The religious body of colonial Saint-Domingue played an important, but little-known role in the Haitian Revolution. In the years before the slave uprising, the religious engaged in philanthropy aimed at improving the lives of people of African descent, gained the trust and respect of the enslaved population, and eventually took an active part in the political and social changes of the French and Haitian Revolutions. Interactions between the religious and slaves remained a constant, and these relationships played important roles in the revolutions in Saint-Domingue. To be sure, the religious did not always contribute to the revolution with philanthropic intent or a desire for racial equality, nor was slavery the only factor shaping their actions. Their decisions were complicated by the parallel revolutions in France and Saint-Domingue, forcing them to choose sides on varied issues, such as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, rights for free people of color, and the abolition of slavery. This chapter explores the diversity of religious responses to the revolution. It juxtaposes the alternative courses of action taken by the religious—abolitionist and pro-slavery, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary. Whatever side they were on, the religious were always important to colonists of all colors, free and enslaved. This juxtaposition also emphasizes the sincerity of the philanthropic and revolutionary actions of some religious, as it was not the only course of action. Rather than for personal benefit or a result of opportunism, these religious explained their philanthropic efforts in the name of enlightened defiance, conscience, humanity, and religious devotion.
Work on the religious and the Catholic Church in the colony is minimal, mostly published in the mid-twentieth century, and does not offer much information on the Haitian Revolution.1 George Breathett, who has written extensively on pre-revolutionary religion in Saint Domingue, claims that “the Catholic Church in Saint-Domingue practically disappeared during the excitement of the years following the revolt of 1791.”2 This chapter questions Breathett’s claim. It demonstrates a continued presence of the religious and the Church in the colony during and after the Haitian Revolution. It also questions the notion that Christianity was a source of slave docility. Sue Peabody has claimed that the Catholic decline after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1763 may have facilitated the successful slave revolution in the colony. She asserts that “the demographic revolution of the plantation complex, coupled with this rise of anticlericalism and expulsion of the Jesuit order, made widespread conversion of the enslaved impossible in the late eighteenth century and may have indirectly influenced the unfolding of the Haitian Revolution.”3 With this, she implies that Christianity made slaves docile, and low conversion rates allowed the enslaved to remain wild and violent, helping to bring about the Haitian Revolution. This chapter challenges Peabody’s assertions, by showing that Christian instruction encouraged the revolutionaries. The alliance between the religious and the revolutionaries contributed to the abolition of slavery and growth of racial equality in Saint-Domingue.
Scholars recently have begun to uncover the contributions of the religious to the Haitian Revolution. In the early 1990s, two authors briefly introduced evidence to suggest antislavery and revolutionary sentiments among some Saint-Dominguan clergy. In a chapter contribution to the edited volume The Abolitions of Slavery, Laënnec Hurbon claimed that various primary sources demonstrate “the participation of the clergy in the insurrection of August 1791.”4 Hurbon references only one similar study, an article written by Father Antoine Adrien in 1992. According to Hurbon, Father Adrien “endeavoured to open the debate on the attitude of the colonial clergy to the slave revolt in the North, although with the greatest caution….The evidence that he adduces…makes it possible at once to abandon the current view that the clergy was wholly committed to the cause of slavery.”5 Adrien’s article only focused on the priests in the North Province, without examining the involvement of the clergy in the other two provinces of the colony. Moreover, it only discussed the beginning of the slave uprising in 1791. Hurbon supplemented Adrien’s evidence by presenting a few instances of participation by the clergy in other parts of the island, and suggesting that some of the priests and nuns in Le Cap may have been warned about or anticipated the initial slave uprising.6 While these two brief analyses are in no way definitive, Hurbon and Adrien prove the need for further study of the clergy as philanthropists and revolutionaries in Saint-Domingue before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution.
The Catholic Church had a long history in the French Caribbean, even before Saint-Domingue officially became a French colony in 1697 with the Treaty of Ryswick. The initial colonial relationship between the Church and the state was complementary. When Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII, commissioned the establishment of the first French colony in the Antilles in 1626, he required Catholic instruction for the inhabitants. Eventually, France applied this policy to all its colonies in the Caribbean.7 In addition to the religious instruction of the French colonists, Louis XIII authorized slavery in the French colonies in 1636, as long the enslaved converted to Christianity.8 Even before the French had any substantial colonial presence in the Antilles, the monarchy and metropolitan political leaders formulated a colonial policy guided by Christianity. This religious element of French colonialism in the Antilles would shape the development of colonial society and influence many of the conflicts within the individual colonies over slavery and power.
The French Crown cemented the relationship between the Catholic Church and the colonies when it decreed the Code noir in 1685, which applied to all of France’s colonies, as well as Saint-Domingue, even though it was not yet a colony. Catholicism was central to the Code noir. Although intended to regulate relations between masters and the enslaved, Catholicism appeared throughout the Code noir—in its preamble, as the focus of the first article, and figuring into the next 13 statutes. The edict explained the need for the authority and justice of the French Crown “to maintain the discipline of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church” before mentioning the decree’s announced purpose, “to regulate the status and condition of the slaves.”9 This prioritization reflected Cardinal Richelieu’s emphasis on Catholicism in the colonies. As France introduced slavery legally into the colonies, Catholicism took precedence in official policies. The first two articles repeated this prioritization. The first article decreed the expulsion of Jews from the colony, but did not mention slaves or the treatment of slaves. The second article, requiring the baptism and Catholic instructi...