West Central African Religious Specialists in Angola and Minas Gerais in the Eighteenth Century

This paper concentrates on West Central African religious specialists, namely healers and diviners, in eighteenth-century Angola and Minas Gerais, Brazil. By studying and comparing the activities of these specialists on the two sides of the Southern Atlantic, the paper seeks to illuminate how African religious ideas crossed the ocean. Far from being destroyed by experiences of enslavement, West Central African healing and divination practices were retained in the mining region of Minas Gerais by slaves and freedmen originating in Angola. In Angola, West Central African religious practices underwent dynamic processes of syncretization during the centuries of contact with the Portuguese. Many of the slaves who landed in Brazil were familiar with Portuguese language and Catholic religion. In Minas Gerais, the processes of creolization continued as enslaved religious specialists had to adapt their practices to their new environment. In their new home communities, they served not only their countrymen but also slaves originating in other regions in Africa. White people also employed the services of West Central African religious specialists. The study is based on Inquisitorial sources pertaining to Angola and Minas Gerais, which clearly show that the religious history of Minas Gerais cannot be told solely through the prism of Catholicism, but has to seriously embrace notions of hybridization and acculturation that give more weight to African religious practices.