Treatise on Slavery: Selections from “De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute”

Abstract

For scholars who wish to understand the African-European encounter in the early modern Atlantic world, Alonso de Sandoval’s 1627 treatise on Jesuit ministries among African slaves in the New World is a must-read. Described by literary scholar Margaret Olsen as a “historical and geographic compendium of Africa, apology for Jesuit action in the New World, and practical missionary manual,” the multifaceted work continues to interest scholars from a number of academic disciplines. With Nicole von Germeten’s new abridged translation, the first ever in English, this rich document is now available and intellectually more accessible to a wider Anglophone readership.By the early seventeenth century, slave ships (negreros) delivered some 3,000 to 4,000 Africans each year to the Caribbean port of Cartagena (in modern Colombia), where some were sold in public auction to local or regional buyers, while others were transported on to distant regions of Spain’s New World empire. By the time the Jesuits established a permanent presence in Cartagena, the city’s political and economic life revolved around the buying and selling of slaves. Yet despite high-minded rhetoric that justified the slave trade by promising eternal salvation to otherwise non-Christian Africans, very little attention was given to the physical, moral, or spiritual condition of slaves. When young Alonso de Sandoval arrived at the new Jesuit college in 1605, he began to address this neglect, devoting himself to a lifetime of pastoral labors among the city’s slave population, as well as to the advocacy of these ministries through constant letter writing. But it is De instauranda Aethiopum salute for which he is remembered today; we would know very little about Sandoval, and less than we now do about the seventeenth-century Atlantic slave trade or Jesuit evangelization of black slaves, were it not for this important work.Just as in Sandoval’s time, De instauranda offers a little of something for everyone. Indeed, scholars from such diverse disciplines as epidemiology, literary criticism, and the history of Jesuit spirituality have fruitfully explored the text. There can be little doubt, however, that the work is of particular value to those who study the transatlantic slave trade, New World slavery, and the ethnic origins of those slaves; one need only consider the titles chosen for all three modern editions (1956, 1987, 2008). While this tendency toward presentist readings has drawn criticism from Colombian historian Eduardo Restrepo, it reflects the reality of today’s readership and book markets. But even Sandoval himself faced this reality; although he referred to the treatise elsewhere as De instauranda Aethiopum salute (On restoring salvation to the Ethiopians), and although he viewed its emphasis on Jesuit pastoral ministries as “the fundamental goal and purpose of the work” (p. 99), he nevertheless published it under the title Naturaleza, policia sagrada i profana, costumbres i ritos, disciplina i catecismo evangélico de todos etíopes, a concession no doubt to the book market.Be that as it may, Nicole von Germeten’s previous scholarship on the social history of colonial-era free blacks and slaves in the circum-Caribbean qualifies her very well to edit an edition that emphasizes the slave trade, slavery, and the African-European encounter. In a brief introduction, she provides a general context for understanding the work. Here she explores the Jesuit intellectual tradition, particularly as it relates to ideas about slavery and race, and begins to place Alonso de Sandoval into the wider history of racial and racist ideology. What follows is an abridged translation that, while slightly biased (in terms of relative length) toward books 1 and 3, reflects her emphasis on Africans as subjects, as well as on Sandoval as storyteller. The translation itself, though containing minor flaws (e.g., rudo as “rude”), is highly readable, free from the labored feel of translations marred by hyperliteralism. In helpful introductions to each book and chapter, as well as in periodic footnotes, von Germeten provides context and definitions essential to the general reader (for example, see explanation of “sacraments,” p. 71). In these introductions, she also poses questions to guide the reader. The benefit of such questions, of course, is in helping the reader focus on a few particular concepts; however, the inclusion of leading questions may limit the reader’s ability to make independent judgments or see other things in the text.At the close of his discussion of the horrors of the Middle Passage, Sandoval expresses his hopes for his “humble book”: “I pray to God, full of good intentions and a desire to do well, that my words will interest readers, inspiring and motivating them to help these people . . . . When I am no longer able to work for their salvation, this book will live on” (p. 59). Thanks to the work of von Germeten, Sandoval’s book does live on for a new generation of readers. For academics and students who wish to understand the social experience of Jesuits and black slaves in the Spanish colonial world, as well as for those who will find its primary value in how it speaks to contemporary pastoral concerns within the Latin American church, this new translation of De instauranda Aethiopum salute will prove a rich resource.

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