In the seventeenth century, Barbary pirates were at the height of their plundering power. Whether loosely organized or state-directed by the sultan or other pashas, North African pirates engaged in raiding the Mediterranean and its neighboring seas for goods and for captives that could be sold into slavery or ransomed.
Among those negotiating the release of the captives was Pierre Dan, a French priest of the Order of the Holy Trinity and Redemption of Captives. In 1634, Dan visited North Africa where he described the despair of the slave auctions and estimated that 25,000 Christian slaves were held in Algiers alone. Wearing the cross of the Redemptionist order, Rev. Dan is featured on the frontispiece of his book, Histoire de Barbarie (1649) conversing with a turbaned Turk or Berber and pointing to the ransom coins while ragged captives are brought out in chains.
So why is a book on Barbary pirates part of the St Vincent de Paul Reading List titles being collected by Rev. Edward Udovic, C.M.? Legend has it that from 1605 to 1607 when St Vincent de Paul was a young priest he was captured by Algerian corsairs and sold to different masters before making a daring escape with one of his captors, a French renegade who wished to be reconciled with the Church. Although the account of Vincent’s captivity came from letters he wrote at the time to explain his two year disappearance, most historians today doubt the veracity of the account and speculate that the young Vincent had dropped out of sight because of his heavy debts, and the failure of his attempts to gain an ecclesiastical benefice. Nonetheless, the Vincentian (Lazarist) order also had missions in Algiers and Tunis to bring relief or freedom to captured Christians.
Fast fact: Between 1575 and 1869, there were 82 redemption missions where friars bought the freedom of an estimated 15,500 captives.
Dan, Pierre. Histoire de Barbarie, et de ses corsairs... 2nd ed. Paris : Chez Pierre Rocolet, 1649. SPC 961.023D167h1649
The entire St Vincent de Paul Reading List of books contemporary with St Vincent can be found at: http://library.depaul.edu/Collections/spcaPDF/vdp_readingList.pdf
For more information contact Special Collections & Archives, Room 314, or archives@depaul.edu
