1

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).

2

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

3

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:

4

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.

5

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

6

“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

7

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

8

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

9

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.

10

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.

11

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

12

“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.

13

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.

14

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,

15

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

17

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).

18

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).

19

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

20

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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