Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World

"This is a fascinating book. If I had to read only one of these books, I would probably choose this one. But then I am a historian of West Africa. This is a book based on one Inquisition trial in the middle of the 18th century. Domingo Alvares came from what is now the Republic of Benin. He was sold into slavery, crossed the Atlantic, went to Brazil, went to various sugar plantations in north-eastern Brazil, but managed to get a reputation as a very powerful healer. He moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he effectively set up shop. Lots of people, Africans, Creole Portuguese, people from a whole different range of backgrounds consulted him. He became so famous that the Inquisition accused him of sorcery, but really he was just too powerful. So they deported him to Lisbon and his whole life story comes out in this one trial, which James Sweet, an American historian, uses as a way of looking at the individual life history of this one person. “They made it your moral duty to gossip, and denounce your neighbours. That can be appealing to some people” And again, it’s a fascinating example of how an Inquisition trial can give you the life history of somebody who had been an enslaved African in the 18th century. But he also uses it as a window on to understanding the different roles of Africans in different parts of the Atlantic and even in Portugal. Once he’s released, Domingos Alvares is found having discussions on religious life and belief with priests in the Algarve. It’s really a fascinating history and, also one, which, again, reveals the power of the Inquisition to take somebody from Brazil back to Lisbon for trial. By that time, he had managed to buy his freedom. Urban slaves, in particular, in Brazil might often be able to buy their freedom because they might earn money on their own account, which they could give to the people who owned them, and hence buy their freedom. No. Usually people taken in by the Inquisition in some way or other had powerful enemies. This is a very unusual case, which is one of the things that makes it such an extraordinary book. Because of the reputation he had gathered in Rio, the local church saw him increasingly as some kind of a rival. So that was one of the reasons he got picked up by the Inquisition. The Inquisition is not a topic which many women have written much about. The book I would have loved to have included here, is by the Spanish historian called Mercedes Garcia-Arenal, who is the best historian of the Moriscos at work today. Her book Los Moriscos was originally published in 1975, and was republished 20 years later in Madrid. Sadly not translated into English, it is an extraordinary piece of historical research which has stood the test of time, and reveals in great depth and humanity the extent to which Spain’s Muslim population who had been forcibly converted to Christianity (the Moriscos) formed such a key part of Spanish society, and also the way in which the Inquisition targeted them from the 1570s onwards, leading to the tragedy of their expulsion from Spain in 1609."