St. Peter Claver

For those convinced that the Catholic Church was forcing conversions in New Spain, let me introduce you to St. Peter Claver.

A native of Catalonia, Spain, Peter Claver spent all his adult life in Cartagena, Colombia, the center of the slave trade in the new world. Appalled at the dehumanization of the whole dirty business of slave trading, he made a personal vow in addition to those of his religious profession as a Jesuit–that until his death, he would serve and advocate on behalf of the Africans sold into slavery.

While the commonly regarded among Europeans as little more than advanced animals, he insisted that they were truly equal in worth and dignity to the Europeans. In his lifetime Peter Claver ministered to over 300,000 Africans brought to South America as slaves. Despite the contempt for him among the merchant and landed classes, his work was supported by the Jesuit Order and he was canonized a saint by Pope Leo XIII in 1888. His work and writings along with others such as Bartolome de las Casas, while broadly rejected in his time laid the foundation for the eventual rejection of the institution of slavery by the Catholic Church and the European powers by the early 19th Century.

An exerpt from one of his letters:

Inca Processional Hymn from 1631

“Hanacpachap cussicuinin” is processional hymn in the Quechua language of Peru (Inca), this piece was most likely written by a native composer and later published by the Franciscan scholar Juan Pérez Bocanegra in 1631, thus becoming the first example of polyphony printed in the Americas.