The Priest and the Prophetess

Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World

Terry Rey

Closely examines the significance of Catholic mysticism in revolutionary Haiti
The most substantial study of Romaine-la-Prophétesse and his role in the Haitian Revolution
Uses previously unstudied documents from Romaine-la-Prophétesse and Abbe Ouiviere

The Priest and the Prophetess

Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World

Terry Rey

Description

By 1791, the French Revolution had spread to Haïti, where slaves and free blacks alike had begun demanding civil rights guaranteed in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. Enter Romaine-la-Prophétesse, a free black Dominican coffee farmer who dressed in women's clothes and claimed that the Virgin Mary was his godmother. Inspired by mystical revelations from the Holy Mother, he amassed a large and volatile following of insurgents who would go on to sack countless plantations and conquer the coastal cities of Jacmel and Léogâne.
For this brief period, Romaine counted as his political adviser the white French Catholic priest and physician Abbé Ouvière, a renaissance man of cunning politics who would go on to become a pioneering figure in early American science and medicine. Brought together by Catholicism and the turmoil of the revolutionary Atlantic, the priest and the prophetess would come to symbolize the enlightenment ideals of freedom and a more just social order in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Terry Rey offers a major contribution to our understanding of Catholic mysticism and traditional African religious practices at the time of the Haitian Revolution and reveals the significant ways in which religion and race intersected in the turbulence and triumphs of revolutionary France, Haïti, and early republican America.

The Priest and the Prophetess

Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World

Terry Rey

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: The Rise of Trou Coffy and the Jacmel Insurgent Theater
Chapter Two: Romaine-la-Prophétesse
Chapter Three: Abbé Ouvière
Chapter Four: Trou Coffy and the Léogâne Insurgent Theater
Chapter Five: Sacerdotal Subversion in Saint-Domingue
Chapter Six: The Priest, the Prophetess, and the Fall of Trou Coffy
Chapter Seven: An Abbot's Atlantic Adventures
Chapter Eight: Dr. Pascalis and the Making of American Medicine
Chapter Nine: The Prophetess in Fantasy and Imagination
Conclusion
Bibliography

The Priest and the Prophetess

Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World

Terry Rey

Author Information

Terry Rey, Associate Professor of Religion, Temple University

Terry Rey is Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University.

The Priest and the Prophetess

Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World

Terry Rey

Reviews and Awards

"The Priest and the Prophetess offers a fascinating glimpse into an understudied figure in Haitian Revolutionary history. Along the way, Rey manages to augment and helpfully complicate narratives of the Haitian Revolution and portrayals of Haitian religion.... The Priest and the Prophetess makes a compelling case for the centrality of Catholicism in the Haitian Revolution." - Reading Religion

"By illumining the Haitian Revolution through Catholic people, ritual, and ideology, Rey has restored a key perspective generally missing from most historical interpretations of this period. The Priest and the Prophetess is an engaging, fresh, and thoughtprovoking read." - Sue Peabody, New West Indian Guide

"The Priest and the Prophetess offers a rich and fascinating story, evocatively told, that gives us new insight into the spiritual, cultural and political meanings of the Haitian Revolution. Through the carefully reconstructed life of the remarkable Romaine Rivière, Rey illuminates a key moment in the religious history of Haiti and the Afro-Atlantic world." - Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

"Tracing the collaboration and divergence of two remarkable figuresone a defrocked French priest, the other an African-descended prophetessTerry Rey brilliantly illuminates the role of popular Catholicism as an intellectual force in the revolutionary Atlantic world. Along the way, Rey resurrects little-known life histories of the Haitian Revolution. Deeply researched and engagingly written, this is micro-history at its very best." - James H. Sweet, University of Wisconsin, Madison