Portuguese sailors reached the mouth of the Congo River in 1482. When they arrived, they learned that a large kingdom, Kongo, ruled the area. They left some of their crew ashore and took a Kongolese nobleman named Kala ka Mfusu back to Lisbon in 1483. After he returned to Kongo a year later, the ruler, named Nzinga a Nkuwu, based on the testimony of the Portuguese crewmembers and Kala ka Mfusu’s report, decided to study further. He sent a large mission to Portugal where they stayed nearly four years. When they returned, they brought Portuguese missionaries with them. The king and his noble subjects were baptized in 1491. Christianity then became a part of Kongo’s culture.
Portugal sent priests to Kongo, but they were never enough to teach the religion themselves. This led Nzinga a Nkuwu (now baptized as João) and especially his son Afonso Mvemba a Nzinga (1506-1542) to develop their own Christian educational system. Lower nobles became the teachers. As they developed their teaching, they allowed a great deal of their former religion to continue. Medieval Christians, even in Europe, often incorporated local spirits and practices that were not strictly Christian. As in Medieval Europe, Kongolese also often had experiences in which local spiritual entities were discovered to be saints or members of the Holy Family. When they translated Christian texts, such as teaching books in their own language (Kikongo), they often used local spiritual terms for Christian concepts. For example, the word -kisi was associated with the spiritual power of objects that could be inhabited by a spirit. Therefore, it was used to translate “holy.”
By the middle of the sixteenth century, Christianity reached the entire country, including common people. This was due to the lessons of local teachers using their own catechism. However, Portugal prevented Kongo from developing its own priesthood. They claimed it was Portugal’s right to send their own priests. They also kept Kongo from having their own bishop who could ordain priests. Kongo was successful in getting the Vatican to allow them a bishop. But Portugal asserted the right to appoint him, and they often chose Portuguese bishops or left the position vacant.
Kongo managed to get Rome to send Italian priests. Although they were not enough to take over teaching, they did introduce new ideas coming from reforms made in Europe about the medieval form of Christianity. These priests wrote reports of their mission that denounced the local practices. They made it appear that the country was no longer Christian.
John Thornton is a professor of African American studies and history and director of graduate studies at Boston University. He is the author of several books, including Africa and Africans in the Formation of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (1992) and Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (1999), and in 2007 with Linda Heywood published Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which won the Melville J. Herskovits Prize that year.