A colonial catholicism:

the marriage of natives and slaves in brazil,

XVI-XVIII centurY

Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile

(PUF, 551 pages, 2019)

In this absorbing study, Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile revisits the first two hundred years of Brazil’s religious history, from the establishment of the Archdiocese of São Salvador da Bahia in 1551 to the mid-eighteenth century—by which time Brazil had become Portugal’s richest colonial possession. Castelnau explores the complex links between religion and colonization from the vantage point implementing Christian marriage among the native and African populations. An indispensable tool of Christianization, the introduction of new marriage practices contributed to the consolidation of the colonial order. But, as Castelnau compellingly shows with a wealth of new documentation, it also provided a space where men and women of different legal status and ethnicities could win their liberty, improve their status, and assert their dignity.

Castelnau looks at the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, retracing the early encounters and alliances between Europeans and natives until the arrival of the Jesuits. Tasked with converting the natives and laying the foundations of a new society based on Christian principles, the missionaries were soon confronted with the issue of marriage as a concept and as a practice. How could they reconcile the tenets of a Catholic marriage—indissolubility and free and willing consent—with the realities of slavery? What rights did being a Christian secure? Castelnau then analyzes marriage in a slave society at the turn of the eighteenth century, a period during which the slave system hardened after the destruction of Palmares, a fugitive community of escaped slaves.

Castelnau’s extensive archival research in Portugal, Rome, and Brazil allow her to present an engrossing history of marriage in colonial Brazil. Her studies encompass the adaptive strategies of religious authorities to a new colonial environment as well as the extraordinary agency of the enslaved who used canon law provisions to defend their own interests. She unearths missionaries’ descriptions of the vanished customs of the Tupis and Kariris people. Her close examination of papal bulls sheds new light on the continuous exchange between the local representatives of the Church and Rome. Most compelling is her analysis of trial accounts retrieved from the archives of Rio de Janeiro’s ecclesiastical court. These cases, and the specific situations they address, vividly bring to life the men and women—free, emancipated, and enslaved—who presented themselves in front of the court to validate their union. 

A Colonial Catholicism is a magistral addition to Brazilian history, and to the broader scholarship on colonization and Christianization. Castelnau brilliantly unravels the complex processes of human agency, adaptation, and negotiation, which led to the formation of a new society born out of conquest and slavery.

Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile is a professor of modern history at the University of Paris and co-directs the “Nouvelle Clio” collection at PUF. She has previously published Les ouvriers d’une vigne stérile. Les jésuites et la conversion des Indiens au Brésil 1580–1620 (Centre culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2000) and Pascoa et ses deux maris. Une esclave entre Angola, Brésil et Portugal au XVIIe siècle (PUF, 2019).