Notre Dame de l'Assomption

The feast of Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, celebrated on August 15, mattered in revolutionary Saint-Domingue because Catholic feast days created legitimized opportunities for gathering and movement in a slave colony where assembly was always politically charged. The vault sources identify August 14, 1791 — the eve of the Assumption feast — as also coinciding with celebrations for the Vodou lwa Ezili Kawoulo, and the Morne-Rouge assembly gathered on that same day. Colonial authorities had feared feast-day gatherings since the 1720s, when missionaries warned that hundreds of enslaved people sometimes assembled under liturgical cover; the Assumption therefore belongs to the broader pattern where Catholic calendrical time and Vodou time overlapped to create space for insurgent organization.