Locating Slavery's Legacies @ Virginia Military Institute

Memorial Artwork

Visual Work of Art

Enslaver

St. Peter Claver

Stained glass portrait of St. Peter Claver baptizing a kneeling enslaved person

In Loyola University Maryland's Alumni Memorial Chapel is a stained glass window depicting St. Peter Claver, known within the Catholic Church as the patron saint of the enslaved. The window depicts Claver standing above a kneeling enslaved man, pouring water over his head in the act of baptism. Recent scholarship has reassessed Claver's missionary work among the enslaved, questioning whether through baptism and stripping them of previous cultural ties, his actions were supporting the slave economy.

The stained glass image of a kneeling enslaved man echoes an image first produced in the late 1700s and widely recognized by British and American abolitionists as a powerful and revered symbol of the abolitionist movement. Scholars today, though, note how the enslaved's clothing and positioning reinforce his subordination and "othered status" (Cutter, 3). In Loyola’s stained glass installation, an enslaved man kneels before Claver, who stands above in a position of authority. Instead of looking upward toward someone or something above him, as was often the case in 19th-century supplicant enslaved images, the African man is looking down and away from Claver—suggesting his own autonomy, however constrained.

Alumni Memorial Chapel’s stained glass windows were produced in the early 1950s by D’Ascenzo Studios. The subject matter for the windows was selected by Loyola’s president, Father Francis X. Talbot, S.J., and final approvals came from his successor, Father Thomas Murray, S.J. The chapel was funded largely by donations from students, alumni, and friends of the university. Records indicate that donors were likely unaware of the specific content of windows they sponsored at the time of donation. The Claver window’s inscription notes it was donated by Mrs. Ferdinand J. Roth.

Large stained glass window

S Peter Claver

Nicola D'Ascenzo and Lucien Gaudreau

1951

1945-1976: Era of Civil Rights Movement and resistance to Civil Rights Movement

Loyola University Maryland alumni, students, and friends
Loyola University Maryland Board of Trustees

Loyola University Maryland; Baltimore, Maryland

Peter Claver

Cutter, Martha. The Illustrated Slave: Empathy, Graphic Narrative, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800-1852. University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Gualtieri, Anna Maria. “The Stained Glass Windows of the Loyola College Chapel.” Loyola University Maryland, 2004.

"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”: Antislavery Art in the PMA’s Collection

Carey, Elliot. "'Kneeling Slave’: Imagery of the Abolitionist Movement.” County Pages, 22 Mar. 2021