Letters
Letters and proclamations issued in the name of Afonso I, king of Kongo, to the kings of Portugal and to his own lords. They are the earliest surviving documents to speak for a Kongo ruler about his kingdom’s conversion.
The letters were written in Portuguese by secretaries at the court of Afonso I of Kongo; that of 6 July 1526 names its writer, Dom João Teixeira. Among them is a proclamation of 1512 addressed to the lords of the kingdom, which tells how Afonso’s father received the faith and then fell away, and how Afonso won the throne.
They are royal documents with their own purposes: to assert Afonso’s right to rule, to ask Portugal for priests and teachers, and to complain of Portuguese traders. They still give what Pina’s chronicle cannot, a voice from the Kongo court. See the King of Kongo Is Baptised.
Cited in
- 3 May 1491, firm date