Antônio Etíope e Benedito, o mouro: o escravinho Santo e o preto eremita

• Main Author: Giovanna Fiume
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal da Bahia - Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais 2009-01-01
• Series: Afro-Ásia
• Online Access: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=77019782002

This article discusses the process of canonization of two African slaves, Benedict and Anthony, who were taken to Sicily through a combination of privacy wars, the slave trade and conflicts between Christian states and the Ottoman Empire in the context of modern-era Mediterranean. Along with other "servants of God" with exemplary lives, they both joined the Franciscan Order and were elevated to the altar after their deaths, while enslaved Christians in African territory "took the turban" with some even became local Muslim authorities. Sicily, a Spanish vice-kingdom near the northern African coast, was a cultural crossroad and for at the same time a privileged laboratory for the activity of religious orders and the construction of models of black sainthood that facilitated the conversion of African slaves. The two black saints offered the orders a brilliant opportunity to idealize the conditions of slavery as a path that could lead, through suffering, to the ultimate prize: heavenly paradise. The article outlines the two Franciscan saint's rise to fame in Latin America, and the construction of a hagiographic legend that came to Europe as part of the process of their canonization.