"With the License of Masters": Race, Slavery, and the Celebration of Sacraments in America's First See, 1789–1830

Abstract: Catholic priests in Baltimore, America's first diocese, used a system of sacramental control that extended enslaver authority into the most sacred aspects of faith for enslaved parishioners. Analyzing baptismal, marriage, and burial records across urban and rural parishes, this study identifies how slavery fundamentally shaped Catholic practice and sacramental access through three ascending levels of control. Baptism operated as controlled inclusion, with enslavers facilitating the sacrament while maintaining oversight through sponsorship and documentation that embedded property relations in sacred records. Marriage represented restrictive gate-keeping, requiring explicit enslaver permission that transformed spiritual commitments into property negotiations. The healing sacraments of confession and last rites became sites of ultimate control, where enslaver authority could shape salvation by withholding spiritual care from those who challenged bondage. Rather than offering refuge from temporal hierarchies, Catholic sacraments became extensions of slavery's hierarchies, with priests deferring to slaveholder interests and codifying local Maryland customs into church policy. This accommodation established precedents that subordinated enslaved Catholics' spiritual welfare to enslaver authority, creating a distinctly American Catholicism where enslaver consent could determine access to salvation.