This project places into conversation the two major circuits of enslaving in the early modern world – the Atlantic and the Mediterranean – by exploring how Spanish thinkers discussed enslaved Black and Turkish (or North African) people. While the transatlantic slave trade functioned in very different ways from the Mediterranean – the latter being defined in large part by its economic features of captivity and ransom – the project explores the ways in which the two systems defined and reinforced each other. For example, we see in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hagiographies of Black holy people, the clergy began to describe their subjects’ transatlantic slavery in the same way that they discussed Spanish people and sacred objects captured by North African corsairs. As recent historiography has begun to explore, friars began to ransom sacred objects as well as people from North Africa, particularly sculptures of Christ and the Virgin. In hagiographic rhetoric, Black bodies and sacred images were both held as hostages to Christian enemies whose removal to Spain offered release and healing. Spanish authors explicitly played on the doubleness of the concept of “redemption” when comparing the salvation of pagan African “bought” by enslavement to the ransom of Catholic sacred images.

Este proyecto pone en conversación los dos principales circuitos de esclavitud en el mundo moderno, el Atlántico y el Mediterráneo, explorando cómo los pensadores españoles discutieron sobre los esclavos negros y turcos, o del Norte de África. Aunque la trata transatlántica de esclavos funcionaba de forma muy diferente a la del mediterráneo, y este último se definía en gran parte por sus características económicas de cautiverio y rescate, el proyecto explora las formas en que ambos sistemas se definían y reforzaban mutuamente. Por ejemplo, observamos que en las hagiografías de santos negros de los siglos XVII y XVIII, el clero comenzó a describir la esclavitud transatlántica de sus súbditos del mismo modo que hablaba de los españoles y de los objetos sagrados capturados por los corsarios del Norte de África. Tal como ha comenzado a explorar la historiografía reciente, los frailes empezaron a pedir rescates de objetos sagrados y de personas del norte de África, en particular esculturas de Cristo y de la Virgen. En la retórica hagiográfica, tanto los cuerpos de los negros como las imágenes sagradas eran rehenes de los enemigos cristianos, cuyo traslado a España ofrecía la liberación y la curación. Los autores españoles jugaron explícitamente con la duplicidad del concepto de "redención" al comparar la salvación de los paganos africanos "comprados" por la esclavitud con el rescate de las imágenes sagradas católicas.

This project examines the sacred history of the Carmelite order in the early modern period. It analyzes the controversies over Carmelite promotion of their order’s history, which they dated from the Old Testament prophet Elijah through an unbroken chain to the early modern period. Criticism of this history by seventeenth-century Church historians led Spanish and Portuguese Carmelites to craft ever-more elaborate genealogies for their order, absorbing large numbers of ancient saints as Carmelites. Included among these ancient saints were two Ethiopians: Elesban and Efigenia. This projects examines both early modern Carmelite visual and literary histories, as well as the more specific presence of Ethiopian saints within them.

Este proyecto estudia la historia sagrada de la orden de los carmelitas en el comienzo de la época moderna. Analiza las controversias sobre la promoción carmelita de la historia de su orden, que fecharon desde el profeta Elías del Antiguo Testamento, a través de una cadena ininterrumpida, hasta el principio de la época moderna. Las críticas a esta historia por parte de los historiadores de la Iglesia del siglo XVII, llevaron a los carmelitas españoles y portugueses a elaborar genealogías cada vez más elaboradas para su orden, absorbiendo un gran número de antiguos santos como carmelitas. Entre estos antiguos santos se encontraban dos etíopes: Elesban y Efigenia. Por consiguiente, este proyecto analiza tanto las historias visuales y literarias de los primeros tiempos del Carmelo, como la presencia más precisa de los santos etíopes en ellas.

During my research for Black Saints, I came across an Afro-Brazilian man, Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, who traveled to Rome, via Spain and Portugal, in order to denounce the mistreatment of enslaved people throughout the Iberian Atlantic. Since then, I have turned my attention to learning more about Mendonça’s identity, his time in Madrid, and how he came to take on this role. In the process, I realized that two Capuchins – Francisco de Jaca and Epifanio de Moirans – who had been imprisoned by the Spanish in the Caribbean were in Rome during the exact same years as Mendonça, making similar arguments against perpetual enslavement. This article explores this fascinating decade at the Propaganda Fide, and the larger history of how Rome attempted to mediate between the Iberian empires and their Black Christian subjects.

Rowe is also in the beginning stage of launching a large-scale, collaborative project to create a digital archive of baroque images of Black Saints throughout the Catholic world. She continues to gather new images that she did not come across while writing her book, including several in Spain. This digital archive will further provide her the opportunity to expand her project into Latin America, and to work more closely with scholars and curators in Iberia and Latin America.