Nzinga a Nkuwu
The king of Kongo who received a Portuguese embassy and was baptised with the name João on 3 May 1491. His son Afonso later wrote that he made a good beginning in the faith and then turned from it.
The Portuguese chronicler Rui de Pina calls him the king of Congo, or Manicongo; modern histories use the Kongo name Nzinga a Nkuwu. Pina says that he sent an embassy to Portugal asking for priests, builders and farmers (Rui de Pina, Chronicle of John II chapter 58), and describes him receiving the Portuguese in 1491 seated on a dais, bare to the waist, with a tall cap of palm cloth and a horse’s tail trimmed with silver at his shoulder (Rui de Pina, Chronicle of John II chapter 60). He was baptised on 3 May 1491 with six of his nobles and took the name of the Portuguese king, João (Rui de Pina, Chronicle of John II chapter 62 (pp. 165–166)).
Pina’s story ends with the king a zealous convert. A proclamation issued by his son Afonso I of Kongo in 1512 says that he afterwards turned away from the faith, banished Afonso for keeping to it, and died just before Afonso came back from exile (Afonso I, Letters no. IX (1512), pp. 6–9). 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.