Afonso I of Kongo
Son of the first baptised king of Kongo. He won the throne in battle against a brother, ruled as a Christian king, and wrote to the kings of Portugal for priests and teachers and against the enslavement of his people.
According to Rui de Pina, in the weeks before the queen of Kongo was baptised in June 1491 the prince, the king’s son, was away in his own lands and the king was waiting for him; Pina does not give the prince’s name (Rui de Pina, Chronicle of John II chapter 63). The proclamation that Afonso issued in 1512 as “king of Manicongo” tells his own story: he embraced Christian teaching as a youth, was exiled by his father for it, and on his father’s death came to the capital with thirty-six men and defeated the brother who had taken the kingdom. The enemy, it says, saw a white cross in the air and the apostle James with armed horsemen, and the arms that the king of Portugal sent him recalled the vision (Afonso I, Letters no. IX (1512), pp. 6–9).
His letter of 6 July 1526 to John III of Portugal, written “from our city of Congo”, asks for priests, schoolmasters, and wine and flour for the mass, and protests that merchants are seizing free people, nobles and his own relatives among them, and that the country is being depopulated (Afonso I, Letters no. XXVII (6 July 1526), pp. 53–54). See the King of Kongo Is Baptised.
In the timeline
- 3 May 1491, firm dateThe King of Kongo Is Baptised
On 3 May 1491 the king of Kongo is baptised at his court by Portuguese friars and takes the name João. The account is Portuguese. A generation later his son Afonso I writes as a Christian king, asking Lisbon for priests and protesting against the trade in his people.