The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750

Author(s): John Thornton

Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1984), pp. 147-167
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/181386
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Journal of African History, 25 (I984), pp. I47-i67 147
Printed in Great Britain

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AFRICAN CATHOLIC

CHURCH IN THE KINGDOM OF KONGO, I49I-1750'

BY JOHN THORNTON

H I ST 0 RI A N s, anthropologists and sociologists have long been fascinated by

the conversion of the kingdom of Kongo to Christianity. The effect of this
conversion on Kongo's internal politics, on relations between Kongo and
Portugal, the sincerity of conviction of Kongo's Christians, and the under-
standing of this religious change in the general discussion of acculturation
have all been the subject of debate and discussion.2 However, the survival
of a number of misconceptions about Kongo's relationship with Europeans
and the effects of this relationship on Christianity have marred a proper
understanding of the nature of Kongo's conversion. Christianity is often seen
as a perpetually foreign religion, introduced by Europeans and often serving
their interests more than those of Kongo. In this way Christianity undermined
Kongo's sovereignty, and it became common for historians, especially in the
I960s, to view Christianity as part of a larger semi-colonial relationship
between Kongo and Portugal.3 In addition, the conversion of Kongo is seen
as having been superficial, at best a light syncretism, confined to a
'Westernized' strata in the court. David Birmingham has argued that this
court Christianity was maintained as a facade to enhance Kongo's diplomatic
relations in Europe, while the indigenous religion continued to be practised
in most other affairs.4 Finally, in line with the perceptions of Christianity as
essentially a foreign religion without local roots, the extent of Christianity's
influence is usually measured by the number of European clergy in the
country. Thus the Church was strong and pervasive under King Afonso in
the early sixteenth century when there were many priests from Portugal
present, but weaker in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as
the Portuguese priests abandoned Kongo for the colony of Angola. In this
view, the start of the Capuchin mission in I645 brought a resurgence of
Christianity, and the gradual decline in their numbers in the middle of the
eighteenth century led to a decline in Christianity which finally disappeared
as the nineteenth century dawned. Sigbert Axelson has periodized Kongo's

1 Research for this project was made possible by a grant from the Funda,ao C
Gulbenkian of Lisbon under the topic 'Christian Missionaries in Africa, XIV-XVII
centuries', to whose generosity I am grateful. Some of the microfilm copies of documents
were purchased through a Faculty Development Grant of Allegheny College. I would also
like to express my gratitude to Linda Heywood, Wyatt MacGaffey, Francois Bontinck
and Jan Vansina, who commented on earlier versions of the paper. Finally sincere thanks
to Maria Teresa Geraldes Acabado of ANTT and Fr. Metzler of APF for their assistance
in obtaining copies of documents.
2 Georges Balandier, Daily Life in the Kingdom of the Kongo, trans. Helen Weaver (New
York, I968); W. G. L. Randles, L'ancien royaume du Congo (Paris, I968), among others.
3Balandier, in particular, saw the Kongo in terms of the situation coloniale.
4David Birmingham, 'Central Africa from Cameroun to the Zambezi', in R. Gray
(ed.), Cambridge History of Africa, iv (Cambridge, 1975), 332.

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 I48 JOHN THORNTON

religious history in precisely this way, a history which he sees as an on-going

struggle between the alien clergy and indigenous religious actors.5
In fact, however, the history of the Christian religion in Kongo was quite
different from this image. Since Kongo converted to Christianity of its own
free will, the shape and structure of the Church and its doctrines were
determined as much by Kongo as by Europeans. Because Kongo controlled
the Church, attempts to use the Church for political leverage by outsiders
were not successful, although the Portuguese tried regularly to do so.
Although modern research has shown that there was considerable syncretism
in Christian practice in Kongo, the European clergy who visited Kongo,
and their superiors in Rome, both accepted it as orthodox. Because of the
way in which Christianity was made a part of indigenous religion, its survival
was not in question and the cult can be documented from the early sixteenth
century to the present day. Its apparent disappearance in the nineteenth
century was not due to a lack on the part of Kongo, a resurgence of suppressed
local religion or a failure on the part of the clergy. Instead it was caused by
a changing definition among European clergy (including Rome) as to what
constituted Christianity, coupled with more chauvinistic attitudes towards
non-Western (and especially colonial) peoples that arose after I850. Christi-
anity in Kongo may have changed little, but the way in which it was perceived
by foreigners changed substantially, and what had been considered orthodox
before were now no more than interesting and unedifying survivals.
It is fairly clear that the conversion of Kongo was a voluntary act on the
part of its own ruling group. The earliest sources to describe the conversion
are virtually contemporary with it, and show beyond a doubt that, for
whatever reasons, Nzinga a Nkuwu (subsequently baptized as Joao I) asked
to be baptized in I49I. The baptism of the king and his major nobles went
smoothly, and both sides seem to have been well pleased.6 If Christianity was
ever challenged, it was in these early years, and in fact Joao was reputed to
have renounced the faith, or at least cooled in it, towards the end of his reign.
His son Afonso, whose letters form our only source for the events at the end
of Joao's reign, presented the succession dispute that followed the death of
King Joao (in about I 5o6) as a struggle between a Christian camp, represented
by Afonso, and a pagan camp, represented by Afonso's brother.7 To the
5 Sigbert Axelson, Culture Conflict on the Lower Congo (Stockholm, 1970).
6 The conversion of the king of Kongo is described by Rui de Pina, based on an inq
conducted among the crew of the ships that took part in the expedition to Kongo in I49I.
His account in its original form, written about 1492, is only known from an Italian
translation written some years later (photographically reproduced in Francisco Leite de
Faria, Uma rela,cao de Rui de Pina sobre o Congo escrita em 1492 (Lisbon: Series Separata,
Agrupamento de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga, I966); the original appeared in Studia).
A somewhat less detailed version of the events appeared in his Cr6nica del Rey D. Joao
II, a MS in Arquivo Nacional de Torre do Tombo (henceforward ANTT) Livraria of
C. 15I5, eventually published in 1792. Ant6nio Brasio has published an edition of the
sections on Kongo based on the printed and the MS text in Monumenta Missioniria
Africana (I2 vols. Lisbon, I952-8I), I, 6I-5, I21-4.
7 Afonso sent his account of the events to Portugal with his ambassador Pedro de Sousa,
who was also his cousin, in about 1508 or I509: Afonso I to Manuel I, 5 October I5I4
in Brasio, Monumenta, 1, 30I. Since Francois Bontinck suggests that Afonso only became
king in I509, this was among his first acts. It was probably from the account, now lost,
that a series of letters addressed from Afonso to the Pope, the King of Portugal, the Lords
of his kingdom and to his people was composed, and from which most of the details of

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, I49I-I750 149

extent that such a clearly self-serving account can represent the true
convictions of both parties, this conflict can be seen as a challenge to the
establishment of Christianity in Kongo, as indeed it has been viewed by many
historians of Kongo.8
Whatever the truth of the matter, the Christian religion never faced
another serious challenge from within Kongo society after Afonso's accession
to the throne. Many writers have doubted this, and with some reason, for
the documentary record is full of accounts of the kings of Kongo turning from
or abandoning Christianity. An examination of these accounts, however,
suggests that the documents that support the contention of Kongo's anti-
Christian behaviour were usually written by people who had reason, for
political rather than religious motives, to want to present Kongo as a non-
or anti-Christian country. To take one example, Jan Vansina has argued,
working from a series of Jesuit reports of the mid-sixteenth century, that the
then reigning Kongo king, Diogo I (ruled I 545-6 I), turned from Christianity
to support national interests against the Portuguese.9 The documents10
represent Diogo as a bad Christian who persecuted clergy, adding asides
about keeping 'fetishes' and maintaining other bad customs. Their reports,
however, must be put in the context of the unsuccessful Jesuit mission to
Kongo of I548-55. They had come to Kongo expecting that the entire
religious life of the country would be put in their hands, and Diogo, while
initially respecting them, consistently favoured locally recruited clergy over
them. The local secular clergy, in addition, abused the Jesuits and refused
to obey both them and the Bishop of Sao Tome to whom they legally owed
obedience.11 The Jesuit reports that Diogo disliked Portuguese as well as the
Church stemmed from the same causes, for he also favoured the locally
established Portuguese community over Portuguese of higher status from
Portugal and Sao Tome who tried to dominate them. 12 This political
dimension of the Jesuit reports probably explains the apparent contradiction
between their description of Kongo and that of Duarte Lopes, who visited
the country twenty years later. To Lopes, Diogo was remembered as an
exemplary Christian and friend of the Portuguese.13 Lopes' informants,

this period are reconstructed; these letters dated by Brasio to I 5 I 2, and probably written
in Portugal as an example of style to be sent on Afonso's behalf to the various addressees,
are printed in Brasio, Monumenta, I, 256-73. More detail on the events, not found in these
letters, but probably based on the same accounts appeared in other books, first by Martin
Fernandes de Enciso, Suma de Geographia (Seville, 1519), I09-IO, and then by Joao de
Barros in 1552 (sections published in Brasio, Monumenta, i, I42-4).
8 Balandier, Daily Life; Randles, L'ancien royaume.
9 Jan Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, I966), 58-64.
10 Published in Brdsio, Monumenta, II, 222-75 passim.
11 On the nature of this correspondence and its effect on the historiography of Kongo,
John Thornton, 'Early Kongo--Portuguese relations: a new interpretation', History in
Africa, viii (I98I), I83-204, and especially I90 and 195.
12 Some of these Portuguese names are given in a denunciation of them by an
anonymous (probably Jesuit) survey of affairs in Kongo in Brasio, Monumenta, II, 330.
The act making the local Portuguese community self governing is an alvara of Joao III,
dated 1553; Brasio, Monumenta, II, 321-2.
13 Filippo Pigafetta, Relazione del Reame di Congo (1591) mod. ed. Giorgio Cardona
(Milan, 1978), 56-7 (original pagination presented in modern edition - readers can also
find the original pagination marked in the critical French translation, Willy Bal, ed.
Description du royaume de Congo et des contrees environnantes (Louvain, I965)).

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 I50 JOHN THORNTON

however, were drawn from the local Portuguese community, both clerical and
lay, who had benefited from Diogo's policies and who remembered his reign
as a good time for them. Most other evidence also points to Diogo's respect
for the Church. Upon his succession, Diogo anxiously sought Papal recogni-
tion of his claim to the throne, sending an ambassador to Rome for that
purpose.14 In addition, he allowed his capital enemy, Dom Pedro Nkanga
Mvemba (Afonso's son, who ruled for a few years before Diogo overthrew
him in 1545) to remain unmolested in a church where Pedro had sought
asylum."5 He sent 'chapel boys' from his own church to missionize the
surrounding countries,16 and finally he always declared himself publicly
obedient to the Church."7
There were several other such incidents in which Kongo kings were
denounced as being against the Church, most of which fall into a pattern
similar to the one outlined above. For example, the bishop of Sao Salvador,
Dom Manuel Bautista, wrote a series of pessimistic accounts of Christianity
in Kongo in i6ig.18 These accounts, like those of the Jesuits before, reflect
conflicts between the king, Alvaro III (ruled I614-22), and his Portuguese-
appointed bishop over control of the local secular clergy.19 A similar series
of tensions between regular clergy and local seculars led to yet another series
of denunciations, this time in the mid-i65os by Capuchin clergy. Capuchin
reports, when combined with equally hostile reports by the Portuguese clergy
of Angola, anxious to support Portugal's claims over Kongo's mineral wealth,
give the impression that King Garcia II (ruled I64I-6I) rejected the
Church.20 Despite these accusations, however, one finds evidence of the
various kings' unswerving formal loyalty to the Church and to Christianity.
They wrote to the Pope, asked for missionaries, asked for marital dispensations,
and even asked for Divine assistance against invasions of locusts21 - all
activities which can only be explained if one accepts that they respected the
Church, however much they might abuse certain of it workers.
Finally, the authorities in Rome seem to have always considered Kongo
to have been a Christian kingdom, at least since the early sixteenth century.
Papal letters to kings of Kongo exhorted them to keep the faith or to abandon

14 Diogo I to Diogo Gomes, 15 August 1546, Brasio, Monumenta II, i47.

15 Auto de Devasa de D. Diogo I, io April 1550, Brasio, Monumenta II, 248-6i passim.
16 Sebastiao Souto to King, c. 156i, Brasio, Monumenta II, 477-80.
17 See Diogo's titles as used in his correspondence in Brasio, Monumenta II, i49, I74.
18 Manuel Bautista to King, 7 September i6i9; Brasio, Monumenta VI, 375-84.
19 Teobaldo Filesi has discussed the relationship between Kongo, Rome and Portugal
at length in a series of articles appearing in the Italian journal Africa. See especially 'Le
Relazioni tra il regno del Congo e la Sede Apostolica nel XVI secolo', Africa, xxii (1967),
413-60; 'Duarte Lopez ambasciatore del Re del Congo presso Sisto V nel 1588', ibid.
xxiii (i968), 44-83; and 'Nuove Testimonianze sulla missione Congolese a Roma del
i6o8', ibid. xxiii (I968), 43I-69.
20 Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, Istorica Descrizione de' tre regni Congo,
Matamba ed Angola (Bologna, I 687), Book 4, nos. 13-40; Biblioteca Estense Modena, MS
Italicus 1380, a N .9.7, Giuseppe Monari da Modena, 'Viagio al Congo', fos. 22Iv-224
(435-40). Monari's work, written in 1723, incorporates in this section an older chronicle
of the Capuchin mission, possibly written about i659 by Giacinto Brugiotti da Vetralla;
Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, MS 3533, Antonio de Teruel, 'Descripcion Narrativa
de la Mission serafica de los padres Capuchinos... en el reyno de Congo' (c. i664), fos.
12 i-6.
21 See the various letters of Kongo kings addressed to Popes in Brasio; Monumenta
III, 234-5 (1583), V, 262-3 (i607); VII, 51-3 (I622); XI, 138-40 (I65I).

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, I49I-I750 I5 I

certain customs which were contrary to proper conduct; they did not address
them as pagans in need of conversion.22 In addition, when the Capuchin
mission was dispatched to Kongo in I645, and throughout most of the time
when Capuchins operated in the country, they were there to minister
sacraments and to improve the habits of a Christian community, not to
convert unbelievers to the Faith.23 Capuchins, who spent much of their time
in remote rural regions of the country, felt that the peasants were quite
ignorant of the fundamentals of Christianity, a fact that they blamed on the
lack of clergy; on the other hand they rarely thought of the upper classes as
non-Christian or anti-Christian.24 They might denounce Kongo customs as
sinful, even superstitious, but not pagan. The distinction between sinful and
pagan was important and significant.
It must however be asked, is this formal recognition of Kongo as a
Christian kingdom, both by Kongo's dominant classes and by the leadership
of the Church in Rome, sufficient to force us to agree that the conversion was
genuine? Modern opinion, whether by social scientists or historians of the
Church, has been to doubt the sincerity of the conversion. In part, this is due
to uncritical use of the negative (perhaps even slanderous) reports of clerical
parties hostile to Kongo, such as the sixteenth-century Jesuit mission or the
reports of Bishop Manuel Bautista. But the doubt concerning Kongo's
Christianity is not only derived from sources which are clearly politically
motivated, but also from reports which were non-political and might praise
the Christianity of Kongo. Such reports deal with descriptions of religious
practice, many of which were left by Capuchin missionaries. Here, investi-
gation reveals, Christianity was accepted, not as a new religion, but as a
syncretic cult, fully in keeping with other cults in Kongo and deriving from
Kongo and not from European or Christian cosmology.
Wyatt MacGaffey, for example, who has studied modern central African
cosmology at length, has shown how Christianity in Kongo fitted into the
Kongo conception of the universe, especially the cult of earth and water
spirits, isimbi.25 Birmingham has also argued that 'some of the Catholic
rituals and sacred objects found favour among the Kongo' and were
incorporated into 'customary ceremonies and shrines ',26 while Ann Hilton
made a thorough study of Kongo cosmology and seventeenth-century
descriptions and concluded that Christianity was always a syncretic religion
in which the Kongo reinterpreted Catholic rituals and actors according to
their own religious system.27 As a result, Christianity could be adopted
22 See various letters of Popes and Vatican officials to Kongo kings in Brasio,
Monumenta III 342-3 (I587); 542-3 (1596); v, 649-50 (I6Io); vII, 11-13 (1622); IX, 386-7
(I645); XI, 6-7 (I650); XII, 310-12 (i66o).
23 A point meticulously made (however, for his own purposes) in Hildebrand de
Hooglede, Le martyr Georges de Gheel et les debuts de la mission de Congo (I645-52)
(Antwerp, 1940).
24 Archivo 'De Propaganda Fide' (henceforth APF), Scritture originali in Congre-
gazioni Generali (henceforth APF: SOCG), vol. 249, vol. 343V, Buenaventura de Cerolla,
'Relasion de los ritos gentilicos, ceremonias diabolicas y supersticiones destos infelicis-
simos Reynos de Congo' (c. I653).
25 Wyatt MacGaffey, 'The cultural roots of Kongo prophetism', History of Religion,
XVII (I977), I84-5.
26 Birmingham, in Cambridge History of Africa, IV, 341.
27 Ann Hilton (nee Wilson), 'The Kongo kingdom to the mid-seventeenth century'
(Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1977), 254-6, 307. Her own account of priests as
representing a cult of 'sky spirits' is, however, probably not correct.

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 152 JOHN THORNTON

without any real disruption of former religious beliefs, but as for real
conversion, it clearly did not occur.
There is, however, a major problem with such an interpretation. While
modern analysis has revealed the syncretic nature of Christianity in Kongo,
this issue seems not to have troubled most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
observers, even those who were priests. All these observers seem to have
considered the Kongo form of Christianity, with its religious terminology
borrowed from Kongo cosmology, as perfectly acceptable and normal. It
might be argued that the priests who visited Kongo in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were so short-sighted and culturally bigoted that they
never took the trouble to study Kongo cosmology, and hence to understand
it. No systematic study of Kongo religion was ever undertaken, so far as the
documents show, save for lists of practices which were considered illicit.28
In this respect they differed from the Spanish priests in the Americas, who
went to great lengths to understand the cosmology of the conquered
inhabitants in order the better to root it out, and to avoid any possible
confusion between their beliefs and Christianity.29 That this was not done
in Kongo assumes a greater significance in the light of the fact that rival
religions were taken seriously elsewhere in the mission field.
In fact, when the effort of the missionaries in Kongo is compared with
efforts made elsewhere, it is fairly clear why the Christianity of Kongo fitted
so smoothly into the country's own cosmology. Missionaries who went to
Kongo carried with them what might be described as an inclusive conception
of the religion, as opposed to an exclusive concept, such as was applied in the
Spanish colonies in the Americas. The inclusive concept means that all
aspects of the culture of the target country that are not directly contrary to
the fundamental doctrine of the Church are considered acceptable. Indeed,
the ultimate result is that virtually the only behavior necessary to be a
Christian is self-identification and recognition of the Catholic Church as the
only Church and the Pope as its head. Self-identification, in turn, requires
only a simple declaration of faith, such as might be found in the Creed, in
which one confesses belief in the existence of a single God, His relationship
to Jesus Christ, belief in the Mission and Resurrection of Jesus, and the
Christian idea of an afterlife.30 This confession of belief was made even easier
when key religious terms such as God, holy, and spirit were rendered in
Kikongo terms taken directly from Kongo cosmology (Nzambi Mpungu for
God, nkisi for holy and moyo for spirit or soul).31 Moreover, the missionaries'
possible suspicions that fundamentally different concepts were at work were
allayed by an analysis of Kongo's original religion such as that made by
Mateus Cordoso, a Jesuit priest in I624, in which he maintained that the
Kongo knew of the existence of the True God but had not had the opportunity
to know, prior to their contact with Europe, of Jesus Christ.32
28 Such lists are found in Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, book i, nos. I83-97; APF:
SOCG, vol. 249, fos. 336-44, Cerolla, 'Relasion', and scattered throughout other
Capuchin sources.
29 Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966),
40-2.
30 For example, see the course of Christian instruction presented in the Kikongo
catechism of I624; Francois Bontinck and D. Ndembe Nsasi, Le catechisme kikongo du
I624; r&edition critique (Brussels, I978). 31 Ibid. passim.
32 [Mateus Cordoso], Hist6ria do Reino de Congo (Lisbon, I969), 20 (modern edition
by Ant6nio Brasio of original of I624).

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, 1491-1750 153

This tolerant approach to conversion contrasts sharply with the exclusive

concept, which was applied in the Spanish conquests, at least during the early
years of the formation of the American Church. Here great pains were made
to ensure that no such identification between pre-conquest gods and the
Christian God was made, so much so that the key spiritual words were
rendered in Spanish.33 Later, this rigid and basically intolerant attitude broke
down under pressure of circumstances, and considerable syncretism was
allowed, but the theory remained the same.34 In general the Americans were
forced into adoption of a whole new cosmology, and their conversion was
always in doubt, so that to be accepted by the Church as truly converted they
had to put aside not just a restricted set of beliefs, but much of their cultural
equipment as well.
The difference between the two approaches is easy enough to understand.
In Kongo the missionaries came to a country as the invited guests of a
powerful and unconquered king. It behoved them to make their religion as
acceptable to him as possible, while in Mexico and Peru the Spanish brought
in their religion as conquerors. The acceptance of Christianity by the
American population constituted an act of submission to the conquerors, and
a barrier to their participation in the new state of post-conquest America. An
exclusive concept of Christianity required them to make a strong and
permanent show of loyalty before being eventually (and somewhat grudgingly)
accorded the civil rights appropriate to their class in the colonialists' system.
This same notion of exclusiveness was also applied internally in Portugal and
Spain to the converts from Judaism after that religion was forcibly suppressed
in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The 'New Christians'
(converted Jews, who remained 'New' converts for generations) were always
under suspicion. Any behaviour, such as putting on a clean shirt on Friday
or disdaining pork, was considered evidence of the practice of Judaism, no
matter how strongly they appeared to accept the new religion.35 Thorough
study of Jewish cosmology revealed the significance of these actions and called
for a response. It also provided convenient pretexts for denying New
Christians their civil rights, blocking them from office and limiting their
marriages.
There was, in fact, a constant tension between the exclusive and inclusive
conceptions of Christianity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.
Teobaldo Filesi and Isidoro de Villapadierna, in analysing the intellectual and
spiritual background of the mid-seventeenth century when the Capuchin
mission was dispatched to Kongo, show clearly that they were specifically
enjoined to use an inclusive approach to the people in Kongo.36 Such an
approach to Kongo would characterize all missionary efforts until the
nineteenth century, when fundamental changes in European attitudes towards
Africa would alter it. It is only after understanding the social context of the
missionaries' choice of an inclusive rather than an exclusive approach to
conversion that one can comprehend the apparent paradox of the divergent
views of Kongo Christianity held in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
Modern analysis of Kongo's conversion has tended to stem from an

33 Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, 5 5-60.

34 On the syncretism see Eric Wolf, Sons of the Shaking Earth (Chicago, I959), I64-75.
35 C. R. Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion (Baltimore, I978).
36 Teobaldo Filesi and Isidoro de Villapadiena, La 'Missio Antiqua' dei Cappuccini
nel Congo (I645-I835) (Rome, 1978), 5 1-79.

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 154 JOHN THORNTON

exclusive rather than an inclusive conception of Christianity. For example,

Robin Horton's work on African conversion speaks of the very different
mentality of traditional as opposed to Christian belief systems, and discusses
the fundamental changes that must accompany the transition.37 This is due
in turn to the fact that modern Christianity, in contrast to the Christianity
of the sixteenth century, has come to Africa as a religion of colonialists, who
have, like the Spanish colonists in the Americas, taken up an exclusive version
of the faith for much the same reasons that their Spanish counterparts did
four centuries earlier. Coupled with this natural favouring of colonial regimes
for exclusive interpretations of religion has been a general hardening of
European attitudes towards non-Western cultures in general since the
nineteenth century. The hardening has been most noticeable in Africa, where
the increasing cultural chauvinism of nineteenth-century Europe was coupled
with the newly devised concepts of pseudo-scientific racism, itself an
outgrowth of Africa's peculiar relationship to Europe and the Americas
through the slave trade.38 As a heritage of these twin reasons for favouring
an exclusive conception of Christianity and conversion, both modern clerical
students and social scientists whose understanding of Christianity has been
born out of twentieth-century European or African colonial culture have
tended to deny the reality of Kongo's conversion, or to find the workings of
Kongo's national cosmology on Christian symbols as evidence of insincerity.
Like the mission priests of colonial Africa, they are forever examining the
innermost regions of the heart to see if a real change, a real turning away from
the old religion has occurred.
But the forerunners of the modern missionary to Africa did not share this
concern for a 'change of heart'. Coming not as conquerors, they approached
Kongo with the same sort of spirit of concession and willingness to syncretize
as the Church approached Europe in the sixth century, and a great deal of
mixing of cosmologies occurred. Thus Christianity conquered Kongo
peacefully - but at the cost of adapting itself almost wholly to the 'conquered'
people's conception of religion and cosmology.
This spirit of concession that typified the approach of missionaries to
Kongo was not unique to it. In China, where Europeans' arms could inot
prevail any more than in Kongo, a similar set of concessions produced the
famous 'Chinese Rites', a blend of Christianity and Confucianism which
would be comfortably acceptable to most Chinese.39 A similar compromise
took place in southern India, with the 'Malabar Rites' combining Christianity
and Hinduism, in each case attaching a confession of faith and acceptance
of a few principles (such as those enumerated in the Creed) to the national
cosmology of the country.40 The ultimate fate of these rites, eventually
branded as heterodox, depended not only on theological issues but on
political considerations, or squabbling between rival orders (as the struggle
between Jesuit and Franciscan orders that eventually put an end to the
acceptance of the Chinese rites in Rome as orthodox).41 In Asia, the distrust

37 Robin Horton, 'African conversion', Africa, XLI (1971).

38 Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison, I964).
39 C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire (New York, I969), 65-83. See the
thorough study of FranSois Bontinck, La lutte autour la liturgie chinoise (Louvain, I962).
40 Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 238-45. 41 Ibid. 238-40.

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, 1491-1750 155

of an unconverted ruling group combined with struggles between orders to

hinder the advance of Christianity, however syncretic it might have been. In
Kongo, however, the ruling group was fully behind the religion, and found
that recognizing the supremacy of Rome in religious matters did not involve
any loss of sovereignty, but conferred some diplomatic leverage in Europe.
It was as a result of their allegiance to Rome that Kongo was able to secure
Papal denunciation of the Portuguese invasion of southern Kongo in i622.42
As a result, the creation of a new, syncretic Catholicism in Kongo went much
farther than it had in Asia.
It was important that Christian missionaries should have permitted Kongo
to practise a syncretic form of Catholicism, but they were only partly
responsible for actually designing it. Indeed, the very strong participation by
the Kongo in the creation of their unique form of Christianity helped to
nationalize the religion and probably explains its success. Although documen-
tation is sparse, it seems quite probable that the main lines of Kongo's
adaptation of Christianity occurred during the reign of Afonso I, with major
contributions from his son, Henrique, Kongo's bishop (from 15i8 to 1531)
and assistance from European regular clergy, especially the Canons of Saint
Eloi, whose mission lasted from I509 to 1532.43 Afonso studied the tenets of
Christianity seriously, and read the considerable literature brought by the
Portuguese priests early in his reign. They gave him 'many ecclesiastical
books by various holy doctors', while at the same time his son Henrique was
dispatched to Europe to learn more, and eventually to become bishop.
Henrique likewise sent more books back,44 which Afonso read with such
diligence that the Portuguese vicar, Rui d'Aguir, spoke in 15 I 6 of him
reading far into the night and falling asleep over them, as well as astounding
the priests with his knowledge.45 This intense study, aided by the priests, who
were greatly impressed by it, must have produced the distinctly Kongo
version of Christianity. Unfortunately, we lack much documentation on the
theological details of Christianity at the time. A small hint, however, comes
from the observations of the Jesuit missionaries who reached Kongo in I 548,
five years after Afonso's death. They noted that the Kongo referred to the
church as mbila, meaning 'grave', a term which was later rendered as nzo
a nkisi (also meaning 'grave') in the catechismal literature of the seventeenth
century.46 The first Kikongo catechism, published in 1555, may well have

42 Pedro II to Juan Bautista Vives, 28 November I623 (summary in Italian of non-ext

original), Brasio, Monumenta vii, i6i.
43 George Cardoso, Agiologio Lusitania (Lisbon, i666) in Brasio, Monumenta i, 87-8.
44 Alessandro Zorzi, 'Informati6 hauuto jo Alexandro da portogalesi. I 5 I 7 . 1 Venecia',
fos. I32-I32V, in Francisco Leite de Faria and Avelino Teixeira da Mota (eds.), Novidades
Naiuticas e Ultramarinas numa informafdo dada em Veneza em I517 (Lisbon, I977).
45 Ibid. fo. I32V; Rui d'Aguir to King Manuel I of Portugal, 25 May I5i6 originally
published in Damiao de Gois, Chr6nica, etc. in Brasio, Monumenta, I: 36I (edition from
the MS in ANTT, Livraria and published edition of I566). Aguir noted, 'I certify to
your Highness that he teaches us [j] and knows the Prophets and the preaching of Our
Lord Jesus Christ and all the lives of the saints and all things of the Holy Mother Church
better than we others do.'
46 Letter of Cristovao Riberio (August I548), Italian extract of about I558 in Brasio,
Monumenta ii, I86; see the use of 'ambiro' and 'igreja' interchangeably in Jorge Vaz
to Captain of Sao Tome, i i February I 549 in ibid. II, 228.

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 I56 JOHN THORNTON

contained the same sort of religious terminology as later catechisms, but

unfortunately none has survived.47 In any case, the later catechismal literature
was very much a product of the local church, and the extant catechism of I 624
was a product of Kongo church staff with the assistance of the Jesuit priest
Matheus Cordoso. Cordoso specifically noted that he felt some of the
terminology in use by Catholics in Kongo was misleading and changed it,
while the Inquisition authorities in Portugal changed some more (although
they did not question the most crucial terminology nor change the general
tenor of the literature).48 Capuchins also tried to alter local terminology but
in both cases the local uses prevailed despite attempts to change it.49 The
efforts of both groups preserved a syncretism acceptable both in Europe and
in Africa.
The inclusive interpretation of Christianity goes a long way towards
explaining why missionaries to Kongo never devoted any energy to defining
Kongo's original cosmology or any of its manifestations in a systematic way.
Their activity in this regard was not rooting out paganism (an alternative
unacceptable theology) but rooting out superstition and sin.50 Thus
Inquisition priests accepted in passing that a certain Kongo noble who
'practised the fetishism of his people (fazerfetifos de sua gente)' was a 'public
heretic', rather than a pagan, in i596.51 This same visit of the Inquisition,
which remained for a year in Angola and heard considerable testimony
against an alleged conspiracy of New Christians (converted Jews) in Kongo
to practise their old religion, never investigated any signs of 'backsliding'
on the part of Africans in Kongo,52 including the noble mentioned above. In
central Africa the exclusive definition of Christianity was reserved, as in
Portugal, for use against Judaism.
If one re-analyses clerical activity in Kongo in this light, a somewhat
different version of it from that normally accorded the Christian faith in
Kongo emerges. Willing to accept this Kongo definition of religious belief
on theological issues, the priests concentrated on placing recognized religious
actors in control of all religious functions, and in suppressing practices which
were considered sinful in Europe (primarily polygynous marriage or
concubinage). These twin goals explain the two most common activities of
priests: burning of 'fetishes' and exhortations regarding marriage.
The priests in Kongo referred to themselves as nganga in religious texts
and oral presentations, taking over the term employed for religious practi-
tioners in Kikongo.53 This was fully equivalent to the Jesuits insisting on
See the discussion in Bontinck and Nsasi, Catechisme, I7-23 and Filesi and
Vilapadiena, Missio Antiqua, 185-6.
48 Bontinck and Nsasi, Catechisme, 32-3.
49 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, book 4, no. 42. Capuchin attempts to replace the term
kudia mungwa (to eat salt) for baptism, which they felt did an injustice to the sacrament,
failed - as late as I 798 Raimondo da Dicomano still reported women asking to have their
children baptized as saying 'Nganga, nganga anamungwa!'; Ant6nio Brasio (ed.),
'InformaSao do Reino de Congo de P. Raimondo da Dicomano, I79I-95', Studia, xxxiv
(I972), 24.
50 Hence the constant lists of unacceptable practices.
51 ANTT, Inquisicao de Lisboa, I59/7/877, Visita a Angola, I596-7, fo. IOv.
52 Ibid. passim.
53 Bontinck and Nsasi, Catechisme, passim; see the definition of sacerdotis (ngangan-
quissi) in Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Rome) (henceforward BNCR); Fundo Minori
I896, MS Varia 274, 'Vocabularium latinum, Hispanicum et Congoese' (c. I648), fo.
93V

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, 1491-1750 157

behaviour resembling that of Buddhist monks in Japan, or Mandarin sages

in China.54 They performed all the public and private roles expected of such
practitioners in Kongo, from initiation ceremonies (baptism)55 to providing
individual charms for luck (in the form of religious medals, thousands of
which were distributed in Kongo),56 protection of fields by charms,57
performing public ceremonies to appeal to earth spirits in case of drought
(with penitent processions, and self-flagellation)58 and consecrating the
coronation of the king.59 The widespread use of charms was encouraged by
the practice of using iconographic material and distributing other items, such
as religious medals, and the use of the word nkisi to mean 'holy '.6O Since nkisi
in Kikongo is the term used for a material object which houses spiritual
forces, any item which normally had the adjective 'holy' attached to it in
European practice could be considered such an object: hence 'Holy Church'
was translated as nzo a nkisi61 and 'Holy Bible' as mukanda nkisi.62 Most
significant of all, this use of nkisi was not due to a misunderstanding, or the
linguistic faults of the missionaries, for Antonio de Teruel, a widely travelled
Capuchin missionary who wrote his report in I664, clearly understood its
meaning in Kikongo, yet had no difficulty in u.sing it to describe his own
actions.63
Nevertheless, in undertaking this transformation of European into African
Christianity, the priests faced competition from the original group of nganga,
whose own labours the priests worked hard to thwart. These nganga were not
considered as pagans by the priests nor were the people who sought their aid.
Instead, they were placed in the category of fetifeiros (from which comes our
term 'fetisher ').64 This category was also recognized in Europe. The
Inquisition of Lisbon investigated a handful of cases of 'fetishism' in
sixteenth-century Portugal.65 These were simple magical and medicinal
practitioners whose activities were considered sinful. During the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries their status was transformed by an elaborate

54 Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 238-45.

55 John Thornton, 'Demography and history in the kingdom of the Kongo,
1550-1750', Y. Afr. Hist., XVIII (I977), 514.
56 Capuchin requests for large numbers of these medals are found scattered through
APF: SRC, Congo, vols 2-3 passim.
57 Giralamo Merolla da Sorrento, Breve e succinta relazione del Viaggio nel Congo
(Naples, I692), I5 I.
58 APF:SOCG vol. 457, fo. 371, Andrea da Buti to Propaganda Fide, I674; Archivio
Provinciale dei Cappuccini da Firenze, Filippo Bernardi da Firenze, 'Ragguaglio del
Congo...' ( 71 1), fo. 623; Merolla, Relazione, II 2.
59 For example the coronation of Garcia II in i65i, an event which established a
long-lasting precedent.
60 Merolla, Relazione, 152.
61 BNCR, Fundo Minori I896, MS Varia 274, fos. 17, 107. Templus = nzo amquissi;
Biblia = Muquissi mucanda. In this dictionary note also that priest is nganga a nkisi (fol.
93v).
62 Ibid. fo. 17, Bibblia = muquissi mucanda.
63 Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, MS 3533 de Teruel, 'Descripcion Narrativa5, fo.
99. The description is complete with terminology of non-Christian nkisi which he was
bent on destroying.
64 Wyatt MacGaffey, 'Fetishism revisited: Kongo nkisi in sociological perspective,
Africa, XLVII (1977) 172-3 for a discussion of the term in modern anthropology.
65 Ant6nio Baiao, A Inquisi4do em Portugal e no Brasil: Subsidios para a sua Hist6ria
(Lisbon, I906), I5i and passim.

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 I58 JOHN THORNTON

theory of witchcraft which held that all European magicians and healers were
working through or with the Devil.66 It was from this tradition of European
witchcraft lore that missionaries categorized the practices of the traditional
nganga as 'diabolic superstitions '.A This then allowed them to suppress as
witches all nganga in the country other than ordained clergy, a distinction
fully in accord with Kongo as well as European cosmology. Since it was the
duty of an nganga to root out, challenge and destroy all those who engaged
in such antisocial practices, this convergence allowed missionaries to attack
the devil's work in Kongo by invoking a fully Kongo notion of witchcraft
eradication. In a fully Christian Kongo, by this reckoning, there would be
no nganga but the recognized Christian ones engaging the supernatural
powers, and no nkisi (charms) but those certified by the recognized nganga.
All other practitioners would be deemed to be witches and punished
accordingly.
The other side of Christianization in Kongo-the suppression of sinful
practice - is best illustrated by the question of marriage. In Europe, monoga-
mous marriage consecrated by a religious ceremony was sufficiently entrenched
to be considered a fundamental part of Christian doctrine. But marriage, as
a social institution, was not subject to much theological baggage, and in the
world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Europe as in Africa, it
was enough to differentiate between types of sexual unions, and label one as
marriage to overcome the problems raised by polygyny in Kongo. At the very
start of the Christianization of Kongo, the multiplicity of wives was seen as
a major barrier to Christianity in Kongo. Alessandro Zorzi's informants told
him in about I 5 I 5 that 'the king and his people are content to observe each
and every part of the Christian rite except that covering lust because they want
to have as many wives and women as they wish', which he, like other writers
of the time, put down to the effect of the hot climate.68 Afonso must have
been aware of this, for he approached Rome with a request to allow his clergy
to be married (a dispensation allowed the Maronites of Lebanon) on the basis
that the tropical climate made celibacy impossible.69 In any case, the question
of polygyny was solved quite early by transforming it into concubinage. Since
in Kongo society the multiple wives of a polygynous husband did not have
equal status, the Kongo nobility simply married their head wife following
Christian rites, and kept the others as concubines. Such wives were normally

66 See the detailed discussion in Pierre Chaunu, 'Sur la fin des sorciers au XVIIe sicle',
Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations, XXIV (I969).
67 Common usage in all the Capuchin texts of the late seventeenth century, for example:
Luca da Caltanisetta, 'Relatione della Missione fatta nel Regno di Congo' (1701) in
Romain Rainero, II Congo agli inizi del Settecento nella Relazione di P. Luca da
Caltanisetta (Florence, 1972) fo. 39-39v. I have cited the folio numbers of the original
manuscript to allow readers to consult the French translation of Francois Bontinck, Diairie
Congolaise (I690-1701) (Louvain, I97I) in which the foliation of the original is included
as well. Also see the usage in another great seventeenth century missionary and diarist,
Girolamo da Montesarchio, 'Viaggio al Gongho' (i 669) in Calogero Piazza, La Prefettura
Apostolica del Congo alla meta del XVII Secolo (Milan, 1976), 179-80.
68 Zorzi, 'Informati6', fo. 132v.
69 Marco Vigerio della Rovere to Papal Secretary, 8 January 1534, translated with
commentary in Francois Bontinck, 'Du nouveau sur Dom Afonso, roi de Congo',
African Historical Studies, III (I 970), 15I-62.

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, I49I-I750 I59

called 'mancebas' (concubines) and the word became a regular part of

clerical vocabulary.70
The more diligent clergy were not, of course, necessarily happy about this
state of affairs, since it was still sinful to have relations with women outside
the marriage bond. But the practice of such extra-marital relations was so well
established among the European nobility at home that a whole body of law
and social practice had grown up around it. Kongo resident in Portugal even
followed this set of practices: the Portuguese archives include documents for
the legitimization of children born in this way.71 Despite the fact that this
was counter to Church law, the Church had to accept it while continuing to
criticize it. Indeed, in Kongo, as in Europe, Christian priests did criticize the
upper classes for what they considered a sensuous and sinful life.72 But they
could not, and did not consider the practice as being non-Christian, save for
those cases where they had political motives for wishing to slander Kongo,
such as the bishop Manuel Bautista or the Dean of the chapter of the Church
in Angola in order to justify a planned Portuguese invasion of Kongo in I657.
We can therefore say with confidence that a form of Christianity, practising
its own local variations but recognized in Rome as orthodox and accepted by
European priests operating in the country, had become the national religion
of Kongo probably as early as the reign of Afonso I. Of course, this statement
must be qualified by noting that the conversion did not involve a fundamental
change in religious outlook by anyone in the country, but was largely a
product of renaming existing institutions and concepts. Christian priests
filled the role of the nganga, and the most substantial difference between these
nganga and the traditional ones was the means of recruitment. Christian
nganga were certified through a hierarchical system of recognition and
training, while the traditional nganga's recruitment was more open and less
centralized and controlled.73
It was this last aspect of Christianity in Kongo, the question of the role,
recruitment and nationality of the priesthood which has led so many scholars
to see the conversion of the country as detrimental to its sovereignty. Was
it not possible for the Portuguese, operating through the influence they had
over the clergy, to use them as an instrument of their policy? Indeed, was
this not made all the more possible by the fact that the Kongo were genuinely
respectful of the Church and the priests? Although the turbulent history of
the organization of the Church in Kongo may appear at times to support such
a contention, in fact the Church represented no serious threat to Kongo's
sovereignty. In order to understand this, we must examine the role of the
Church in politics in both Europe and Kongo.
In European countries at the close of the medieval and start of the early

70 John Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition 164I-I17I8
(Madison, I983), 48. Luca da Caltanisetta, 'Relatione', fos. 35v-36
71 At least one Kongo had his own child legitimized according to these rules, document
from the Livro de Legitimayoes de Joao III (ANTT) in Brasio, Monumenta II, 240-I.
72 See the contrast made by Jesuit priests between the sensuous and sinful Alvaro III
(died I622) and his virtuous successor, Pedro II (I622-4), Mateus Cordoso to Manuel
Rodrigues, 'Relaqao da morte del Rey D Alvaro III...' in Brasio, 'O problema de ele
e coroaSao dos reis do Congo', in Hist6ria e Missiol6gia: Ineditos e esparsos (Luanda,
1973), 232-9. 3 Thornton, Kingdom of Kongo, 62.

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 i6o JOHN THORNTON

modern period, the Church controlled a great independent store of wealth,

and derived from this considerable power. This is because in European
societies of the time the division of the land revenue among the various
factions (crown, nobility and Church) of the dominant class derived from
rights of ownership in land.74 This was so for Portugal, where the Church
had throughout its history acquired considerable land and derived much of
its income from rents taken from that land. By the early modern period,
however, the Portuguese state managed to control the Church, not through
its title to land, but through control of its personnel. The rule of celibacy
meant that the personnel of the Church could not physically reproduce itself,
and the control exercised by the kings over the bishops (and through them
over the lesser clergy) meant that the crown controlled the staffing of positions
and influence in the Church.
The social structure of Kongo was different. In Kongo the state was
responsible for the division of land revenue, and no individual, institution
or family could establish permanent rights to income through possessing title
to rent-bearing land. Instead, income was distributed through the state by
one of two methods. On the one hand, individuals could be given the right
to collect the state's revenue from specified areas, taking a portion for
themselves and transmitting the rest to the king. On the other hand, the king
could grant an individual a sum of money from his own revenues as a sort
of salary. In official documents which were written in Portuguese, the first
form of revenue distribution was called a renda and the second was often called
a moradia.75
Both forms of revenue distribution can be found in the earliest documents
referring to Kongo. Afonso I, for example, expressed the theory of the renda
well when he explained that after his victory over his brother in about I506
he placed his companion Dom Goncalo as 'a captain of some part of his lands
to collect his rents '.76 Such a land grant was temporary and revocable, for
Afonso himself had lost his rendas when he fell out of favor with his royal
father in the late I 490s.77 A group of plotters hoping to overthrow King Diogo
I in I 550 sought the support of some of the nobility by playing on their fears
that the king would take away their rendas.78 The second type of income
distribution is also mentioned in early documents: in about I500 Pacheco
Pereira noted that when the King of Kongo made a grant (fazem merce) to a
noble, he paid this income in the shells that circulated in Kongo as money
(nzimbu).79 Such a grant was also made to the first official Portuguese mission
to Kongo in I 49 I .80
Since the first form of revenue grant also involved administrative duties,
it is not surprising that foreigners tended to get the second type, and the

14 Armando Castro, Portugal na Europa de seu Tempo (Lisbon, 1977), 119-35.

75 Renda: see Afonso I's usage in his letter to Manuel I, 5 October 1514, Brasio,
Monumenta I, 295. On the use of moradia: Ant6nio de Oliveira de Cadornega, Hist6ria
geral dasguerras angolanas, i68o (ed. Jose Matias Delgado and M. Alves da Cunha, 3 vols.,
Lisbon, 1973), III, 195.
76 De Barros in Brasio, Monumenta I, 145.
77 Afonso to Manuel I, 5 October 1514; Brasio, Monumenta I, 297.
78 Auto de Devasa, in Brasio, Monumenta II, 251-3 and 255-8; see the original
document, ANTT, Corpo Chronologico II, 242/121, fo. 7v, which contains two lines on
this subject missing from the published edition, 257.
79 Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo, 172.
80 Rui de Pina, Chr6nica, in Brasio, Monumenta, I, 112.

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, I49I-I750 i6i

Church's income tended to be more in the form of a moradia than in rendas,

which might have involved them in provincial politics to a degree that the
kings did not want. However, the Church income did take the form of a
somewhat assured portion of royal income. For example, Afonso instituted
a tithe, but collected it himself and paid the Church from such income.8'
When his son Henrique returned to Kongo as a bishop, Afonso noted that
he gave him a portion of the income of the province of Mpangu for his needs,
even though Henrique did not reside in Mpangu or perform administrative
duties there.82 A somewhat more permanent grant appears in a document of
I622 written by King Pedro II in which he made a sort of charter for the
funding of his royal chapel, the Chapel of Saint James. In this document,
he specified exact salaries to be paid to the members of the chapel, and
detailed precisely from which province or renda these incomes would be
drawn.83 Again, the Church was receiving assured income, grounded on a
section of the country's ground rent, but was not allowed to be involved in
its collection or in other administrative duties on the land which provided
them with their income. A more strictly moradia type of stipend was paid to
knights (cavalheiros) in Kongo's military order, modelled on the Order of
Christ in Portugal. In explaining how he intended to finance the order, in
I617, King Alvaro II stated that its endowment would not come from the
funds to be paid to other religious establishments, but directly from his royal
revenue.84 In addition to the income they derived from grants, the clergy in
Kongo also obtained income by charging a fee for performing the sacraments.
Even in rural areas they obtained money grants which Alvaro II explained
were necessary as the king could not send them food in the remote areas
because of the size of the country.85
There was some lessening of this attitude of keeping the Church away from
obtaining income solely by royal grant when the Capuchins entered the
country in I645. Capuchins, barred from living in the major rural capitals
by the secular clergy, built hospices in remote rural areas and were allowed
to obtain land for their hospice, as well as for farming for their own
subsistence. They farmed these lands by means of freed slaves whom they
obtained and who formed a permanent part of the hospice staff (nleke).86
Dionigio Carli described the splendours of the gardens around the hospice
in Mbamba when he resided there in I667-8.87 In Soyo towards the end of
the century this process had gone farther. Girolamo Merolla explained that
in addition to grants of money the Prince of Soyo also gave them lands,88 and
while the hospice was scarcely a landed proprietor in the European sense these
grants made them much more like the Church in Europe in that they
controlled their own sources of income.

81 Rui de Aguiar, 25 May 15i6, in de Gois, Cr6nica in Brisio, Monumenta I, 361.

82 Afonso to Joao III, I8 March 1526, Brisio, Monumenta I, 46I. He was given Mp
'pera dos gastos' but remained in the capital.
83 Alvaro II to Juan Bautista Vives, 23 June I623, in Brasio, Monumenta VII, 36.
84 Alvaro II to Juan Bautista Vives, 25 October I617, ibid. VI, 292-3.
85 Alvaro II to Pope Paolo V, I3 February I613, ibid. VI, 129.
86 De Hooglede, Martyr, 200-4.
87 Dionigio Carli da Piacenza, Viaggio del Padre Michael Angelo de Guattini et del
Dionigi de Carli da Piacenza. . . nel Regno del Congo (Bologna, 1674, an augmented edition
of an original published in Reggio, I671), 245 et seq. passim.
88 Merolla, Relazione, I55-6.
6 AFH25

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 I62 JOHN THORNTON

However, even when one makes exception for the hospice lands of the
Capuchins, it is clear that the state in Kongo controlled the revenue of the
Church. When the Jesuits fell out with Diogo in the I55os he cut off their
income,89 and the bishop Manuel Bautista describes an interesting institution,
apparently well established by I6I9, which he called the 'excommunication
of the country' (excommunicaf ao da terra). Whenever Manuel Bautista
excommunicated the king (which was often) the king would reply with this
local 'excommunication' in which the bishop would get no income, no wood,
food or water until he was forced to give in (in fact, Manuel Bautista received
no income at all for his entire turbulent stay).90
This process for funding the church explains perfectly well why Portugal
could not use the Catholic Church as a 'fifth column' in Kongo, and why,
even though the kings of Portugal controlled the appointment of the bishop
who nominally controlled it, they could not translate that power into real
influence in the country. This does not mean, however, that the kings of
Portugal did not hope to use the Church in this way, even though their
manifold efforts to do so failed.
In the earliest days of Kongo's conversion there was little attempt to
control the clergy or the church. Some clerics apparently just came to Kongo
on their own and attached themselves to royal service: Rodrigo Anes and
Ant6nio Fernandes, whom Afonso dispatched to Europe in about 1509, were
probably of this sort.91 Others came as servants or personal chaplains of
powerful Portuguese who resided in Kongo or on the island of Sao Tome,
such as a certain Father Nuno who came as a vicar from Fernao de Melo,
the donat6rio of Sao Tom6.92 Most important were the 'caravans' of regular
clergy, sent by the king of Portugal, such as the Canons of Saint Eloi.93 All
attached themselves to the service of the king of Kongo, and even those whose
order required them to obey a superior, such as the Canons of Saint Eloi,
received their pay separately and came to live on their own, even making
private fortunes.94 As long as these priests remained in Kongo, there was no
clerical discipline save that provided by the king of Kongo, who could, and
occasionally did, expel priests who displeased him.95
From the point of view of the Portuguese crown, this was a disorderly
situation, and King Manuel of Portugal pressed Afonso to send someone to
Europe to be ordained and recognized as a bishop.96 Although one might have
expected Manuel to try to impose clerical discipline through his own choice
of a Portuguese superior, he allowed a Kongo to perform this role. Possibly

89 Joao Afonso Polanco, Rerum Societas Iesu Historia in Brasio, Monumenta II, 320.
90 Manuel Bautista, 'Relae,ao dos costumes, ritos, e abusos de Congo' 7 September
I6I9, ibid. VI, 295, 297.
91 Afonso to Manuel I, 5 October 1514, ibid. 1, 317.
92 Same to same, ibid. I, 295, 297.
93 Damiao de Gois in Brasio, Monumenta I, 207; George Cordoso in ibid. I, 87.
94 See the brief of Pope Paolo III, 7 October 1536, printed and analysed by Franeois
Bontinck in 'Un document inedit concernant un missionnaire portugais au Royaume de
Congo (1536)', Neue Zeitschrift fur Mission-wisschenschaft XXXIII (I977), 58-66; Afonso
to Manuel, 14 October I514, Brasio, Monumenta I, 299-300.
95 Afonso to Manuel I, 5 October 1514 in Brasio, Monumenta I, 295, 297.
96 On his life and elevation to bishop, Franqois Bontinck, 'Ndoadidiki Ne-Kinu a
Mubemba, premier eveque Congo', Revue africaine de Theologie iii (I979), 149-69.

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, 1491-1750 I63

the Portuguese king feared that too much forceful intervention in the young
church might disillusion the Kongo and result in expulsion. In any case, the
rule of the bishop Henrique, with the strong support of Afonso, had the
desired effect of creating a well-organized church, doctrinally adjusted to
Kongo and possessing income, personnel and a place in Kongo's political and
social system. This may well explain why Portugal no longer supported
Afonso's attempt to have another Kongo made a bishop when Henrique died
in 1531, although some writers, such as Joao de Barros, believed that this
attempt had succeeded.97 Since Henrique was only a suffragan bishop
formally occupying the See of Utica (in North Africa which was not under
Christian control), there was no automatic need for a new bishop to fill
Henrique's place. Shortly after Henrique's death Manuel de Castro arrived
in Kongo as a royal vicar with orders to subordinate all the clergy in the
country, exercise control in the king's name over the Portuguese community
and be financially responsible to Sao Tom6.98 We have no idea whether this
ambitious attempt to control the newly established Church in Kongo
succeeded, although it seems unlikely that it could. In any case, the King of
Portugal formalized his attempt to exercise control over Kongo's church by
having the Pope place Kongo under the control of the newly created bishop
of Sao Tome in 1534.99 Many years elapsed between the formal subordination
of Kongo to Sao Tome and the first actual attempt of the bishop to exercise
real control. When he did in the 1540S it emerged clearly that no outsider
could control Kongo's clergy. Diogo refused to allow the bishop to force his
personal confessor, Manuel Afonso, to leave, and caused the Jesuits to leave
in I555 when they tried to exercise the bishop's control on the mainland.100
Attempts by vicars sent from Sao Tome to harass the local Portuguese
community, especially those who were 'New Christians' (some of whom
were also clerics) also failed. The Inquisition, which visited Luanda in
1595-6, investigated a number of allegations of ill-treatment of priests from
Sao Tome in Kongo by New Christians, and it seems that these persecuted
ex-Jews exercised considerable influence in Kongo.101
In 1596, at the request of the king of Kongo, the country was created as
a separate see from Sao Tome, and a bishop nominated for Sao Salvador,
Kongo's capital.102 However, the king of Portugal was able to obtain the right
to appoint the bishop to this seat, and once again the kings of Portugal tried
to obtain real control of the church in Kongo through exercising formal
control over the bishop. As we have seen from the case of Bishop Manuel
Bautista, this effort failed. Not succeeding in controlling the Kongo church,
the Portuguese apparently now decided to try to destroy it. In I 624 the bishop

97 Documentary fragments of letter of Afonso I, 1526, in Brasio, Monumenta I, 481;

de Barros in ibid. I, 146.
98 Regimento to Manuel de Castro, n.d. (c. 1521), in ibid. I, 535-9.
99 Ibid, I, 537-8.
100 Bernardo da Cruz, acting bishop on Sao Tome, exercised his powers through his
cousin who was appointed a vicar to Kongo, Bernardo da Cruz to King, 3 November I 542;
Brasio, Monumenta ii, I I8-I9. Manuel Pacheco tried to enforce his rule earlier, but
without success, Pacheco to King, 28 March 1536, ibid. II, 57. On the Jesuits' difficulties
see Polanco's chronicle, ibid. II, 319-21.
101 ANTT, Inquisiqao de Lisboa, 159/7/877, Visita, fos. 64-82 especially, for eve
of 1593-6.
102 Filesi, 'Nuove testimonianze', 43 I-S.
6-2

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 I64 JOHN THORNTON

moved, permanently, to Luanda leaving a rump of pro-Kongo clergy in Sao

Salvador, and the bishop stopped ordaining new Kongo clergy.103
The kings of Kongo met this new challenge by obtaining regular clergy
directly from Rome. Negotiations to obtain Capuchins began in i6i8, and
the first Italian Capuchins arrived, despite hostility from Portugal, in
I645 .104 These Capuchins joined the dwindling number of secular clergy and
a handful of Jesuits (who re-established their mission in Kongo in I6I9) to
provide the Sacraments on a regular basis to the Kongo until I835.
Many writers see this move by Kongo as the beginning of the end of
Kongo's Christian experiment. Since the Church became increasingly
dependent on a foreign clergy, the institution as a whole lost whatever status
it once had as a national institution. Furthermore, these Italians are viewed
as having been intolerant and alienating all but a few Kongo. Birmingham
described them as 'provincial Italian Capuchins with no tolerance for
religious syncretism' and believed that much of their teaching 'was rejected
by people who could not give up their house-gods, polygynous families and
their traditional safeguards against witchcraft and sorcery '.105 Axelsen
painted a similar picture of the Capuchins and portrayed their relations with
the Kongo as something akin to a war until the mid-eighteenth century, when
dwindling numbers of foreign clergy allowed the local religious actors to
reassert themselves.106 The decline of Christianity in Kongo is typically
related to the decline in numbers or enthusiasm of the Capuchins. Filesi and
Louis Jadin, both close students of the later days of the Capuchin mission,
argued that the failure to develop local priests, Portuguese interference with
the Capuchin mission and some of the faults of the Capuchins themselves
led to a gradual decline in the quality of Christianity, although 'survivals'
did remain.107
All these assessments, so prominent in the discussion of Kongo's Christi-
anity, rely too heavily upon the role of the ordained clergy. They overlook
the important role played after i6oo by the lay Christian in Kongo, when
political struggles deprived the country of a clergy composed of its own
nationals. The base of Kongo's Church, since the days of Afonso, was its local
educational system, which made Kongo into a literate as well as a Christian
country.108 In the sixteenth century these literate students went into the
103 Wilson, 'Kongo kingdom', 297-8. The situation at mid-century contrasts with the
evidence of many priests in the testimony recorded in ANTT, Inquisiqao de Lisboa,
159/7/877, Visita.
104 The story is told in many places; see Filesi and Villapadierna, Missio Antiqua, i 6-22.
105 Birmingham, in Cambridge History of Africa, IV, 341-2.
106 Axelson, Culture Confrontation.
107 Filesi and Villapadierna, Missio Antiqua, 40-79; Jadin, 'Le clerge seculier et les
Capuchins au Congo et d'Angola aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles', Bulletin de l'Institut
historique belge de Rome, xxxvi (i 964); I86-206; 'Les survivances chretiennes au Congo
au XIXe sicle', Etudes d'histoire africaines, I (I970), 137-85; Johann Metzler, 'Missions-
bemiuhungen der Kongregation in Schwarzafrika', in J. Metzler (ed.), Sacra Congrega-
tionis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum (2 vols. Freiburg, 1973), II, 882-932 (Metzler's
article relies on posthumous, unpublished work of Jadin for his discussion of the Kongo
mission). In all fairness, it must be said that both these scholars give clear credit to the
local church organization for the success of the Capuchins, but still see the Capuchins
as the principal motivators of Christianity.
108 Literate, of course, in the same sense that most European countries were in the same
epoch: literacy confined to the upper classes.

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, 1491-1750 i65

priesthood as well as into government service,109 and when the priesthood was
closed off they formed a group of lay assistants to the ordained clergy. Some
were interpreters, others 'masters' of churches or chapels, others still were
catechists. They were recruited from the highest levels of the nobility, and
in Soyo, in the late seventeenth century a career as an interpreter or master
could lead one right to the office of Prince.110 As teachers and catechists they
were responsible for the creation of Kongo's unusual interpretation of
Christianity, and it was they who propagated it. As early as 1514 Afonso I
mentioned that 'chapel boys' were sent to Mbata to convert its ruler to
Christianity, and in the I55os Diogo used them to spread Christianity to the
Ndembu region south of Kongo."' Even at home, it was they who taught
the rural people Christian prayers and hymns, prepared the way for the priest
and ensured instruction. When a priest, Capuchin or otherwise, worked in
Kongo, he normally did little more than perform the sacraments. Anyone who
has seen the statistics of the incredible number of baptisms performed by
Capuchin priests, or has read their accounts of their travels, can appreciate
this. Carried by the hospice servants (nleke) and accompanied by a noble
interpreter, the priest would travel from village to village, baptizing hundreds
of people each day, while the real mission work remained firmly in the hands
of the church staff.112 Their work would continue whether or not a priest was
present, and as laymen they were not under religious control, but could be
appointed or removed by the state authorities. They ensured continuity in
the Church and also ensured that its doctrine remained constant.
Even after Kongo's centralized government collapsed in the civil wars that
followed the battle of Mbwila in I665, the church organization continued.
Each parish church and each hospice became an independent, small political
unit, staffed by its nleke who fed and served the noble catechist or teacher
(and, if present, the foreign priest). The situation is described in the account
of the so-called 'mixed mission' which worked in Kongo from 178I to
1788 - I50 years after Kongo stopped being ordained in any numbers and
some twenty years after a Capuchin priest had been in the country. They
noted that many dukes, marquises and infantes also held titles such as
'Interpreter of the Portuguese Language' and 'Master of the Church '.113
They described many well-kept chapels, with a small building and a large
cross in a nearby field which served as an open meeting place. These chapel
locations were manned by people who spoke and wrote Portuguese, having

109 For example the Portuguese sailor in French service, Joao Afonso, noted
mid-sixteenth century that Kongo had 'monks and vicars of their own nation' and that
the king himself (Diogo or perhaps Pedro I?) had studied in Portugal, unconfirmed but
not impossible. Jean Alfonse de Saintogne, La Cosmographie (I545) (ed. Georges Musset,
Paris, 1904), 340. Musset believes that the manuscript was completed in 1530.
11 Thornton, Kingdom of Kongo, 92-3.
"I Afonso I to Manuel I, 5 October 1514 in Brasio, Monumenta I, 322-3; Sebastiao
Souto to King, c. 156I; Brasio, Monumenta II, 477-80.
112 Thornton, 'Demography and history', 514-15.
113 Academia das Cienc,as (Lisbon), MS Vermelho 296, 'Viagem do Congo do
Missionario Fr. Raphael de Castello de Vide hoje Bispo de S. Thom' (I778), fos. 53, 64
My thanks to Susan Broadhead for giving me a microfilm of this document. Broadhead
has written a good account of the social and political history of this period. 'Beyond
decline: the kingdom of Kongo in the eighteenth and nineteenth century', International
Yournal of African Historical Studies, xii (I979), 615-50.

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 i66 JOHN THORNTON

kept up the school system while the ordinary people sang hymns for them,
insisted that their children be baptized and in general moved the priests with
their devotion."14 Rafael de Castello da Vide, who left a detailed description
of the trip, noted how at Christmas 178 I he baptized a great crowd of people
who sat up all night singing 'various praises of the Lord'."-, He baptized
children with 'eyes bathed in tears' to see such devotion."16 It was not the
Capuchins who made this possible, for all their efforts, nor the secular clergy
from Angola who still found their way into Kongo throughout the eighteenth
century. One of these seculars 'Padre Simao' had a village of catechists
established which continued long after he died and helped the mission of
I78I-8.11" It was, in fact, the catechists, interpreters and masters who
preserved the religion and kept Kongo a Catholic country.
De Castello da Vide was deeply moved by the Christian devotion of the
people of Kongo, but those who followed him were less appreciative. A host
of nineteenth-century travellers also crossed Kongo, saw the villages of
catechists, heard the rural people imploring to have their children baptized and
saw the crosses, ancient catechisms and other religious paraphernalia, but
their reaction varied from patronizing amusement to scorn. As they saw it,
Kongo's Christianity was simply 'fetishism' and if they felt that Kongo had
once been Christian, it could no longer be called such. Protestants such as
the Baptist Mission which came in i 88 i put it down to the inherent tendency
of Catholics to water down Christianity in search of quick converts, while
Catholics felt that the long lack of an ordained priesthood had caused the lapse
in discipline.18 Ant6nio Barroso, founder of the modern Catholic mission to
northern Angola, was perhaps representative of the new, nineteenth-century
attitude among Catholic clergy. After visiting a village of catechists in i88i,
which he described in fair detail, he concluded that while the village was a
tribute to the work of the Capuchin mission, the original work of those Italian
friars was lost.1"9 This Christianity, ready to hand, and perhaps even helpful
to permit the Church and Portugal to claim Kongo against Protestant and
English, French and Belgian rivals, was not a model to follow, and the Church
must remake the country in order to succeed.120
Father Barroso's decision, and the observations of the other nineteenth-
century travellers, need not be taken as evidence for a loss of interest on the
part of the Kongo in Christianity. Neither should we imagine that the lack
of clergy caused fundamental changes in the nature of Christianity in Kongo.
Rather, the cause should be sought in the changing attitudes of Europeans,
which suddenly put the formerly acceptable Christianity of Kongo outside
the pale of orthodoxy. The imposition of colonial rule, with the inevitable
swing towards the exclusive definition of Christianity, was already implicit
in Barroso's work, and would continue from that point onwards. Despite their
having been placed outside the Christian world, the catechists continued to

114 Ibid. fos. 29-30, 32, 57, 63, 67, 68-9, 77-8 and passim.
115 Ibid. fo. 77. 116 Ibid fo. 29. 117 Ibid. fo. 69.
118 These positions are given, with considerable references to primary sources, in
Axelson, Culture Conflict, pp. 155-202.
119 'Relat6rio da viagem ao Bembe do C6nego Ant6nio Jose de Sousa Barroso', 15
September i884, in Mario Ant6nio Fernandes de Oliveira and Carlos Alberto Mendes
do Couto (eds.) Angolana (3 vols. Lisbon, i968-76), II, 457-6X.
120 Ibid. 1i, 458-9.

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 CATHOLICISM IN KONGO, 149I-1750 I67

operate. They provided the anthropologist-oriented priest de Troesch with

descriptions of Soyo's institutions and history, the macologist Dartevelle
with information on nzimbu shells and, in I980, the mission of Laborat6rio
Nacional de Antropologia with oral traditions.12' In spite of their continued
practice, however, these catechists have no longer been regarded as practising
a form of Christianity which was considered unusual but orthodox as late as
the late eighteenth century. Instead, most anthropologists and theologians
would join Simao Souindoula of the Laborat6rio Nacional de Antropologia
in calling them a 'syncretic rain cult'.122

SUMMARY

Scholarly opinion on the conversion of the Kingdom of Kongo to Christianity has

generally been that it was superficial, diplomatically oriented, impure, dangerous
to national sovereignty or rejected by the mass of the population. This article argues
that although Christianity in Kongo took a distinctly African form it was widely
accepted both in Kongo and in Europe as being the religion of the country.
This was possible because Kongo, as a voluntary convert, had considerable
leeway to contribute to its particular form of Christianity. Also, European priests
were much more tolerant of syncretism in Kongo than in regions like Mexico, where
colonial occupation accompanied the propagation of Christianity. Kongo's control
over the theological content allowed the religion to gain mass acceptance while its
control over the Church organization and finance allowed it never to be an
instrument for foreign domination, in spite of Portuguese attempts to use it as a
'fifth column'. When European priests arrived in Kongo during the Portuguese
colonial occupation at the end of the nineteenth century, they rejected the local form
of Christianity, thus ending its acceptance among Europeans as Christianity.

121 Simao Souindoula, 'Missao Etno-Hist6rico do Soyo: Pesquisas arqueol6gica

Novembro: A Revista Angolana vi (June 1982), 62-3.
122 Ibid. 62.

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