Black Saint of the Americas: The Life and Afterlife of Martín de Porres by Celia Cussen (review)

Black Saint of the Americas is a vital addition to current scholarship on popular religion and the construction of sanctity in colonial Latin America. Readers will associate Martín de Porres (1579–1639) with recently studied contemporary holy women, particularly the Americas’ first saint, Rose of Lima, and the Afroperuvian visionary Úrsula de Jesús. A mulatto born illegitimately to a former slave woman and a Spanish father, Martín could aspire to enter the local Dominican monastery only as a donado (lay servant). Yet, he quickly gained renown for his efficacious healing, charity, humility, and mystical prayer. After his death, friends among the local elites and the Dominican order promptly began to promote Martín as a candidate for sainthood. Celia Cussen first reconstructs Martín’s historical biography in the context of colonial Peru. She then examines how printed hagiographies, beatification hearings, and pictorial images represented the donado’s African origins, healing mastery, and piety in the decades and centuries following his death.

The book consists of two parts, each containing four chapters. In part 1, Cussen synthesizes extant archival information about Martín’s historical life, thereby sketching for the reader Martín’s birth and childhood, service in the monastery, and death. Of special value are Cussen’s vivid depictions of colonial life in Lima. As she details personal connections, social interactions, medicinal practices, and religious devotions, she situates Martín in a vibrant, diverse, and multi-faceted urban milieu. When Martín intercedes on behalf of his niece and helps her acquire the necessary dowry to marry a Spaniard, for example, the episode illustrates gender relations and potential racial mobility in colonial Peru. Cussen also suggests that Martín’s African roots, in conjunction with his spirituality, bolstered the perceived efficacy of his healing abilities.

Part 2 examines the enduring, dynamic devotion to Martín after his death. Both locally and internationally, Martín’s cult intertwined the holy man’s coexisting identities as healer, mystic, and mulatto. Biographies and images promoted Martín’s holiness, and miraculous healings via relics and prayer were attributed to his efficacious intercession. Images for wide circulation commonly emphasized the donado’s humility and charity, but occasional paintings showed Martín in mystical ecstasy, levitating toward the crucifix to receive Christ’s embrace. Martín’s mulatto identity figured prominently in most representations, although with changing meanings: originally a model of humble virtue for Lima’s lower social classes, more recently Martín has been invoked as defender of the oppressed and promoter of racial harmony.

Cussen offers valuable insight into the role of saints and holy models in colonial Peru: varying depictions of Martín reveal changing cultural and social values while affirming the healer’s ongoing relevance in his followers’ daily lives. Cussen’s research will be of additional significance to readers interested in racial diversity and African presence in seventeenth-century Lima; colonial Catholicism and popular piety, including relationships between saints and devotees; and the politics of canonization. Furthermore, Cussen affirms the ability of past holy figures to speak to current concerns as she details the portrayals of Martín leading to his canonization in 1962. The Afroperuvian healer was repeatedly invoked to endorse racial equality in both Church and society; the twentieth-century discourse surrounding this celebrated colonial saint continues to resonate as we grapple with race relations today.