Page 141 - Transcriptions d'actes notariés - Tome 20 - 1682-1686

Spaniards, and to the restrictions imposed on the Catholic slave-oivner
by the Slave Code of Canon Law. For one thing slaves had the customary
right in the Spanivh world to buy their lreedom on payment oi a eertain
6Um. It must hc remernbered that this particnlar thing was not peculiar
to the Spanish world. A slave woman was allowed undcr the Spaniards
to purehase the freedom of her child who had been born to her in
slavery. Further when a hlnlatio rhild was sold, ~he Spanish lather was
given preference beiore other buyere. The emancipation of sIaves in
the Spanish Empire was ali at:t nf piety encouraged by ronfessors. "And
the knowledge that they criulrl so easily become free, and the irequency
'
of the oeeurrenee, mitigat cd their owners' sense of ~uperioriiy". "'
With this staLement Lord Wyiidham undersrores au important ingredient
in the psychological relations exis tjug between Spanish slave owners and
their slavcs.
A distiriguished Brazilian wri~er, Gilber~o Freyre, in his stndy, The
Master.9 land Shves, la study in the I)eveIopmenf O/ Rrazilian Civilization,
agrees wilh Wyudham iii his opinion that the lot of the Negro slaves was
usually better iti the Catholic Empires, "Yet it was in the fervor of rht
Catholic Catechisni thai the harsher aiid niiire gross traits of the riative
culture were softcricd in the case <if thiise Africans who camc irom the
Fetishistic areas - although to he aite this was a Catholicism that, in
order to attract the hidians, had cipulently dmkcd iteelf out in frcsh
colours, with the padres even irnitating the mumrnery of the native
niedicine nian. The Catechi~m nrovided the first zlnw (if warmth LO
which the mass of Negroes was sibjected befiirr bei& integrated in the
05cislly Chrietian eivilization that in this ciiunlry i, Brazil waa niade
nD of so manv diverse elenierits. elemerits whose iorw iir hatshness the
~hurch sought to teniper wihout wholly destroyirig lheir teritil
ali[ie~.""~'
Negro slavery whieh became a part of European eçonomic life from
the fifteenth century oriwards fitted into a pattern of thought and habit
which allow-cd it to be accepted aud which eventuall considtred it io
be i~idisperisable. At the sanie time, however, it di B eause qualma cif
conscience to some Christians, and thc eystem had its occasional
opponente.

(1s) Wyodhain, H. A.. The A~lanrir. and Sla~~ety, Oxford Universiiy Press. London,
Humphrey hiillord, 1935, Part ITI, C. II, p. 248.
('0) Freyre. Gilbrrio, The Mlrster and the Slaues: A Study in ihe Drveiopment
or BrorJion Ciiiiiization, iranslaied by Smiuel Putman, New York, Alttd
A Knopf, lW, C.V.P. 375.