James appeared at the Battle of Clavijo in 844, during the (.)Ĥ Along with the Blessed Mother, Saint James the Greater (as Santiago Matamoros ), patron saint of Spain, would also see his cult flourish in the New World 3. 3 According to popular Spanish legend, St.On the island that the Spanish named Hispaniola, so many churches, bays, towns, and rivers were, after all, named by Europeans for the Virgin Mary. From this standpoint, the earliest New World saint cults were transplanted versions of the Counterreformation Marian devotion of the early waves of Spanish and Portuguese explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries subjugated Native Americans and enslaved Africans, according to this view, were forced to become Catholics and adopted and practiced usually pale and often heretically syncretic versions of European devotions. Most historians have therefore opined that the emergence of saint cults and their pilgrimages in the Americas were chiefly determined by ecclesial proclamations made by Iberian clerics, such as the naming of a church or a town for a saint of their choosing. Notably, this transpired on the eve of the European conquest of the Americas and thus greatly shaped the kind of Catholicism that was brought to the New World. During the Counterreformation, saint cults, which since the Middle Ages had been in something of a recession, were infused with new life and popularity. ģ Throughout the Catholic world, pilgrimage has always been inspired by popular devotion to saints and martyrs. This is especially true regarding the traditions of Saint James the Greater/Ogou Feray and Saint Philomena/Lasyrenn, which are highlighted in this paper 2. Conceived in part to help fill the resultant significant gap in our understanding of Haitian pilgrimage, this paper combines historical and ethnographic analysis to demonstrate that Kongolese popular religion, which has long been in significant part itself Catholic, was not only a taproot of Haitian pilgrimage culture, but that Kongolese influences are among its most vibrant features to this day. With few exceptions these depictions completely lack historical and ethnographic consideration of Central African influences (especially Kongolese) on these traditions 1. While not incorrect, this only tells two-thirds (at best) of their ethnohistory. Sweet, Stefania Capone and Deborah O’Neil for their helpful comments on e (.)Ģ Scholarly and journalistic literature generally portrays these cults as a fusion of West African (mainly Fon and Yoruba) spirit cults and Western European (mainly Estremaduran and Breton) popular Catholic saint veneration. 1 As Linda Heywood (2002, p. 1-18) explains, this underestimation of Central African influences is no (.).
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