p. 12.

  139. 139.

    Laënnec Hurbon, “Le clergé catholique et l’insurrection de 1791,” L’insurrection des esclaves, p. 44.

  140. 140.

    “La mort du chef noir Boukman,” Le Temps de Saint-Domingue, p. 318.

  141. 141.

    Abbé de la Porte to Larchevesque-Thibault, 25 May 1792, printed in Jean-Charles Benzaken, “Lettre d’un curé dans une zone contrôlée par les esclaves révoltés,” Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, no. 205 (July–August 2007), p. 5261.

  142. 142.

    Jean-Francois and Biassou to the Commissioners, December 12 & 21, 1791, Folder 4, #6 & 14, DXXV 1, AN, translated and printed in Dubois and Garrigus , Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, pp. 99–102.

  143. 143.

    Abbé de la Porte to Larchevesque-Thibault, Généalogie et Historie, p. 5261.

  144. 144.

    Ibid.

  145. 145.

    Dubois , Avengers of the New World, p. 146.

  146. 146.

    Felix Carteau, Soirées Bermudiennes, ou Entretiens sur les événemens qui ont opéré la ruine de la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue (Bordeaux: Chez Pellier-Lawalle, 1802), p. 82.

  147. 147.

    Jeremy Popkin , You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 165, 171; Elizabeth Colwill, “‘Fêtes de l’Hymen, Fêtes de la Liberté’: Marriage, Manhood, and Emancipation in Revolutionary Saint-Domingue,” in The World of the Haitian Revolution, David P. Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds. (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 128–129, 148 n21.

  148. 148.

    Dubois , Avengers of the New World, p. 157.

  149. 149.

    Popkin, You Are All Free, pp. 258–259.

  150. 150.

    Popkin, You Are All Free, p. 259.

  151. 151.

    La Révolution in Haïti, p. 484.

  152. 152.

    Carteau, Soirées Bermudiennes, p. 82.

  153. 153.

    Descourtilz, Histoire des désastres de Saint-Domingue, p. 263.

  154. 154.

    For more on the details of Louverture’s switch in allegiances see David P. Geggus, “From His Most Catholic Majesty to the godless Republique: the ‘volte-face’ of Toussaint Louverture and the Ending of Slavery in Saint Domingue,” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, vol. 65, no. 241 (1978): pp. 481–499.

  155. 155.

    Pamphile de Lacroix, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la révolution, p. 299.

  156. 156.

    Henri Castonnet des Fosses, Perte d’une colonie, la révolution de Saint-Domingue (Paris: A. Favire, 1893), p. 159.

  157. 157.

    Antheaume , Basile Joseph, prêtre attaché au clergé de Saint-Domingue (1787), E 396, ANOM.

  158. 158.

    Extraits des minutes déposés au greffe de la municipalité de la ville & banlieue du Cap, May 1795, Recueil de lettres et pièces originaux sur les affaires de l’ile de Saint-Domingue, Français 12103, Bibliothèque nationale de France [hereafter cited as BNF].

  159. 159.

    Lacroix, La Révolution in Haïti, p. 456.

  160. 160.

    Rapport présenté aux Consuls de la République par le Conseiller d’Etat charge de toutes les affaires concernant les cultes, le 26 frimaire an 11, Ms. 2333, BFC.

  161. 161.

    Pluchon, “Biographical index,” La Révolution de Haïti, p. 456.

  162. 162.

    Annales de la religion, vol. 12 (Paris: Imprimerie-Libraire Chrétienne, 1801), pp. 25–27.

  163. 163.

    Three of the bishops resigned, leaving only Guillaume Mauviel as a bishop for Saint-Domingue. Jean-François Brière, “Abbé Grégoire and Haitian Independence,” Research in African Literatures, vol. 35, no. 2 (summer 2004), p. 37.

  164. 164.

    Profession de foi des ministres du culte catholique du département du Nord, adressée au général en chef, pour prévenir l’introduction des évêques envoyés par les soi-disans évêques réunis à Paris, 11 Germinal An 9, CC9B 18, ANOM.

  165. 165.

    Pluchon, “Biographical index,” La Révolution de Haïti, p. 489.

  166. 166.

    J.-C. Dorsainvil, Manuel d’Histoire d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince: Editions Henri Deschamps, 1958), p. 332.

  167. 167.

    Robert Saurel, “La Mission des pères Dominicains à Saint-Domingue (1684–1804)” (Ph.D. diss. Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, n.d.), p. 69.

  168. 168.

    Pamphile de Lacroix, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la révolution, p. 97.

  169. 169.

    Pluchon, “Biographical index,” La Révolution de Haïti, p. 489.

  170. 170.

    Gabriel Debien, “Guillaume Mauviel: Evêque constitutionnel de Saint-Domingue (1801–1805),” Notes d’histoire coloniale, no. 105 (1981), pp. 17–22.

  171. 171.

    “Constitution of the French Colony of Saint-Domingue,” in Dubois and Garrigus , Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, p. 168.

  172. 172.

    Leclerc to the Minister of the Marine, 15 February 1802, in Lettres du général Leclerc, commandant en chef de l’armée de Saint-Domingue en 1802, Paul Roussier, ed. (Paris: Société de l’histoire des colonies françaises et E. Leroux, 1937), p. 90.

  173. 173.

    Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, vol. II (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de Jh. Courtois, 1847), p. 167.

  174. 174.

    For more on the deportations see Claude Bonaparte Auguste and Marcel Bonaparte Auguste, Les déportés de Saint-Domingue: Contribution à l’histoire de l’expédition française de Saint-Domingue, 1802–1803 (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Editions Naaman, 1979).

  175. 175.

    “Conduite du P. Julien Prefet Apostolique dans la mission du Cap Français,” Ms. 2333, BFC.

  176. 176.

    “Rapport by Jean Claude Dessirier, propriétaire à Saint-Domingue, prêtre, ancien missionnaire au Cap Français pendant 18 ans, 24 Ventôse an 9,” CC9A 27–28, ANOM.

  177. 177.

    Conduite du P. Julien, Ms. 2333, BFC.

  178. 178.

    Ibid.

  179. 179.

    Rapport présenté aux Consuls de la République par le Conseiller d’Etat charge de toutes les affaires concernant les cultes, le 26 frimaire an 11, Ms. 2333, BFC.

  180. 180.

    Conduite du P. Julien, Ms. 2333, BFC.

  181. 181.

    “Dessalines’ Proclamation, 28 April 1804,” translated and printed in The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, p. 182.

  182. 182.

    “Haitian Constitution,” Dubois and Garrigus , Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, p. 194.

  183. 183.

    Dubois and Garrigus , Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, p. 191.

  184. 184.

    Profession de foi, 11 Germinal An 9, CC9B 18, ANOM; Hubert Cole, Christophe: King of Haiti (New York: Viking Press, 1967), p. 145. Corneille du Douai had been a priest in Saint-Domingue before the Haitian Revolution began in August 1791. See Ms. 1970 B, BFC.

  185. 185.

    Cole, Christophe, p. 145, 191; Jacques de Cauna, Haïti: L’Eternelle Révolution (Monein: PRNG, 2009), p. 146.

  186. 186.

    Breathett only applied the idea to the Jesuits. Breathett, “Religious Protectionism,” pp. 26–39.

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    Erica R. Johnson

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Johnson, E.R. (2018). Faith in Humanity: Philanthropists in the Colonial Clergy. In: Philanthropy and Race in the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76144-2_2

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