Converging on Cannibals. Jared Staller
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early date, first the copper and then the Tio slaves (in that order). Afonso funded the missionaries’ proselytization in Nsundi, where he developed a small retinue of followers devoted to himself and identifiable by their conversions to Catholicism.
While not much is known about this initial decade, 1495–1506, it is clear that Afonso studied Catholic doctrine and history, just as would be required of any aspiring member of a skilled guild in Kongo, with zeal and devotion.8 In 1516, the Portuguese vicar (the top prelate resident in Kongo, the local representative of a bishop) recalled how Afonso had studied the Bible and other religious books so late into the night that he often fell asleep over his texts.9
The people of Kongo regarded reading as an inherently magical act along the lines of dealing with spirits, and Afonso’s ability to read Latin and Portuguese texts would have validated his claim to being able to access the power of the Christian God. He gained such a command of complex Catholic doctrine that even the priests turned to him for guidance in their pastoral duties.10 The priests, of course, needed Afonso’s insight into local culture to help them adjust their proselytization strategies. Language would have been a significant barrier, and there is some scant evidence that under Afonso’s tutelage Portuguese priests worked with Kongo Christians to translate Catholic ideas into Kikongo words. In 1548, only a few years after Afonso’s death in ca. 1542–1543, we find the first examples of Catholic phrasings translated into Kikongo, and less than a decade after his death, in 1555, the first Catholic catechism in Kikongo was published.11 Thus Afonso adopted Catholicism with an entirely Kongo sensibility that mandated that he, as the mani of these Catholics, be their master and expert. With Afonso’s sponsorship, the priests focused their conversion strategies in Nsundi first on baptizing their converts as souls saved individually and thus drawn out of their former loyalties to their communities. Then they hunted out and destroyed the artifacts the Kongo used to maintain these collective identities, which the priests identified as false idols sent by the devil of Christianity. By thus disrupting the strong Kongo ethos of community and calling individuals to stand off from their kin, the priests—and Afonso—were verging on appearing as what Kongo cosmology viewed as standoffish, greedy, traitorous witches.
Nzinga a Nkuwu appears to have reconciled with Afonso sometime before he died in 1506. His death set the stage for the usual struggle among the confederation’s contending factions to succeed him as mani Kongo, represented by the half siblings from his many wives. A few years later, in 1509, Afonso gathered his corps of personally devoted Kongo and Portuguese Catholics from Nsundi (Afonso later alleged, in the document beginning this chapter, that there were only thirty-seven of them, with their servants, or likely slaves, in numbers not specified) and marched on Mbanza Kongo, ostensibly to pay his respects to his father’s memory. Afonso’s small retinue managed to gain entrance inside the walls of Mbanza Kongo, but then they were surrounded by far greater numbers of warriors supporting one of his half brothers, named Mpanzu a Kitima, who had never accepted Catholicism. Facing the much larger force, including the full weight of the ideological heritage of the mani Kongo position, Afonso later recalled that his desperate men called out for divine help as they prepared to charge into battle on the plain outside the walls.12 Mpanzu a Kitima’s vast forces froze and then turned and fled, offering almost no resistance. As they ran away, many were slain. Survivors captured in the pursuit claimed that they had no choice but to take flight when they saw a magnificent white cross appear in the sky, with angelic riders on horses charging to Afonso’s aid. In Kongo terms, this terrifying apparition was the omen that confirmed, in a starkly otherworldly form, the authenticity and power of Christianity and Afonso’s authority as mani Kongo.
Afonso’s victory over his principal rival was apparently not enough to satisfy Kongo’s many networks, whose representatives complained to the influential senior counselor mani Mbata that Afonso had seized the position illegitimately, presumably against the precedence of the prestigious council of electors called the Mwissikongo. As Nzinga a Nkuwu had died three years prior, it is certainly possible that the electors had already designated Mpanzu a Kitima as the next mani Kongo, even if he had yet to undergo official investiture in the position. The mani Mbata at that time was Afonso’s maternal uncle. He was, according to the matrilineal affiliations prevailing in Kongo, head of the familial network from which Afonso had descended. He was in a position of authority over his nephew, and his group presumably stood to gain from Afonso taking the mani Kongo position. The mani Mbata supported Afonso’s cause. With his military and ideological support added to that of the Portuguese, Afonso was invested as mani Kongo in 1509. Since his victory in battle had demonstrated (from a Kongo perspective) that his power derived from his ability to channel access to the new and exclusionary Catholic God, people in the communities composing the polity would have accepted Catholic rituals—particularly baptism—as entirely consonant with the process of adding to the spiritized charms that confirmed transitions from one mani Kongo to the next.
Crowned as a Catholic, in 1512 Afonso dictated a letter in Portuguese to his Catholic brother in Lisbon, King Manuel I (r. 1495–1521), to justify and legitimize his rule over a Kongo kingdom in the monarchical sense intelligible to his Portuguese sponsors and allies. He also wrote three other letters, arguably intended to begin reshaping the Kongo political composite into a European-styled monarchy with a single ruler who had direct personal power over individual subjects. These four documents explicate Afonso’s constitution of himself as both mani Kongo and Catholic king, in the additive style of building the novel out of the familiar. He did not share his Catholic sponsors’ views, in which Kongo thought and Christian faith were mutually exclusive. In the letter to King Manuel, he styled himself as a European monarch and equal of his Catholic, especially Portuguese, “brother kings.”
To understand the conflicting details within these letters, it is necessary to consider the details of their production. Scholars assume that the four letters from 1512—to Kongo nobles, to the people of Kongo, to Portuguese nobles residing in Kongo, and to the pope—derive from an earlier letter that Afonso had written and sent to King João of Portugal in 1508 or 1509. The 1509 letter, which is no longer extant, described Afonso’s victory in battle and the later years of his father’s rule.13 That letter was sent with a personal courier, a cousin of Afonso’s named Pedro de Sousa, who served as his ambassador.14 While the letter sent to a Portuguese king would have been written in the Portuguese of their 1512 supplements, it is tempting to think that Afonso dictated the letter in Kikongo to someone else, who then translated it. In fact, Afonso dictated most of his diplomatic correspondence to a Kongo scribe named João Teixeira. Considering that Afonso had been living with European clergy by 1509 for nearly fifteen years, and by 1516 was proficient enough in Latin to fall asleep reading theological texts, it certainly seems likely he could have dictated lengthy orations in Portuguese. Ultimately all such thoughts about the production of this original letter are speculation, however, since it was lost.
Some scholars think the four 1512 letters are based heavily on this 1509 letter and suggest that the later letters may have been drafted in Portugal and then sent to Afonso as templates for formal diplomatic correspondence.15 However, the drastic differences in details among the 1512 letters suggest that they were not written from a single account or even from a Portuguese Catholic worldview, as we might assume letters written in Lisbon by a Portuguese cleric would reveal. And, the letter written to Pope Julius II states explicitly that it was written in the “city of the mani Kongo,” so at least one of the four was produced in a Kongo context. As we will see, whoever produced the letters of 1512 was intimately aware of compositional Kongo politics and possessed an additive sense of time and change.
Although much about the production of the letters remains a mystery, an important clue about their intended audiences turns up in the repositories where the documents have been found. The letters addressed to the pope and to Portuguese lords, senhores, living in Kongo were deposited in royal archives in Lisbon, where one would expect to find copies of formal diplomatic correspondence. The other two letters, those directed to Kongo audiences, were found in equally telling places. The letter to Kongo lords (senhores) is housed in the National Library of Portugal (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal), rather than with the royal archive of the Torre do Tombo. We could speculate that the Kongo ambassadors and students whom Afonso routinely sent to live and study in Portugal brought this letter to Lisbon.