The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvrière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World by Terry Rey (review)

Terry Rey's The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvrière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World tells a captivating and previously ignored story. At the center of this story are the Haitian Revolution and two unique figures who reveal much about Catholicism in the revolutionary Atlantic world. One was Romaine Rivière, a mixed-race man from the Spanish region of the island who claimed to be the Virgin Mary's godson, led the Trou Coffy rebellion, and identified as a Catholic prophetess. The other was the French Catholic priest Abbé Ouvrière, who would die in Philadelphia in the 1820s while working as a doctor and father of three. The book is more narrative driven than argumentative, bringing light to an untold and overlooked element of the Haitian Revolution. Rey illuminates "how Catholicism played an important role in the triumph of the Haitian Revolution, the institutional Catholic Church's complicity in the transatlantic slave trade notwithstanding" (6). There is a rich historiography on the significance of Vodou in the Haitian Revolution but until Rey's work Catholicism's part in the rebellions, especially the influence of Kongolese popular Catholicism, has remained unexcavated. This makes The Priest and the Prophetess an important book for scholars of Catholicism in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution, and religions of the Afro-Caribbean.

The book's scope is an expansive one, following the lives and choices of Romaine Rivière and Abbé Ouvrière while also telling the story of the Haitian Revolution. Chapter One introduces readers to the Haitian Revolution, especially the southern theatre and the Trou Coffy rebellion led by Romaine Rivière. It emphasizes the racial hierarchy of the island and the various divides and fissures among the gens de couleur libre, slaves, white slaveowners, and poor whites. Chapter Two focuses on Romaine Rivière, his rise as a prophetess (with gender analysis regarding his identification as a prophetess), and his dedication to Catholicism. During the Trou Coffy rebellion, he met Abbé Ouvrière who first helped him arrange a treaty and then seemed to betray him to the white elite. Abbé Ouvrière's troubled past in France as an outspoken priest and revolution ally who married and his unstable time on the Caribbean island comprise the heart of Chapter Three. The next two chapters provide important context, as Chapter Four recounts the success and quick burn of the Trou Coffy rebellion and Chapter Five examines how other priests in Haiti responded to the rebellion, ranging from rebel ally to racist opponent. Chapter Six focuses on the relationship between the two main figures of the book and the fall of the Trou Coffy rebellion. Catholicism and a mutual "hope that peace and justice would ring and reign in Saint-Domingue" may have brought Romaine Rivière and Abbé Ouvrière together, but the violence of the former and betrayal of the latter kept their alliance brief (158). The final three chapters see their stories to the end. Chapters Seven and Eight follow Abbé Ouvrière's transformation into Dr. Pascalis—Episcopalian priest-turned deist, friend to Benjamin Rush, and medical researcher. Chapter Nine explores possible reasons why Romaine Rivière is not celebrated like other Haitian revolutionaries despite his important role in priming the slaves and free blacks in the western part of the island for later victories.

The Priest and the Prophetess fills an important historiographic lacuna by exploring the significance of Catholicism during the Haitian Revolution. This book is a must for college libraries and would do well in graduate courses on the Atlantic world, religions in the Caribbean, Catholicism in the Americas, or the Haitian Revolution. Additionally, all scholars in those subfields should read this book. With its wide range of characters and events, it will prove a hefty text for an undergraduate course. However...