Father Alonso Sandoval's Slaves Of The Church

Slaves of the Church Father Alonso Sandoval, a Catholic priest in the 1600’s, found it necessary to question an institution which had long been deemed acceptable by the Catholic Church. Long had man dealt in the trade of his brothers and sisters, selling them into slavery far from home and almost uniformly ensuring a life full of labor and toil and near certain death from being overworked. With the exploration of the African coast came new opportunity to engage in the trade of men on a scale which had never before been seen in this world. The Catholic Church, what some could call the conscience of the Western world did more than just stood by as this atrocity unfolded. The early Church had, since its birth, condoned the institution of slavery

The letter of Luis Brandaon requires sufficient context to better understand the world in which Brandaon himself, African slaves, and Brandaon’s colleague, Father Sandoval, operated in daily. The ambiguous opinions of the morality of the slave trade were most assuredly an issue that requires one to explore the Catholic Church and its role in the trade of African slaves ever further. Brandaon, a priest residing in Luanda, most assuredly backed the trade according to his opinion as written in his response letter. The question still remains though, was the entirety of the church on board as Brandaon was? Surly not since Sandoval felt it necessary to question the institution and the methods in which it was carried

The letter never comes right out and says it and merely addresses the answers to each of Sandoval’s questions, however with a little bit of backtracking can be fished out of the document. A summary of his questions would be as follows: How were African’s obtained for the means of slavery? What portion if any were obtained legally? How are slaves treated once they have been captured and exported?[6] These are the main issues addressed in the document and therefore can be assumed to be the questions which Sandoval raised in his original letter to Brandaon. Each of these are addressed by Brandaon, though some to a much greater degree than others and their justifications also vary in length and