This book deals with the Capuchin mission to Kongo in the seventeenth century and shows that this mission was a unique endeavor in African history since it occurred at the invitation of the African rulers.
Fromont highlights the role of indigenous catechists in the dissemination of Catholicism in the Kongo region. This new perspective challenges the traditional perception of the Catholic mission in Africa as an ally of colonialism.
Early modern central Africa comes to life in an extraordinary atlas of vivid watercolors and drawings that Italian Capuchin Franciscans, veterans of Kongo and Angola missions, composed between 1650 and 1750 for the training of future missionaries. These "practical guides" present the intricacies of the natural, social, and religious environment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century west-central Africa and outline the primarily visual catechization methods the friars devised for the region. Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola brings this overlooked visual corpus to public and scholarly attention.
This beautifully illustrated book includes full-color reproductions of all the images…
The roots of carillon music are to be found in the Low Countries (today’s Belgium and the Netherlands). Rombouts highlights how the carillon is more than a musical instrument and shows how it is also a symbol of local pride and identity.
The book tells the story of bells in connection with the dramatic history of the Low Countries. It also pays great attention to World War I and the German invasion of Belgium, which triggered the interest in the instrument in the United States and makes his book interesting for an American audience.
The carillon, the world's largest musical instrument, originated in the sixteenth century when inhabitants of the Low Countries started to produce music on bells in church and city towers. Today, carillon music still fills the soundscape of cities in Belgium and the Netherlands. Since World War I, carillon music has become popular in the United States, where it adds a spiritual dimension to public parks and university campuses.
Singing Bronze opens up the fascinating world of the carillon to the reader. It tells the great stories of European and American carillon history: the quest for the perfect musical bell, the…
Nicole Maskiell’s Bound by Bondage studies intimate family connections and slavery among New York among elite families with Dutch roots.
With the help of personal documents, such as diaries and letters, Maskiell reconstructs the lives of enslaved individuals and, in this way, demonstrates how American elite families of Dutch heritage played a crucial role in the dissemination of slavery in New York and the American Northeast.
During the first generations of European settlement in North America, a number of interconnected Northeastern families carved out private empires. In Bound by Bondage, Nicole Saffold Maskiell argues that slavery was a crucial component to the rise and enduring influence of this emergent aristocracy. Dynastic families built prestige based on shared notions of mastery, establishing sprawling manorial estates and securing cross-colonial landholdings and trading networks that stretched from the Northeast to the South, the Caribbean, and beyond. The members of this elite class were mayors, governors, senators, judges, and presidents, and they were also some of the largest slaveholders in…
This book presents a new perspective on the Christianization of Black communities in America. It pays great attention to the Portuguese, Catholic influence in early-modern Africa and highlights that, especially in the early decades of the transatlantic slave trade, an influential minority of Africans already identified as Christians before their arrival in America. It also shows how these “Afro-Atlantic Catholics” were to have a major impact on the further development of Black Christianity in America.
