Paper, Ink, Vodun, and the Inquisition: Tracing Power, Slavery, and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Portuguese Atlantic
In 1730, the Inquisition of Lisbon arrested José Francisco Pereira, a man raised in West Africa and enslaved in Brazil then Portugal, who had learned along his transatlantic journeys the art of making amulets known in the eighteenth century Portuguese-speaking world as bolsas de mandinga. Mixing Eur...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2020]
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 88, Issue: 2, Pages: 460-504 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Portugal
/ Slave trade
/ Voodooism
/ Amulet
/ Interreligiosity
/ Inquisition
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| IxTheo Classification: | AX Inter-religious relations BS Traditional African religions KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history KBH Iberian Peninsula KDB Roman Catholic Church |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In 1730, the Inquisition of Lisbon arrested José Francisco Pereira, a man raised in West Africa and enslaved in Brazil then Portugal, who had learned along his transatlantic journeys the art of making amulets known in the eighteenth century Portuguese-speaking world as bolsas de mandinga. Mixing European esoteric material into objects of Afro-Atlantic agency, bolsa-makers such as José Francisco created objects of trustworthy might that brought empowerment and security of body and mind to a diverse clientele. The bolsas, as well as similar empowered objects created in Atlantic Africa reveal the deep and mutually transformative spiritual and material connections that the slave trade engendered between Europeans and Africans in the early modern period. Common concerns produced similar answers, not least newly defined or redefined notions of witchcraft and fetish and, more broadly, conceptions about the nature of power and its multivalent entanglements with the material world. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfaa020 |