Mbanza Kongo
Capital of the kingdom of Kongo, in what is now northern Angola. Its king was baptised here in 1491, and the first church was built in the same weeks.
Rui de Pina does not name the town; he calls it the court of the king of Congo and says that it lay fifty leagues, a journey of twenty-three days, from the port where the Portuguese landed. He describes the king’s palace enclosure with its courtyard, and says that a stone church dedicated to Saint Mary was begun on 6 May 1491 and finished on 1 June, a thousand men carrying the stone (Rui de Pina, Chronicle of John II chapters 59–61). King Afonso I dated a letter of 1526 from “our city of Congo” (Afonso I, Letters no. XXVII (6 July 1526), pp. 53–54). See the King of Kongo Is Baptised.
What happened here
- 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.