Emily Clark and Virginia Meacham Gould

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Emily Clark and Virginia Meacham Gould | The Feminine Face of Afro-Catholicism in New Orleans, 1727–1852 | The William and Mary Quarterly, 59.2 | The History Cooperative

The Feminine Face of Afro-Catholicism in New Orleans, 1727–1852

ON the second Sunday before Easter in 1838 , Henriette Delille, a free creole woman of African descent in New Orleans, walked the eight blocks from her home to the chapel of the St. Claude Street convent and school. She regularly traversed the distance between her house and the chapel, but this morning was special. It was the beginning of the paschal season during which adults were traditionally baptized in the Catholic church, and Delille was on her way to take part in this ancient annual ritual. Waiting for her at the chapel was a free black catechumen, fourteen-year-old Marie Therese Dagon. Standing with Dagon at the baptismal font was the immigrant French chaplain Etienne Rousselon, who would act that day as both priest and godfather. ¹ 1

     The biracial tableau of Marie Dagon's baptism reveals the distinctive profile of Catholic tradition in New Orleans and Delille's place in it. Delille belonged to a congregation of pious women of African descent who were pledged to the corporal and spiritual care of the city's enslaved and free women of color. The spiritual aspect of that mission expressed itself in catechizing and godparenting, and by this time Delille had demonstrated her dedication to the group's aims by sponsoring more than a dozen slaves and people of African descent.² While each of those sacraments would have been meaningful to Delille in its own way, the baptism of Marie Dagon held particular significance. 2

     A young adult and a free woman, Dagon came to the sacrament of her own free will. She was almost certainly led to the act by Delille herself, as it was customary for women to act as godmother to those they catechized. The ceremony took place in a religious precinct endowed with special meaning for the free black Catholic community of New Orleans. The St. Claude Street school and convent, the sacred place where free girls of color were instructed and educated, had evolved from a century-old mission to instruct females of African descent. The baptism was enacted within a space at the heart of female Afro-Catholic tradition in the city. Finally, the participation of Rousselon as both celebrant and godfather signaled a distinctive and crucial partnership between women of color and the Catholic church in the city. 3

     Dagon's baptism manifested key features of Afro-Catholicism in early nineteenth-century New Orleans: the appropriation of Catholicism by the city's free black women, the women's determination to extend the embrace of their church, and the white male clergy's recognition of their role as partners in this mission. When Delille and Rousselon shared the role and obligation of godparenting, they enacted both the spiritual equality that existed between them and their joint commitment to the propagation of the faith. The baptism of Marie Dagon--the symbolic conjoining of a French priest and a pious woman of African descent in the sanctuary of the St. Claude Street chapel--shows the dynamic that shaped the distinctive relationship between people of African descent and the church in New Orleans and illuminates Delille's extraordinary place within it (see Figure I). 4

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