Claver, Pedro (15801654) Spanish Jesuit missionary in New Granada (Colombia),

Roman Catholic saint

Pedro Claver was born in the town of Verd in the Spanish principality of Catalonia in
1580. He was the youngest child of a wealthy country farming family headed by his
parents Pedro Claver y Mingella and Ana Corber y Claver. Claver graduated from the
Jesuit college at Barcelona before entering the Roman Catholic male religious order of
the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, as a novice at Tarragona in 1602. While studying at the
Jesuit college at Montesin in Palma on the island of Majorca, he met Alphonsus
Rodrguez, a Jesuit lay brother who served as the colleges doorkeeper for over four
decades. Rodrguez encouraged Claver to become a Christian missionary in Spains
American colonies. In 1610 Claver arrived in the city of Cartagena, the major South
American slave-trading port of the Spanish Empire, located on the Caribbean coast in the
colony of New Granada in present-day Colombia.
Upon his arrival in Cartagena, Claver met Alonso de Sandoval, the Spanish Jesuit
who would become Clavers mentor. After joining the Society of Jesus in Lima, Peru,
Sandoval had moved to New Granada in 1605 in order to evangelize the thousands of
African slaves that arrived annually in Cartagena. Sandoval and Claver boarded the
incoming slave ships to convert the captives to Christianity, to care for the physical needs
of the hungry and the sick, and to administer the Roman Catholic sacrament of last rites
to dying victims of the Atlantic slave trade. In 1616 Claver became the first Jesuit
ordained in Cartagena. After finishing theological studies in the cities of Bogot and
Tunja, Claver returned to Cartagena. Accepting his final priestly vows in 1622, he signed
himself Petrus Claver, ethiopium semper servus -Peter Claver, slave of the blacks
forever.
The Jesuit order was a major slaveholder in the Americas during Clavers
lifetime. In order to instruct and indoctrinate the newly arrived slaves of Cartagena in the
Roman Catholic religion, Claver used Jesuit-owned slaves, many of whom spoke
multiple African languages, as his interpreters. Claver also made extensive use of
Christian paintings and picture books in his evangelistic efforts. Believing it better to be a
captive Christian in the Americas than a free heathen in Africa, Claver preached to the
newly arrived Africans that their speedy conversion to Roman Catholicism was urgent.
Brutal treatment, lack of proper nutrition, and unsanitary conditions made slaves highly
susceptible to disease and early death, and Claver believed unconverted souls were lost to
all eternity. Also, once buyers arrived, Claver worried that many slaves would lose access
to Christian missionaries and Roman Catholic religious instruction as they were removed
to labor in mining and agriculture in remote areas of the Spanish Empire in the Americas.
During the intervening periods when slave ships were not docked in Cartagenas
waterfront, Claver did religious and humanitarian work in the citys slave quarters,
hospitals, and jails. He assembled a group of catechists, both slave and free, who
accompanied him and his slave interpreters. Claver brought food, medicine, clothing, and
religious instruction to the citys most neglected Roman Catholic converts. Claver, like
Sandoval, cared for the spiritual and material wellbeing of slaves while publicly
accepting the validity of the institution of slavery. Claver was a great admirer and
promoter of an influential book on the Christianization of African slaves written by
Sandoval in 1627 that claimed most African slaves, as war captives or criminals,
deserved their fortune. Claver also concurred with Sandovals endorsement of the biblical
curse of Ham, or the idea that black people descended from Noahs son Ham and
grandson Canaan and had therefore inherited Noahs curse of slavery on Canaan. Claver
did, however, criticize the brutality of the slave trade and advocate for the proper and
theoretically benevolent treatment of slaves according to Spanish colonial law.
Claver worked among Cartagenas Africans to eliminate non-Christian African
religious rites, dancing, and magic, as well as to encourage Christian monogamy. He
claimed to have baptized and given Christian names to some 300,000 slaves during his
lifetime. After being stricken with palsy in 1650, Claver remained bedridden for the rest
of his life. He died in Cartagena on September 8, 1654. He was beatified in September
1851 by Pope Pius IX and canonized in January 1888 by Pope Leo XIII, who also
canonized Alphonsus Rodrguez. In July 1896, Pope Leo XIII proclaimed Claver patron
saint of Roman Catholic missions to black people.


Further Reading
Clissold, Stephen. The Saints of South America. London: Charles Knight, 1972.
Farnum, Mabel. Street of the Half-moon: An Account of the Spanish Noble, Pedro
Claver. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1940.
Lunn, Arnold Henry Moore. A Saint in the Slave Trade: Peter Claver (1581-1654).
London: Sheed and Ward, 1935.
Olsen, Margaret M. Slavery and Salvation in Colonial Cartagena de Indias. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2004.
Picn-Salas, Mariano. Pedro Claver, el santo de los esclavos. Madrid: Revista de
Occidente, 1969.
Valtierra, Angel. Peter Claver: Saint of the Slaves. Translated by Janet H. Perry and L. J.
Woodward. Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1960.

David M. Carletta