Post on 29-Apr-2023
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Catholicism and local powers in Kongo: the role
of the native mediators, 16th to 18th Centuries.
Marina de Mello e Souza
History Department, University of São Paulo,
Brazil
marinamsouza@usp.br
Certain cultural encounters are especially
fruitful for the study of the symbolic systems’
transformation process, required for people from
different backgrounds, coming into contact, to
create a common field of understanding so they
can live together. The manner in which the
Kongo’s ruling elite welcomed the Portuguese
presence in their territory from the 15th century
onwards, in a relationship that would span five
centuries, is an example of this and, for this
very reason, has already quite often been tackled
by a wide range of scholars.1
1 Worth highlighting are studies by Anne Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (1985); John Thornton, among other articles: Early Kongo-Portuguese relations: a new interpretation (1981); The development of an AfricanCatholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750 (1984); Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo (2013) and Wyatt MacGaffey: Dialogues of the Deaf: Europeans on the Atlantic Coast of Africa (1994).
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In the first contacts between the Portuguese
and the Kongolese, Catholicism appears to have
been the main means of communication between
these cross-cultural universes. For the
Portuguese, spreading the faith was an important
part of the movement that led them to conquer
faraway lands, hand in hand, naturally, with
commercial interests. For the Kongolese elite,
the new faith was a way to strengthen one
political faction in order to override others
and, further on, to consolidate centralized
power. Some Catholic rites were soon identified
as a means for men to communicate with the
spiritual sphere and thus accepted by local
chiefs. This was understood by the Portuguese to
be conversion and victory and widely relayed by
the governing groups, who took upon themselves
the responsibility of gathering as many people as
possible to the bosom of the Catholic Church,
especially those they contacted as a result of
the maritime expansion.
Speaking languages that had as little in
common as their cultures, the assistance of
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interpreters was fundamental not only for the
initial contacts but for those that came later
and would last for centuries. The baptism of the
first chiefs took place in 1491, during the third
Portuguese trip to that region, while an earlier
visit, in 1485, resulted in a group of Kongolese
being taken to Lisbon, where they would be
introduced to the local way of life and learn
Portuguese.2 From then onwards, there began a
time when the Kongo and Portugal would be closely
linked and, during those days, the Kongolese took
up some elements of Portuguese culture. The
embracing of Catholic rites and ceremonial
objects, as a result of missionary work, and of
power symbols such as titles and insignia of the
Portuguese nobility, as suggested by the bylaws
and diplomatic missions sent by the Portuguese
sovereign, occurred as part of a process of re-
signification put into practice by the Kongolese
at various stages in their history.3 Within this2 The main source for this inaugural moment of a new phase in the history of the Kongois Rui de Pina’s report based on the testimony of Rui de Souza, captain of the Portuguese 1491 expedition. See Carmem M. Radulet, O cronista Rui de Pina e a “Relação do reino do Kongo” (1992).3 Examples of works which analyze the processes of re-signification of Catholic ritesand objects embraced by the Kongolese are: Cécile Fromont, Under the sign of the crossin the kingdom of Kongo: Religious conversion and visual correlation in early modernCentral Africa (2011); Marina de Mello e Souza, Crucifixos centro-africanos: um estudosobre traduções simbólicas (2009). An abridged version of this article was publishedin English: Central African Crucifixes: a Study of Symbolic Translations. In:
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process, those who were in direct contact with
missionaries, traders and royal officials, and
who belonged mainly to the local ruling groups
played a vital role. Here we will focus on one
specific category within this segment, connected
to a central feature of both Iberian and Central
African societies, that is, religion.
In the early Modern Age, when Portuguese and
Kongolese first came into contact, religion
spread throughout every aspect of life, not only
that of Central-Africans but that of Europeans as
well. Political activity was directly connected
to spiritual forces, and just as European rulers
were anointed or blessed by Church officials when
they rose to power, African chiefs, regarded as
special links of connection to the invisible
world, were legitimized by ceremonies conducted
by priests. Therefore, in a situation where
different political powers came into contact,
religion was vested with major significance. In
this context, Catholicism became an important
means of bringing Portugal and the Kongo closer
together, as the latter incorporated certainEncompassing the Globe. Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Essays. Washington DC,Smithsonian Institution, 2007, p. 97-100.
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features of the white man’s religion in order to
deal with the novel situations created by the
presence of these foreigners. In the process of
integrating Catholic elements, interpreters,
teachers and native preachers played a vital role
in view of the fact that, having been educated in
schools founded by missionaries since the mid 16th
century or sent to Lisbon ever since the
beginning of that century, they translated the
teachings they were exposed to into the
terminology of their own culture and language.
In the process of translating
concepts, the missionaries used native terms to
locate, in the cultures to which their preaching
was directed, ideas that would be equivalent to
those they sought to impart, while Kongolese
chiefs adopted Portuguese noble titles so as to
reaffirm social hierarchies. Thus, calling a
church mbila (place where the chiefs were buried),
the priest nganga (a certain category of religious
specialist), and God Nzambi (unreachable entity
creator of all things), or the local chiefs (mani)
kings, princes and counts, as well as taking at
baptism Portuguese names preceded by “Dom” or
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“Dona”, would consolidate specific ways of
accepting Christian teachings and Portuguese
formulas of power, and these were inserted into
the local thought frames rather than actually
transforming them. These processes of translation
and incorporation of features of Portuguese
society served as tools for the local population
to deal, according to their own options, with the
new situations created by the presence of
foreigners. Foreigners who came to stay for a
long time and who would cause wide ranging
transformations, both in the lives of the people
and in the format of local organizations.
The ability to read and write also became
important as a mark of social distinction seeing
as the education of the elite, especially that of
the main chiefs’ sons, was in the hands of
Catholic missionaries. Besides the catechisms in
Kikongo, a significant number of letters were
written, signed by the rulers and their
secretaries, and these constitute a remarkable
corpus of documentation for the history of the
Kongo, in particular the 16th and 17th centuries.
Since African societies of those days were
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unfamiliar with the written word, the fact that
the ruling elite of the Kongo wrote Portuguese,
as well as their relationship with the Portuguese
crown and the Catholic Church, are entirely
exceptional and a great inducement to study this
region and this period.
We must, however, emphasize that the
adoption of European features and behaviors took
place in accordance to local patterns as well as
to the needs generated by the unusual situations
the Kongolese were required to face and which led
them to modify their forms of organization. These
forms, nevertheless, would continue faithful to
their own patterns: Catholicism, or what then
became known by that name, was the religion of
the rulers and served to strengthen a central
power as well as to help maintain political and
territorial unity. The latter was constantly
threatened by the local chiefs’ propensity
towards autonomy, especially after they were
empowered by their direct contacts with Europeans
who arrived at the Atlantic coast, offering them
new merchandise and the possibility of new
alliances. Baptism and Catholic rites such as
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mass, marriage and funerals came to signify
belonging to the ruling elite directly in touch
with the white foreigners. The use of Catholic
names, always preceded by Dom or Dona, became one
more title among the many collected during the
lifetime of those who had access to them and who
added Catholic names to their native names and
titles. From the time of D. Afonso I (Mbemba
Nzinga, who reigned from 1507 to 1542), the
principal responsible for introducing Catholicism
in the Kongo as well as ushering in a new era
with regard to its political organization, the
main chiefs came to be known by their Catholic
names. This spurred the appearance of lineages
endowed with extremely poetic names, such as the
Água Rosada (Rose Pink Water) and the Lágrimas de
Cristo (Christ’s tears).
A native priest whose existence was recorded
by a number of sources had the fantastic name of
D. Calisto Zelotes dos Reis Magos (Don Calisto Zelotes of
the Three Wise Men). There is no record of his
native name and titles. But clues left by many
sources allow us to rebuild a significant part of
his life, a sample of the role played by those
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who belonged to local ruling groups and received
religious and formal education at Catholic
missionary schools, later becoming key figures in
the dissemination of religious teachings and
practices seen as Catholic and a prerequisite for
political and even economic relations, built
based on the contact with the Europeans.
Educated according to European standards,
besides knowing Latin he could read, write and
speak Portuguese well and had experience in
training novices. Probably educated at the Jesuit
school in mbanza Kongo, he is identified as a
“black priest” and possibly the son of “D. Calisto
Andorinha Zelotes dos Reis Magos, Kongolese
nobleman, killed in the battle of Bumbi in
12/18/1622”.4 Based on the few and scattered
references to be found, he appears to be one more
of the teachers trained in mbanza Kongo by the
missionaries in order to assist them in their
mission and to serve as interpreters, but must
have been ordained considering he is called a
4 CAVAZZI DE MONTECÚCCOLO, João Antonio, Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Kongo, Matamba e Angola, vol II, 1965 (1687), p. 394. Footnote of Leguzzano, based at António Cadornega,História das Guerras Angolanas, 1680.
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secular priest by Cavazzi, who lived in the region
from 1654 to 1667.5
D. Calisto Zelotes dos Reis Magos is mentioned
in some of the reports and documents that have
reached us and is noteworthy both for his
extraordinary name and for various incidents in
his life. When Cavazzi describes certain Kongolese
magic rituals, he tells a story to show how “amid
these blacks there are always examples of rare
justice, especially among those who deal often
with Europeans”, and says he heard this “from a
certain Father Calisto Zelotes, for many years the
interpreter for our missionaries”.6 At the end of
the story, about applying ordeals, the “king of
Micocco” (Macoco, Tio, Anzico), in northeastern
Kongo, with whom he had at times warring and at
times friendly relations, was convinced of the
falsity of local religious leaders and asked the
missionaries to instruct and baptize him. 7 Both
5 CAVAZZI DE MONTECÚCCOLO, João Antonio, Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Kongo, Matamba e Angola, vol II, 1965 (1687), p. 202. Speaking about the Bamba mission, established together with others in 1648, Leguzzano, in note 155, vol I, p.347 of Cavazzi’s book, says it was entrusted to father Boaventura de Sardenha and the “native priest” CalistoZelotes, as reported in António de Teruel, Descripción Narrativa. José Matias Delgado commenting CADORNEGA, Antonio de Oliveira, História Geral das Guerras Angolanas, 1680, also reports that Calisto Zelotes was “a lay priest”, in note 32 tome II, p. 499.6 CAVAZZI DE MONTECÚCCOLO, João Antonio, Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola, vol I, 1965 (1687), p.112.7 CAVAZZI DE MONTECÚCCOLO, João Antonio, Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola, vol I, 1965 (1687), p.113.
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on this occasion and at others, we notice Calisto
Zelotes served as a bridge between two mental
universes, translating in both directions as was
probably done by all the other teachers, preachers
and priests ordained among those who had studied
at the missionary schools.
In 1648 D. Calisto Zelotes was travelling
through the dembos, for he had been appointed, by
the mani Kongo D. Garcia II (Nkanga Lukeni, who
reigned from 1541 to 1661), as interpreter to the
capuchin missionaries Boaventura de Corella and
Francisco de Veas at the mission to Oando, a
chiefdom subject to the Kongo. There, they ended
up all being made prisoners in an attack lead by
Ginga Mona, the main warrior chief of Matamba,
then governed by Nzinga.
After allowing them to return to the Kongo,
even making them take a letter from her to the
Pope, Nzinga demanded they leave Calisto Zelotes
behind. She then entrusted him with important
tasks related to her daily and religious life and
made him her counselor, main secretary and father
confessor. Antonio de Gaeta, a capuchin
missionary who played a major role in Nzinga’s
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“court”, qualified him as “the queen’s favorite as
well as the mission’s interpreter”.8 When Cavazzi
substituted Antonio de Gaeta in 1660 at the
mission in Nzinga’s kilombo or mbanza, he would
find Calisto Zelotes in the role of her main
secretary. It was also at this time that a letter
arrived from the “Sacred Congregation”, addressed
to the Matamba missionaries, insisting that a
seminary should be built “where young blacks”
could learn to read and write “and (learn) other
sciences required for the clerical state” in order
to be able to transmit Catholic teachings “without
the help of foreign missionaries”.9 In his
commentary to this recommendation, Cavazzi replied
it would be necessary to await a better moment
because only a few of the more docile adults were
capable of learning prayers and certain basic
notions that, in Europe, “even children easily
learn”, and adding that in the town of San
Salvador (mbanza Kongo, from where the mani Kongo
8Antonio da Gaeta e Francesco Gioia, Las maravigliosa conversion alla santa fede di Cristo della regina Singa, e del suo regno di Matamba nell’Africa Meridionale (1669), p. 223.9CAVAZZI DE MONTECÚCCOLO, João Antonio, Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Congo, Matamba eAngola, vol II, 1965 (1687), p.134.
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governed his territory) “there already existed a
school with forty young men.”10
The forty boys were probably being trained to
help the missionaries, being taught how to read
and write and pray besides discussing the sacred
texts. As to the obstacles alluded to by Cavazzi,
with reference to the establishment of seminaries,
we can suppose them to be related, among other
issues, to the extreme fickleness of the
conversions. This may be inferred from the fact
that even those who were baptized, who came to
Mass and accepted Catholic weddings, tended to
keep up traditional practices, which was always
criticized in the missionaries’ reports. In order
to keep the true faith safe, they advocated
burning the idols, destroying the altars,
expelling the “witch doctors” and keeping the
converted away from the non-converted in order to
reduce the chances of those baptized falling back
into the traditional practices. As to spreading
the faith properly among Central Africans, the
capuchin replied to the recommendations of
Propaganda Fide declaring that the missionaries
10CAVAZZI DE MONTECÚCCOLO, João Antonio, Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola, vol II, 1965 (1687), p. 135.
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would do their best, but warning about the
resistance of many to giving up traditional
beliefs. This was especially true of some of the
chief's counselors who refused to accept the
Catholic faith and criticized the missionaries
even when their preaching and practices were
accepted.
The information concerning D. Calisto Zelotes
dos Reis Magos, although sparse, tells us he
belonged to the local elite and was educated at
the Jesuit's school where preachers, interpreters
and native priests were instructed so they could
help the missionaries in their travels through
the region and guarantee the dissemination and
upholding of Catholicism in the land. During
these expeditions he acted as more than an
interpreter, not just aiding verbal communication
between missionaries and natives, but also
translating the meaning of traditional practices
for the missionaries. On the other hand, when he
translated Christian teachings for the natives,
he would surely use notions, images and ideas
that they would be able to understand,
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contributing to the development of a particular
way of understanding the Catholic teachings.
In addition to working in the territories
directly controlled by the Kongo, he was
instrumental in bringing Nzinga closer to
Catholicism. Head chief of Matamba, at times an
ally, at others an enemy of the mani Kongo, she
allowed missionaries into her mbanza and adopted
Catholic elements when, weakened by her age and
the loss of the support she had once enjoyed from
the Dutch (at the time they occupied strategic
points of the Atlantic coast, in the region of
Luanda), she came to accept peace and trade
relations with the Portuguese.
Therefore, D. Calisto is an example of a
category of intermediaries with an important role
in the transformation of local societies which
created ways to deal with the novel situations
unleashed by the presence, in the region, of
Europeans interested in trading, converting and
occupying the land. During the days he acted in
this capacity, Catholic elements had already been
adopted by the chiefs and introduced into the
rites and relationships of power for over 150
16
years. Not to mention the fact that, ever since
the initial contacts, governing groups had
strived to grab the reins of the Catholic rites
they adopted. Catholicism, in spite of drawing
Kongolese rulers closer to the Portuguese, had
the effect of strengthening the sovereignty of
native rulers, since they communicated directly
with Rome and, therefore, guaranteed their
independence from Portugal. The existence of
native priests also helped to strengthen the
Kongo's autonomy because, playing as they did an
important part in lending legitimacy to local
powers, the lack of interference in the religious
sphere, either by Portugal or by Rome, came to
assure more control to the Kongolese rulers.
The native preachers and Catholic priests who
kept up the practices introduced by the
missionaries, such as baptism, mass, penance,
marriage and funerals (where prayers, crosses,
statues of saints and processions came to either
replace or be added to traditional objects or
practices), would be essential to the power
organization of the chiefs when, from the second
half of the 17th century onwards, the political
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structures then in place began to collapse and
there came a tendency to decentralize the central
power. In 1665 the Kongolese suffered a
devastating defeat in a battle with the
Portuguese, at Ambuíla, where the mani Kongo and
the main chiefs who could have assumed command of
the central power were killed.
After a long period of wars during which the
different lineages fought for supremacy of rule
over a territory convulsed by the slave trade, by
the pressure of Atlantic traders and by the
impetus of the Portuguese thirst for land, the
political unity of the Kongo and the safeguarding
of its autonomy were, in great part, made
possible thanks to the symbolic links forged from
elements of that Catholicism adopted as the
religion of the main chiefs. Catholic rites, or
their local varieties, and the concession of the
Order of Christ, an honorable decoration granted
to the mani Kongo by the Portuguese king, were
fundamental for the maintenance of political
links between regions with very independent daily
administration.11
11 This situation was perceived by Jan Vansina in Kingdoms of the Savanna(1966) and by Susan H. Broadhead in Beyond decline: the Kingdom of theKongo in the eigthteenth and nineteenth-centuries (1979).
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During the entire 18th century, when the
presence of European missionaries was rare, it
would be the native priests who, having been
recognized or not as such by the Catholic Church,
would keep alive the local forms of practicing
Catholicism. The dependence of the few European
missionaries on these teachers and native priests
was even greater than in bygone times, when their
help had already proved absolutely necessary. The
religious instruction of the European
missionaries was only accepted when shaved to fit
local norms that were established by the native
teachers, as may be seen in passages of a report
by Rafael Castelo de Vide, a missionary to the
Kongo in late 1780 who registers his concerns
regarding the approval of his actions by native
teachers and interpreters.12
This extremely specific situation may be
understood, from the point of view of Catholic
orthodoxy and the interests of the Portuguese
crown, as a failure of the mission whose aim was12 Rafael Castelo da Vide, Viagem e missão no Kongo, Academia das Ciêncais de Lisboa. MS Vermelho 296, Rafael Castelo de Vide, 73, apudThiago Clemêncio Sapede, Muana Kongo, Muana Nzambi Ampungu. Poder e Catolicismo no reino do Kongo pós-restauração (1769-1795), p. 134 (2012). For the education of local priests in an earlier period see Alexandre Almeida Marcussi, A formação do clero africano nativo no Império Português no séculos XVI e XVII (2012).
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religious instruction. This is so because
Catholicism was accepted thanks to the
development of adapted forms of this religion and
did not result in control on the part of the
Catholic Church, especially in the 18th century,
when the native African priests were in charge of
rites and teaching. However, from the point of
view of the paths taken by the social groups in
the cross-cultural exchange procedures, it may be
seen as a successful translation of Portuguese
proposals into local code frames. This view is
based on the fact that certain elements were
selected, among the totality of new imports, in
order to enable the local population, especially
the rulers, to deal with the fresh situations
generated by those contacts while, at the same
time, maintaining their autonomy in face of the
foreigners and even reinforcing their positions
of power.
If the Kongolese chiefs were able to turn to
their advantage situations that initially
intended to subject them to the Portuguese, be
these traders, missionaries or royal staff, both
them and the representatives of the Catholic
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Church were also wily enough to adapt to local
circumstances, overlooking norms of their own
society, such as the ordinance that banned the
ordaining of priests with impure blood, that is,
from Jewish, Native American or African
backgrounds. Thanks to the fact that the
Portuguese mixed with the local populations and
adapted their norms to diverse circumstances,
they were capable of building an empire in spite
of their scant material and demographic
resources. Although unable to control the Kongo
while it undertook changes to cope, in a self-
governing way, with the newcomers from abroad who
slowly took root there, Portugal was able to
build mixed societies used as a foundation to
structure a real dominion, both in economic and
political terms, that would breathe life into an
empire reaching from the East to America and from
there to Africa, from where it would be the very
last colonial power to withdraw.
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21
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