Dissonant echoes in the Atlantic

foundations and limits of Epifanio Moirans' anti-slavery

Abstract

This article aims to shed light on the anti-slavery ideas of Capuchin missionaries in the late 17th century from the book La Justa Defesa (1681) by french capuchin Epifanio Moirans. This is an unusual record in which various arguments against slavery are addressed on the one hand in the light of legal justifications concerning the slave trade from Rome and European theologians, and on the other through the Catholic missionary accounts of the South America. Thus, from Moirans it is intended to insert the anti-slavery movement of the seventeenth century Capuchins throughout the Atlantic theological thinking about slavery.