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th e li ves o f afri can s laves an d people of afri can descent i n renai ssance eu ro pe
Portuguese court jester or fool, João de Sá de Panasco, is a good example of a very talented performer who, while promoted and protected by the Portuguese monarchs, also suffered vicious insults about his former slave status and his black skin from the tongues of nobles and courtiers jealous of his position and success.56 However, he was successful enough to be made a knight of the Order of Santiago, one of only three black Africans to be so honored in the sixteenth century, the other two being prominent black courtiers at African courts.57 More jokes against him survive than jokes that he made himself. These jokes reveal a great deal about reactions or responses to a successful black African living a protected life at court. Nor should the sometimes punitive nature of European Renaissance slavery be ignored; as was to be expected, this differed from place to place. At its worst, for instance in Valencia, slaves in individual houses were locked up at night in wooden cages and restrained with ropes and stirrups,58 but this was quite exceptional. Slaves could also often be physically punished for misdemeanors more severely than free people, a differentiation that could be enshrined in law. Slave-owners could be tried if a slave died as a result of punishment, but few were—societal pressure militated against too harsh a cruelty more successfully than the law. It is also worth remembering that nearly all groups in the household at this time were liable to physical chastisement by the heads of the household: wives, children, servants, and slaves, so slaves were by no means in a unique position in this respect. Another identifying feature of slaves was that they could be branded: slaves belonging to the Portuguese crown were branded on the arm. All slaves taken to São Tomé from Benin or elsewhere after 1519 were branded with a cross on their upper right arm,59 later changed to a G, the marca de Guiné.60 In Spain, slaves were branded with
an S on one cheek, and an I, signifying a clavo, a nail, on the other, so that the whole read esclavo, the word for slave.61 In Italy and elsewhere, slaves were branded only if they ran away, not as a primary means of identification. The treatment of slaves can be grouped under several headings. First of all, Europe was not a place of one religion. The established religion in mid-fifteenth-century Europe was Catholicism, but there were also small but significant numbers of Jews and of Muslims. By the mid-sixteenth century, there were also large numbers of Protestants, of many different types. The papacy usually approved and backed up the institution of slavery, and priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes all owned slaves. The first cargo of slaves to include black slaves arrived in Europe at Lagos in southern Portugal in 1444, and some of this initial cohort were sent to ecclesiastical establishments. In terms of conversion, black slaves brought from West Africa who were considered “animist,” were often summarily baptized by being sprinkled with water on board ship or, if not, they were supposed to be baptized by their new owners. Often this compulsory baptism was more honored in the breach than in the observance, even at the highest levels of society. King João II of Portugal offered incentives in the form of clothing, called “victory clothes” if his slaves converted, but in 1493, at least three of his slaves still retained their African names, transcribed into Portuguese as Tanba, Tonba, and Baybry,62 which demonstrates that they had not converted to Christianity because they had not been given Christian names. Pope Leo X’s bull Eximiae devotionis of 1513 provided for the erection of a baptismal font in the Church of Nossa Senhora de Conçeição in Lisbon specifically to cater for the baptism of newly arrived black slaves.63 Islamic North Africans, if they converted, sometimes had more elaborate baptismal ceremonies (as did Jews) because Islam and