Patrizia Delpiano

Patrizia Delpiano is Professor of Modern History at the University of Turin (Italy). Specialist in the cultural institutions of the Ancien Régime, she has focused on censorship and freedom of the press in the 18th century, and on Atlantic slavery from a historical and historiographical perspective.

His current research focuses on the Catholic Church's attitude towards slavery over the long term, from the 17th century to the present day, through the figure of the Jesuit Pedro Claver (1580-1640), a missionary in Cartagena de Indias (New Granada), where he provided spiritual and material assistance to slaves arriving in the port. Claver died a saint, but was not canonized until 1888 by Leo XIII. Studying the case of Claver, who was in fact deeply involved in the logics of Atlantic slavery, enables us to analyze the process by which the Church changed its attitude over time and came to use his figure to reconstruct an alleged anti-slavery past.

The project

Title: Catholic Church, Atlantic slavery and sanctity: the case of Pedro Claver (16th-19th centuries)

« This research project for a monograph focuses on the relationship between the Catholic Church and slavery, approached from both a historical and historiographical perspective, through the figure of a Jesuit: Pedro Claver (1580-1654). The overall aim of the book is to study the Catholic Church's position towards slavery over time, from its centuries-old complicity to its condemnation at the end of the 19th century, coinciding with the invention of the myth of the Catholic Church's anti-slavery stance. The main theme is the figure of a Jesuit, Pedro Claver. Born into a farming family in Catalonia in 1580, Claver was sent as a missionary to Cartagena de Indias, in the New Kingdom of Granada, where for forty years he provided spiritual and material assistance to the slaves arriving at the port, an important center of the slave trade. He died in 1654 in the odor of sanctity, and the Jesuits set about writing the first “lives” (the first dates from 1657) to obtain canonization. In reality, as in other cases in modern times, Claver, after recognition of his heroic virtues by Benedict XIV (1747), was beatified by Pius IX on July 16, 1850 and canonized only in 1888 by Leo XIII. The study of the Claver case, in reality deeply implicated in the logics of Atlantic slavery, allows us to analyze the process by which the Church changes its attitude over time and finally comes to use his figure to reconstruct an alleged anti-slavery past. »

Hosting institution: Centre de Recherches Historiques (CRH) - École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Selective Bibliography

• Patrizia Delpiano, Church and Censorship in Eighteenth-Century Italy. Governing Reading in the Age of Enlightenment, London, Routledge, 2018 (traduction anglaise de Il governo della lettura. Chiesa e libri nell’Italia del Settecento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007).
• Patrizia Delpiano, La schiavitù in età moderna, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2009, 2011,  2015;; 2018; 2024; ;Arabic translation Abu Dhabi, Kalima, 2012 [Abū Ẓaby, Hayʼat Abū Ẓaby lil-thaqāfah wa-al-turāth (Kalimah), 2023].
• Patrizia Delpiano, Gesuiti e schiavitù. Il caso di Pedro Claver (1580-1654),  «Studi storici»,  2024, 3, pp. 883-909.
• Patrizia Delpiano, Atlantic Slavery, the Catholic Church and Sanctity in the Early Modern Age, in «Church History and Religious Culture», 104, 3-4, pp. 444-462.
• Patrizia Delpiano, Women and Novels. Educating the Female Public in the Age of Enlightenment, in Gender and Cultural Mediation in the Long Eighteenth Century. Women across Borders, ed. by  Mónica Bolufer, Carolina Blutrach and Laura Guinot, 2024, London,  Palgrave MacMillan, 2024, pp. 339-362.