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120 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

(continued)
“[T]he evidence presented here clarifies the . . . context and content of
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that very bloody but spiritually meaningful rebellion. Recent work on the
role of Catholicism in shaping the form and timing of slave resistance in
Brazil suggests that the Stono rebels were hardly exceptional . . . in this
regard. . . . Portuguese Catholicism . . . and the appearance of ‘Saint Mary
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Our Lady, Mother of God’ among the Indians conspired to promote . . .
rebellion among Brazilian slaves. The rebels’ . . . religion rested on a
‘reinterpretation of Christianity,’ and, like the Kongolese, Brazilian slaves
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were taught ‘to say Mass in the Morning on saints days’ and enjoined ‘to
encourage the establishment of the confraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary.’
Brazilian slaves also incorporated key elements of Catholicism into their own
religious beliefs. . . . Worsening social and economic conditions, an African
millenarian tradition, and . . . revolutionary religious beliefs of the enslaved
led to the uprising. Despite the tendency for some earlier scholars to ‘reject
the relevance of the U.S. South to Brazil because the slave religions of the
United States came out of a Protestant tradition,’ and notwithstanding the
scholarly emphasis on the revolutionary theology of Afro-Protestantism,
the arguments presented here . . . suggest that Afro-Catholicism was an
important influence on organized resistance in both regions. Slaves in Brazil
and South Carolina both used a syncretic [combining of various religious
traditions] version of Catholicism — one anchored to varying degrees in the
image Virgin Mary — to shape . . . their resistance.”

Excerpt from Mark M. Smith, “Remembering Mary, Shaping Revolt:
Reconsidering the Stono Rebellion.” The Journal of Southern History,
vol. 67, no. 3, August 2001, p. 513. Copyright © Southern Historical
Association. Used with permission.

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