What Is Human about Slavery?

Abstract

This chapter looks at Hispanic theologians to discern whether there is any discussion of the presence of souls in Africans that might parallel similar discussions about the Native Americans of the New World, and to see what conditions restricted Africans in their becoming Christian and what benefits might accrue to them in doing so. It discusses the belief that it was necessary to evangelize and baptize the Africans in Spain and the New World, and explores the visual representations of the Baptism of the African to show that the process of Christianization promoted in Seville follows longstanding traditions of evangelization of non-Europeans. The chapter focuses on the operation of the oldest black confraternity (founded in the fourteenth century in Seville) and shows how it becomes the template for all the black confraternities founded throughout the Spanish empire and how it was considered a ‘black nation’ by Afro-Hispanic slaves.