Bondye, also known Gran Maître (Haitian Creole: Gran Mèt),[1] is the supreme creator god in the African diasporic religion of Haitian Vodou. Vodouists believe Bondye was responsible for creating the universe and everything in it, and that he maintains the universal order. They nevertheless deem him to be transcendent and thus inaccessible to humans, who must instead interact with spirits called lwas.
Vodou developed among Afro-Haitian communities amid the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries. It arose through the blending of the traditional religions brought to the island of Hispaniola by enslaved West Africans, many of them Igbo, Yoruba or Fon, and the Roman Catholic teachings of the French colonialists who controlled the island. Bondye took his name from the French language term Bon Dieu ("Good God"). Conceptually, Bondye occupied the role played by God in Roman Catholicism and other forms of Christianity, as well as that of the supreme deity found in various African traditional religions.