• The House of HarperMelville's Anti-Catholic Publisher
• James Emmett Ryan (bio)

I can hardly imagine how under any circumstances the Harper brothers could have been other than good men. In ruminating over the reasons why they became the men they were, I find that much importance must be attached to the influence of Methodism, and still more to the impress of Methodist preachers.

—J. Henry Harper (1912)¹

Seething with resentment at American and Spanish complicity in human trafficking, and masterfully narrated toward its violent climax and unsettling denouement, "Benito Cereno" (1855) is the only work of fiction by Herman Melville that reckons substantially and directly with the long history of the transatlantic slave trade. However, set in 1799 off the coast of Chile, the novella's devastating moral force is not merely applied to guilty empires or avaricious nation-states such as venerable Spain or the newly formed United States of America. Instead, Melville chooses to position the problem of slavery within a specific religious culture. The Spanish cultural identity of the novella's central figure, Captain Benito Cereno, which Melville likely deploys to show parallels between his fictional tale of slave trading and the history of the Spanish Inquisition in "Black Legend" ("leyenda negra") religious propaganda, also provides an opportunity to signify Cereno's personal religious background as a Roman Catholic.² As is well known, Black Legend propaganda, beginning in the fifteenth century, sensationalized Catholic association with religious torture, witch hunting, and villainous priests during the Spanish Inquisition and produced a large and popular anti-Catholic literature as a result. In "Benito Cereno" the naïve American captain Amasa Delano serves as a secular foil to Captain Benito Cereno the Catholic Spaniard, whose ethereal strangeness is tied to his religious identity. Likewise, the novella's prevailing auras of menace and moral corruption are strongly associated primarily with Spanish Catholicism. Melville centers his narrative attention on Cereno, captain of the Catholically named San [End Page 76] Dominick, who—in a development initially invisible to Delano—is being physically and emotionally tortured by the insurgent Africans who, after a rebellion, have taken control of the ship and made its captain their hostage, undoing the Spanish Catholic power once vested in the pious Captain Cereno. Gradually, the dramatic irony of the novella escalates as readers discover, long before Delano, that Cereno is no longer in charge. Captain Delano's very late but violently decisive discovery of the San Dominick rebellion precipitates the novella's bloody climax. Throughout, Melville implies that Spain's role in slavery's grim commerce is intertwined with Spain's Catholic religious traditions. Indeed, while the institution of slave trading and the fate of the African captives are Melville's central concerns, linked powerfully to slavery is the religious identity of the story's moral villain: Cereno, whose Spanish version of Roman Catholic religiosity Melville cites, glosses, and emphasizes in a variety of ways.

As the novella opens, a Yankee captain named Amasa Delano, skipper of the American whaler Bachelor's Delight–encounters a mysterious slaveship off the coast of Chile, identified as the Spanish whaler San Dominick. Delano's first glimpses of the Spanish ship provide religious clues, as there are "dark moving figures … dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the cloisters." Dominican friars (Black Friars) are the imagined or spectral figures aboard the ship captained by Cereno, and Melville figures this strange ship as a zone of Roman Catholic imagery and culture. Dominican friars imagined on board a mysterious ship called the San Dominick: in these passages, Melville references the Castilian friar Saint Dominic (1170–1221), celebrated as founder of the Order of Friars Preachers (Dominicans). The anti-Catholic implications of these Dominican references are plain, as many of Melville's readers would have known that the Dominican order, under directions from Pope Gregory in the thirteenth century, had been charged with conducting the Spanish Inquisition against heresy and non-believers. Many Dominicans advanced their inquisitions notoriously and brutally, employing harsh interrogation, torture, and executions, usually by burning. Other nineteenth-century readers of "Benito Cereno" would have noticed the irony of naming a slave ship "San Dominick" in light of Santo Domingo...

• 哈珀·梅尔维尔的反天主教出版社
• 詹姆斯·埃米特·赖安（生物）

我很难想象哈珀兄弟在任何情况下都不会是好男人。在对他们成为男人之所以进行反思的过程中，我发现必须高度重视卫理公会的影响力，并且还要更加重视卫理公会传教士的印象。

--J。亨利·哈珀（1912）¹

贝尼托·塞雷诺（Benito Cereno）（1855）是对美国和西班牙在人口贩运方面的同谋的不满，并对其叙述充满了愤怒，这是赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）唯一唯一能充分并直接地考虑到其悠久历史的小说。跨大西洋奴隶贸易。然而，中篇小说的毁灭性道德力量始于1799年，位于智利海岸附近，不仅适用于有罪帝国或or变的民族国家，例如古老的西班牙或新成立的美利坚合众国。相反，梅尔维尔选择将奴隶制问题定位在特定的宗教文化中。中篇小说主要人物贝尼托·塞雷诺（Benito Cereno）上尉的西班牙文化身份，²众所周知，黑人传奇宣传始于15世纪，在西班牙宗教裁判所期间引起宗教折磨，女巫狩猎和邪恶的牧师的煽动，激起了天主教的热烈欢迎，并由此产生了大量反天主教的文学。在《贝尼托·塞雷诺》中，天真的美国队长阿马萨·德拉诺充当了天主教西班牙人贝尼托·塞雷诺上尉的世俗箔纸，他的空灵怪异与他的宗教身份有关。同样，中篇小说盛行的威胁和道德腐败的光环主要与西班牙天主教紧密相关。梅尔维尔（Melville）的叙述焦点集中在以天主教命名的San的 队长切雷诺（Cereno）上。[结束第76页] 多米尼克（Dominick）在起义中最初遭到德拉诺看不见的发展中，他遭到叛乱的非洲人的肉体和情感上的折磨，他们在叛乱后控制了该船，将其作为船长作为人质，使曾经拥有虔诚精神的西班牙天主教徒力量一扫而空塞雷诺上尉。渐渐地，随着读者在德拉诺之前很久就发现塞雷诺不再负责，中篇小说的戏剧性讽刺逐渐升级。德拉诺船长对圣多米尼克的最后决定却是暴力决定性的发现叛乱激起了中篇小说的血腥高潮。自始至终，梅尔维尔（Melville）都暗示西班牙在奴隶制严酷商业中的作用与西班牙的天主教宗教传统交织在一起。的确，虽然奴隶交易制度和非洲俘虏的命运是梅尔维尔关注的中心问题，但与奴隶制紧密相关的是故事中道德恶棍的宗教身份：塞雷诺，塞雷诺的西班牙版罗马天主教宗教信仰梅尔维尔引用，掩饰并强调以各种方式。

中篇小说揭开序幕时，一位名叫阿马萨·德拉诺（Amasa Delano）的洋基队长，是美国捕鲸者学士学位（ De Bachelor's Delight）的船长–在智利沿海遭遇了神秘的奴隶制，被确认为西班牙捕鲸者圣多米尼克（San Dominick）。德拉诺（Delano）第一次瞥见这艘西班牙船提供了宗教线索，因为“有黑暗动人的人物……朦胧地描述着，就像黑修道士在回廊里走动一样”。多米尼加男修道士（黑男修道士）是塞雷诺（Cereno）上尉的船上想象的或光谱的人物，梅尔维尔（Melville）将这艘奇怪的船视为罗马天主教的图像和文化区域。多米尼加共和国的修士们幻想着在一艘名为圣多米尼克的神秘船上：在这些段落中，梅尔维尔提到了卡斯蒂利亚男修道士圣多米尼克（1170–1221），该人以修道士传道会（多米尼加人）的创始人而闻名。这些多米尼加参考文献的反天主教含义很明显，因为许多梅尔维尔的读者会知道，在13世纪罗马教皇格里高利的指示下，多米尼加教团被指控对异端和非信徒进行西班牙宗教裁判所。许多多米尼加人臭名昭著地并残酷地推进了宗教裁判所，他们通常通过焚烧的方式进行严厉的审讯，酷刑和处决。其他19世纪的“贝尼托·塞雷诺”（Benito Cereno）读者会注意到，根据圣多明各命名一个奴隶船“圣多米尼克”具有讽刺意味。