Kingdom of Kongo

located on the Atlantic side of the continent and some localities far removed from the 

coast became centers where cultural patterns emerged that transformed these places into 

Atlantic Creole cities.  The Portuguese were the first Europeans to establish some of the 

early cultural centers in Atlantic Africa--Elmina in 1482 and Luanda in 1575.  Although 

they visited and African courts like Benin city in the 1470s and Mbanza Kongo/São 

Salvador in the 1480s, Mbanza Kongo stands out as a unique case of where the kings 

(and nobles) set in place a social engineering agenda as a result of contact with the 

Portuguese that changed the physical and cultural landscape and contributed to new ideas 

concerning Kongo identity.  In time the city came to possess European style churches, 

supported a wide range of cultural institutions that the churches promoted, and life for the 

African elite as well as commoners came to be defined by the rhythms of the Christian 

religious calendar. What was unique about the Kongo experiment was that during the 

period that the city flourished as a Christian city, Kongo kings and nobles defrayed the 

economic cost of the experiment. They were the ones who carefully grafted Christian 

religious ideas and cultural practices onto the city’s physical and human landscape to 

create a unique Atlantic African Creole culture.  Exploring how Mbanza Kongo/São Salvador developed during this period can provide deep insights into how cultural 

borrowings of the elite shaped consumption patterns and had other significant 

consequences as well.  Studying social investment in this period of Kongo’s might in turn 

allow us to reflect on wealth and poverty in the longue duree... 

   Mbanza Kongo, which means city (or large central place) of Kongo in Kikongo, 

served as the court of Nzinga Nkuwu, the reigning Kongo king when the Portuguese first 

arrived in the area in the 1487.  Mbanza Kongo’s roots go back to the 13th

 century when 

Nzinga Nkuwu’s ancestors conquered it. Oral traditions identify Mbanza Kongo as the 

first place that the conquerors of what became the Kongo Kingdom settled once they 

crossed the River Zaire.

  The invaders chose Mbanza Kongo because of its strategic 

location, for it is situated on a flat, well-watered mountaintop some 10 miles in 

circumference.  From the time of its original occupation until the kingdom became part of 

Portuguese Angola in 1914, Mbanza Kongo (called São Salvador from the 1570s) served 

as both the real and symbolic center of the Kongo Kingdom.   

Mbanza Kongo already had a distinctive layout which the earliest visitors to the 

area noted. The first description of the physical layout of the city comes from a 1491 

letter of the Ambassador of Milan to Lisbon which noted that the king had “a terra [land] 

encircled by a wall as large as Evora and is inland, some 60 leagues from the sea, all full of 

houses better than are found in all of Guinea.”

 Since Évora was the second largest city in Portugal, the fact that Mbanza Kongo was compared to it suggests that Portuguese visitors 

were impressed by the size and appearance.  

We know little more of the physical layout of the capital or of the religious, 

political or economic life of the residents in the period before King Nzinga Nkuwu 

greeted the first Portuguese visitors who arrived at his court.  It underwent significant 

physical transformation, however, beginning in 1491 when the king and members of his 

court were baptized in a lavish religious ceremony at the palace to celebrate their 

conversion to the Catholic faith.  At that time Mbanza Kongo contained 60,000 people.  

From 1491 to 1678 when the city was temporarily abandoned, Kongo kings oversaw the 

physical transformation of the city that allowed it to have more in common with 

Portuguese Luanda than with the capitals of other African court cities such as Benin City, 

for example. The city’s physical transformation of was most noticeable in the new 

materials that were used to rebuild the wall around the court and the many new buildings 

that were constructed. The size of the city occupied also increased as new settlements 

grew up around the court. In addition to its physical transformation, Mbanza Kongo 

became a Christian religious center as churches and institutions connected to them 

replaced or took over earlier places that had served as spaces for precontact political and 

political and religious activities.

The lifestyle of city residents also changed as celebrations connected to the 

Christian religious calendar came to dominate city life.  As the social experiment 

continued all aspects of life in the city, from politics to economic and recreation created 

demands for trained personnel and for the good required to support the activities of the 

church. Church personnel from Europe, along with the religious items that informed church life were high in demand, and the kings spared no effort in acquiring the 

wherewithal to pay the expenses of the European and African church personnel that 

staffed the church and for the variety of Christian religious items that came from Europe. 

As the city grew it became increasingly divided into two social groups.  On the one hand 

was the king, his court, nobles who were recognized by their mixed European African 

clothing, their literacy, made their connections to the various religious institutions, and on 

the other hand a large population (almost half of the city residents) who were slaves and 

freemen who were only marginally integrated into the new lifestyle.  Although in many 

ways the social distance between the two groups diverged, in many ways the social 

experiment brought slaves and freemen closer to the members of the nobility.  The 

European missionaries and secular European (mainly Portuguese merchants) and church 

personnel who lived in the city also added another social dimension to city life. They had 

their own quarter with a wall as well.  

Mbanza Kongo’s physical transformation immediately after the first Portuguese 

cultural mission arrived early in 1491.  This mission brought Portuguese religious teachers 

and skilled workers, including carpenters, masons, bakers, Christian women, and “farmers 

with their tools and a bell for the church.”  In the months following, the king and his nobles 

mobilized thousands of Kongo laborers to build the church, the first major public work 

project in the city after the conversion.  The thousands of Kongo laborers worked under the 

supervision of Portuguese craftsmen were able to complete the project in record time.  

They began on 6 May and had completed the building by 1 June. The church, called Our 

Lady of Conception was the first European-like structure in the city and thousands of stones and pounds of mortar were used to build it.

 Before this project, the people in 

Mbanza Kongo had never used stone or mortar to construct their houses or public buildings 

but instead used thatch. A rich trove of letters penned by Kongo officials, Portuguese 

residents and visitors to the city beginning in the early 1500s describe the continuing 

physical transformation of the city as more churches and other stone structures went up in 

the years following.  The most spectacular of these was the stone wall built around the 

court, and the beginning of the construction of a stone palace that the laborers began to 

build for famous Christian king Afonso I (1509-1542).  During Afonso’s reign many more 

stone houses were constructed for the Portuguese who called the city home.

The city’s continued physical transformation was the brainchild of King Afonso 

who implemented elaborate plans for the Mbaza Kongo’s physical transformation into a 

Christian city. He largely financed the upkeep of the skilled workmen and paid for the 

supplies that several Portuguese cultural missions brought to Kongo during his long reign.  

In 1509, for example, he welcomed masons and carpenters who King Manuel of Portugal 

had sent to build churches as well as to rebuild his residence so that stone buildings could 

replace the thatched ones.  One of the most impressive results of this Kongo-Portuguese 

collaboration was the building of a mile long 20 feet high stone wall that separated the 

royal residences from the rest of the city.  Although in 1514 Afonso complained that the 

masons had not completed the stone residence that they were building for him because they 

were more interested in trading in slaves despite the money he paid them, he pushed for the 

building of more stone structures in the city. For example, to make sure that his relatives and other nobles in his household were exposed to the new knowledge the priests from 

Portugal brought he “gathered together all our brothers and children and cousins and the 

children of our criados in such a way that there were 400 young men and children and…we 

ordered a great wall made with many thorns on top so they could not climb it and flee and 

we entrusted the fathers with teaching them, and we also ordered other walls made… for 

the fathers to live together.”

  In addition, he also ordered the construction of walled 

enclosures for priests and a large walled enclosure with houses for the “1,000 sons of 

nobles with their teachers and dependants so that the priests could teach them “reading, 

writing, grammar and the things of our holy faith.”

Construction of stone buildings was not limited to Afonso’s palace for he also gave 

permission to the Portuguese to build a somewhat smaller wall around the stone houses that 

they built as well.  Between the walled enclosures that he had built was a large open space 

in the city “where the principal church was built.” Beyond this every noblemen built their 

own city residence, although each of them also had villas located outside the city.

 Afonso 

was very concerned about the upkeep of these buildings, and in 1517 and again in 1526 he 

asked the king in Portugal to send him more stonemasons and carpenters to complete the 

churches that were under construction.  For example in 1526 when only one carpenter 

remained in the city he wrote to the Portuguese king João III requesting five masons and 20 

carpenters to finish one of the churches called Nossa Senhora da Victoria.  He noted that he 

only had one carpenter left who “who can repair and cover the churches.” 

The basic layout of the city would remain the same in the decades following 

Afonso’s reign, although later kings built additional churches, schools and convents, 

cloisters and other buildings for the missionaries, and nobles built residences to ensure that 

they had a place in the center of power.  By the late 1500s the most prominent evidence 

that Mbanza Kongo (by then renamed São Salvador) 

 was not a typical African city 

were the churches, especially the Cathedral located in the large square where outdoor 

masses to accommodate thousands of parishioners were held. The city’s physical 

transformation continued in the 1600’s.  In the early 1600’s, for example, land was set 

aside to build a monastery for the Dominican missionaries, while in 1632 Alvaro 1V gave 

the Jesuits who were beginning their work in the city a site for a college as well as “other

lands for their upkeep.” He requested them to build “a church for the college that can be 

visited any time and continuous alms that the people could give.”

Afonso, and the kings after him, allocated funds not only for the building of the 

stone structures but for the upkeep of the churches and other structures that they had 

constructed.  The income to maintain these buildings and their staff increased as the 

number of churches grew.  At the end of Afonso’s reign in 1542 there were already 

between six and eight churches in the city, while by the late 1590s the number had risen to 

twelve. In 1595 Antonio Viera noted that although there were only six churches in the 

city, many nobles kept their own private chapels.

 These churches were all dedicated to 

Christian saints and were located throughout the city.  Both the church of St. James and the 

church of the Lady of Conception were located within the place grounds, while the Nossa Senhora de Ajuda church was located in the Portuguese quarters.  The Jesuits also had 

three unidentified churches and a cloister in the part of the city that they occupied.  By 

1642 when a Dutch embassy visited the city they were able to list by name at least ten 

churches, although some were already in ruins and others in need of repair. At that time 

four of the churches -- St. James Church, the Church of the Holy Ghost, the Church of St. 

Michael and the Church of St’ Joseph—were located within the palace walls while the 

others--Cathedral, the Church of Lady of Conception, the Church of St. James, the Church 

of Victory, Church of Seven Lamps, and the Church of St. Anthony were located in various 

parts of the city.  Walls also separated some of the churches form the surrounding area. For 

example, the Church of Our Lady of Conception was surrounded by a stone wall in an area 

that also contained two very large residences built with thatch giving the appearance of a 

convent.

  The city by this time had named streets as well. Some, like St. James Street 

took its name from the church that stood on it while another street called Bacas de las 

Almadias (Gulf of the canoes) was located near a river.

  Ollifert Dapper’s engraving of 

the city as it appeared in 1641-2 depicted several of the prominent features of the city. 

The city’s growth as the Christian center of the kingdom was also evident in the 

large number of people who attended church services.  A 1619 a report observed that the 

number of Christians in São Salvador were so numerous that the Cathedral could not 

accommodate the “innumerable multitude of inhabitants”

 and that the king and 

population usually “stand outside the church in the vast square to hear mass.” This 

Christian community was not limited just to Kongos for the Portuguese population had grown as well as many of the 1000 Portuguese who lived in Kongo had a residence in the 

city as well.

 By 1645 the mixed African-Portuguese residents in the city had also 

increased and numbered a total of 400 people, several of whom were priests. 

Although it is impossible to present a detailed accounting of the percentage of the 

kings’ revenue that went into the physical and social transformation of Mbanza Kongo, a 

whole range of descriptive evidence suggest that the kings did not spare any resources.  In 

the early years they spent liberally to pay the skilled Portuguese workmen who worked in 

the various construction projects and to upkeep the churches and their personnel. Because 

Kongo had an actual currency before the Portuguese arrived, some of the payment was 

made in it.  In Kong the people used zimbu shells fished in the shallow waters off the island 

of Luanda and the kings and nobles used it to assess taxes and to pay for the goods and 

services they received. The highest unit of account was the cofu which was worth 20,000 

zimbu shells, while the lefuco was worth 10,000 zimbu shells.

  The Portuguese workers 

who came during Afonso’s time were not only paid in the local currency, but were paid in 

kind.  Moreover over the years the thousands of slaves, ivory, silver manilas, local cloths, 

and the like that Kongo kings sent to their Portuguese counterparts (and at times to Rome) 

covered a lot of the cost for priests, the religious icons and other items that they received as 

gifts from Portugal and Rome. 

Some idea of the expenses that went into the building projects in the early years of 

the city’s transformation come from a letter that Afonso wrote to King Manuel of Portugal 

in 1514 in which he complained that the masons who came from Portugal refused to work and instead “demand pay all the time [for] building the house for me and my queen.” 

Slaves who the king gave to the representatives of the Portuguese as gifts to the Portuguese 

kings or free Kongo subjects who the Portuguese illegally enslaved also represented part of 

the payments from the kings’ revenues since slaves were valuable commodities among 

both the Kongos and the Portuguese. Afonso complained that the Portuguese who came to 

work for him unlawfully enslaved and sold as slaves also represented part of the cost that 

he paid to for the skilled Portuguese workmen who came to the city.

Part of the revenues that the Kongo kings used to cover the Christian project came 

in the form of the labor hours that Kongo workers put into the building projects.  These 

laborers gathered the stones from several miles outside the city and transported them to the 

city center where the churches were built. Kings also handed over large amounts of land 

and the laborers to the priests who managed the churches.  Afonso and the kings after him 

often referred in their letters to the thousands of laborers they recruited to work on the 

building projects.  

The resources that Kongo kings plowed into the building projects represented only 

a part of the expenses they invested to transform Mbanza Kongo into a Christian city.  Over 

the years as they deepened their cultural ties with Portuguese monarchs who they 

considered their brothers in Christendom, and with the Papacy as well they allocated a part 

of their revenues to cover the cost of the recruitment and upkeep of the European expertsmainly priests and other religious personnel who they believed were essential collaborators 

in their Christian project.  All of the foreign experts along with the many Kongos they trained lived at one time or other in the city and were in part supported by funds which 

came from the kings and nobles.   

During Afonso’s time when few institutions existed for training members of the 

local elite, the king provided the funds for members of the nobility to travel to Portugal and 

also to pay for their upkeep. In fact in 1540 he actually requested a loan of 5.000 cruzados 

from king João in Portugal to cover the cost of his relatives who he had sent to Portugal 

to study and to cover the expenses of an embassy he had sent to Rome.

 He promised to 

pay him back in the local currency which the Portuguese agents could use to purchase 

slaves.  As more missionaries traveled to Kongo to manage the churches and to help in 

the education and training of local men and women, the cost of their upkeep fell on the 

kings and nobles as well. Soon after the arrival in the city of a group of missionaries from 

Europe in 1548, one of them wrote back to his colleagues noting that the king Diego 1 

ordered his nobles to “bring us great gifts” to help with their transition

  Moreover, Diego 

also paid for the salary of the Portuguese linguist Pedro Alverez and carriers who he 

supplied the missionary Father George Vas.  Several decades later Alvaro 11, writing to 

the Pope Paulo V in 1613 attempted to outline his efforts to assess the cost of up- keeping 

the bishops and the canons at the Cathedral.  He insisted that the King of Portugal should 

bear some of the cost, since “the chaplains and curates instituted by his grandparents are 

paid each year from his royal income.

 Similarly Alvaro 111 writing to Rome in 1615 to 

request missionaries took pains to assure papal officials that he would be able to pay for 

their upkeep as the “kings my predecessors” did.  He noted that earlier kings always gave 

the Royal chapel to their confessors “with lands, rents, vassals and Lordship…which renders a good 2,000 cruzados,” and promised that this amount would apply “from now 

for ever to that dignitary.” Later kings made similar financial commitments. In the 1623 

invitation that King Pedro 11 made to the Jesuits in his attempt to encourage them to return 

to the city to work, he took pains to remind them of the many churches that his 

predecessors had built, noting that they had “instituted and endowed the church of St. 

James…to serve as a royal chapel.” He also spelt out the funding he planned to spend on 

the mission, agreeing to set aside “400 cofus of zimbo” in perpetuity for a Chaplain major 

and for “successors in the office” to run the operation.

 Likewise in 1632 King Alvaro 

IV also reminded the head of Jesuits in Rome that the kings of Kongo had funded the 

College that they had established and that he himself had given them “not only the site 

for the college but also other lands for farms for creation and recreation and planting.”

Later kings also did not waver when it came to the financial upkeep of the churches and 

their personnel. In 1652 King Garcia blamed his some of immediate predecessors for 

allowing four of the churches built in the early years to fall into ruins and vowed to 

“restore them and rebuild them from their foundation.” In fact he impressed Father 

Giacinto da Vetralla, a Capuchin priest with his commitment even though the missionary 

concluded that “this would cost a lot, because it would be necessary to make them and 

then transport them here.” At the same time Garcia employed a large number of laborers 

to rebuild the Church of St. Michael for the use of the Capuchins.

 Unfortunately by the 

1660s because of the disastrous civil war many more churches fell into ruin as tensions 

between the elite led them to neglect the churches. A 1660 Capuchin report reflecting on the several ruined churches blamed the Portuguese in Angola who they accused of 

preventing the Kongos from importing “lime” and other materials used to repair the 

churches and other building because of the fear they would use it to build “fortifications.” 

By the 1670s when the city was temporarily abandoned São Salvador’s status was as a 

showpiece of architecture and social engineering was already doomed as the city was 

already a shell of what it was during its heyday.  

When the city was at its peak the kings and nobles provided financial support not 

only to the churches and the many chapels, but to the several dozen European and AfroEuropean priests, the Bishop, canons and other church officials who made the city their 

home.  They also paid some of the cost for the training of the thousands of Kongo-born lay 

ministers who performed the crucial work of bringing the new religious ideas and to the 

population in the city and elsewhere. Afonso’s commitment to the churches and the very 

pious life he lived laid the foundations for shaping the Christian character of the city. Most 

of the Kongo kings who followed him also worked to maintain the Christian character of 

the city and to promote it as the Christian capital of the kingdom.  Christianity took roots 

in the city with the annual arrival of missionaries from Portugal and Rome who 

concentrated on teaching the people-from kings and nobles to slaves the core principles 

of Christianity.  Although the number or priests were never enough and fluctuated from 

as high as 50 to as low as 5 (in 1649 there were 16 European missionaries in the entire 

kingdom) the number of residents who were trained to teach the precepts were always 

large.  This was largely because the kings supported the training of a local laity who 

carried out the day to day teaching and other duties of priests, even though they did not 

do baptisms.  Although the kings and nobles and members of their households were the first people in the city to be baptized, over the years the majority of the city’s residents, 

whether slave or free were baptized.  In fact Inquisition accounts from the 1570s suggest 

that most Kongos who lived in the city (and indeed the entire kingdom) were being 

instructed in the teachings of the church. By the 1670s most people who lived in the city 

in fact considered themselves Christians. In the early years these baptisms were mostly 

mass conversions, as occurred in 1548 when on 17 March the Jesuit Father Vas reported 

that he had baptized 3,000 people who attended the several churches, some of them elderly 

Kongos between 60 and 80 years.  Of those baptized all 300 lived in the city.

 By the 

1640s although there were still mass baptisms in the city, most people who were baptized 

would have received some form of religious education from the many priests who 

officiated at masses in the city’s several churches or from the lay Kongo and mixed KongoEuropeans who served as their teachers.     

By the early seventeenth as the city grew in population and social complexity its 

layout and social makeup made Mbanza-Kongo very different not only from Luanda but 

also from the capitals of other African kingdoms of the time. Seventeenth century residents 

and visitors often commented on the layout and make-up of São Salvador.  For example, in 

1609 Antonio Viera, the confessor of King Alvaro II testified in Lisbon that the city had 

10,000 houses and that the bishop’s residence was located next to the cathedral which 

had a parish church, a college and a hospital attached to it.

  By the mid-1620s when the 

Jesuit missionary João de Paiva arrived in São Salvador he described the Portuguese 

quarter of the city, noting also that that the city was surrounded by “villages and neighboring hamlets.”

 Descriptions from the early 1630s noted that the Jesuits had their 

own quarters in the city as well.   

Olifert Dapper describing the city as it was when the Dutch embassy arrived in 

1645 noted that it contained streets and pointed out that the public square (mabzi) which 

was located between the enclosed court of the king and the Portuguese enclosure had 

become a central place for celebrations.  Even when the number of residents began to 

decline in the 1650s, the city kept its status as a center of Christianity in the kingdom.  

When the missionary Antonio Cavazzi visited it in 1664 at the beginning of the civil war 

he put the population at a mere 5,000 people. Even by the 1670s when most of the 

remaining population fled because of the increased fighting between royal factions, the 

remained as the symbolic religious center of the kingdom and was eventually re-occupied 

in 1705.

The kings, beginning with Afonso were largely responsible for making the city 

the religious and political center of the kingdom. The city’s status grew over the years as 

it was the place where every new king following Afonso had to be crowned in the 

cathedral by the bishop or a priest in an elaborate ceremony. No king was considered 

legitimate unless he came to the city to be crowned, and where he was also required to 

take an elaborate oath in front of the thousands of city residents and Kongo notables and 

their followers who traveled in from the provinces to participate in the event.  Moreover, 

Kongo kings made it a point of staging elaborate public ceremonies in the city to 

welcome missionaries from Europe.  Moreover, kings and members of their households always attended the weekly masses that were held in front of the Cathedral, led the many 

public penances that the churches encouraged, and participated in the religious 

celebrations to honor the feast days of various saints.  Finally, burials in the cathedral 

were also major public religious events, as kings and members of noble family had to be 

buried inside the cathedral in elaborate Christian ceremonies. 

  The experience of the first Carmelite mission which arrived on the outskirts of 

the city ion 28 October 1583 provides an excellent example of how important it was to 

the kings to use the city as a center of grandiose political and religious pageantry. When 

Alvaro 1 who was reigning at the time received the news that the members of the mission 

had arrived, he ordered them to spend the night outside the city while he prepared a great 

procession to welcome them and to receive the statute of the Virgin Mary and other relics 

that they had brought from Rome.  The missionaries duly complied, and waited with 

“some relics of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and a bone of one of the Ten Thousand 

Martyrs” 

until the following day.  During that time Alvaro was able to assemble over 

30,000 persons who formed a grand procession to lead the group into the city.  This all took 

place without the king being present, since he had an ailment which prevented him from 

walking, although he was able to view the procession and image from his palace.

 Such 

public gatherings to welcome new missionaries or to attend religious festivals were normal 

for city residents.  In 1619, for example when missionaries arrived from Rome bringing 

an altar and “… the ten thousand medals, crown and similar things” the crowd that 

gathered to witness the blessing of the medals was so large that people most people had to remain outside the cathedral.  In fact by the first decades of the 1600s the Cathedral did 

not have enough space to accommodate the large crowds that attended regular Sunday 

services and these took place took place in the square in front of the cathedral.  In 1631, 

for example, the missionary Francisco de Soveral reported that Sunday services and 

religious festivals were always held outdoors.

 Again in 1651 king Garcia 11 was so 

pleased that Pope had sent him an official letter granting him several indulgences that he 

had requested that he “decreed that they be great celebration in the city, which lasted 

three months, all to show how please he was for the great extraordinary favors he 

received from the Pope.”

The various religious brotherhoods that flourished in the city and which had the 

support of the Kongo kings and members of the nobility also added another crucial 

dimension to life in the city.  The first brotherhood in the city was founded sometime 

before 1585, and they expanded in the early1600s when several groups of Jesuit and 

Dominican missionaries arrived and the king honored their request to open more 

brotherhoods.  By 1609 Antonio Viera noted that six confraternities operated in the city 

and the king and nobles supported them and that “every day masses are celebrated for the 

souls of the dead.”

  In fact in 1612 king Alvaro II was so eager to show the newly 

arrived Dominicans that he was a devoted Christian that he agreed to their suggestion to 

found “the Brotherhood of the Rosary,” and actually oversaw the first procession of nobles and people in the city who paraded in a way similar to the “way it was done in 

Portugal.” 

As members of the various religious orders came to the city to work, they opened 

more brotherhoods. The experience of the Jesuit order in the city provides a telling 

commentary of how the kings and nobles used the brotherhoods to settle political 

rivalries. In the early 1620s King Pedro invited the Jesuits to return to work in the city 

because; because as he explained he had to strengthen Christian morality which he believed 

was necessary to protect the kingdom from the Portuguese who were sending armies into 

Kongo’s southern provinces.  One of these invasions had proven disastrous to the Kongo 

province of Mbamba where the invaders had killed and enslaved thousands of Kongo 

subjects. According to the Jesuit João de Paiva who later became the rector of the college 

the Jesuits built, “King Pedro... [Believed] that only men of the Society of Jesus could 

placate God for the Congo people… [And] he gave letters to our rector at Luanda, to send 

him some of the Society in order that they erect a stable home in the royal city.”

Pedro and the kings after him gave their full support to the Jesuits but they soon 

realized that he hoped to use their presence to support his rather weak claims to the 

throne Kongo throne.  In fact, when the Jesuits sent some of members of the order to the 

city to start construction of the college, Pedro insisted that he should be considered the 

founder of the college.  He not only selected the best site but offered the brothers food 

and supplies and “was often present so that by seeing him the workers might be urged in 

their work.”

 The first church that the Jesuits built in São Salvador was dedicated to “Jesus and King Garcia” who had succeeded his father Pedro and provided the funds to 

continue the construction.

By the late 1620s the Jesuits had erected their own residence, opened schools for 

children of the nobility and also opened brotherhoods in almost all eight churches that 

were functioning in the city.  The presence of the Jesuits actually led to greeted social 

divisions between the elites, the Portuguese and the rest of the city’s population as well as 

between elite women and other females. For example, the Brotherhood of the Holy 

Trinity restricted its membership to 12 year-old unmarried “noble adolescents” and 

Portuguese, while another Jesuit supported brotherhood located in the church of the Holy 

Trinity was dedicated to St. Ignatius and restricted membership to the nobility “either 

married or bereaved of a spouse.” The members of the brotherhood were required to take 

a vow “to teach the Christian doctrine to uncultured and ignorant men especially to the 

members of their own household,” to take communion once a month and to “engage in 

other practices of Christian piety.”

 Not to be outdone noble women in the city clamored 

for their husbands and sons to organize a brotherhood for them, and by 1628 the city 

boasted a brotherhood whose members consisted of “whatever matrons are more 

illustrious by birth…queens and wives of former kings of these and the rest were moved 

to virtue and holy morals.”

  In time, the life of the city’s elite came to be centered on 

the many religious celebrations that the brotherhoods organized to honor the patron saints 

of this or the other brotherhood. There was an underside to crucial role that brotherhoods came to have in the city. 

By the 1630s Kongo members of the brotherhoods divided themselves not only according 

to the various religious orders that funded their brotherhoods (Jesuits, Dominicans, and 

Capuchins) but also according to their political allegiance.  During the years members of 

the brotherhoods often took political sides, and might support one or the other contender 

for the throne. Over the years the religious and political affiliations of leading members 

of the brotherhoods led to open warfare in the city.

 For example, in 1629 a members of 

one brotherhood whose members were suspected of plotting against the king were 

chained and dragged through the city streets, while in 1630 a member of the brotherhood 

was among fifty conspirators executed for plotting against the king.

 Despite the 

political intrigues, the religious activities of the brotherhoods contributed to the social 

character of the city. 

The financial support that Kongo kings put into the physical transformation of the 

city during more than a century and a half gave rise to two social groups in the city.  On 

the one hand it boasted a population made up of European missionaries, other European 

residents (mostly Portuguese), and members of the Kongo ruling elite, many of who were 

descendants of past kings, as well as a mixed race population.  The Kongo members of the 

group were literate in Portuguese and even in Latin, owned slaves, dressed in a mixture of 

European and Kongo clothing, and devoted a lot of their time and resources to activities 

connected to the church.  The members of the other group, comprising more than half of 

the city’s population, were the Kongo commoners, both free and enslaved.  They provided the labor on which all the other groups relied, but were excluded from the social and other 

privileges that the members of the elite enjoyed. 

Despite their difference, the one thing that both groups shared was a common 

Christian identity. City residents, whether they were noble or enslaved called themselves 

Moxicongo, a term that distinguished them from their rural counterparts (mubhata) who 

lived in the rural areas beyond the city or in other provinces. The markers of Moxicongo

was the ability to speak the Kikongo which residents of the city spoke, being baptized, 

regular church attendance, Christian marriages, church burials, and opportunities to 

participate in the several celebrations that took place. Familiarity with these aspects of city 

life separated Mozicongos from their rural and provincial counterparts. 

The urban environment that nurtured this Moxicongo identity was largely owing to 

the financial investment that Kongo kings, working alongside foreign missionaries poured 

into the city. Their investment did not create a city that was a copy of its European 

counterparts as the foreign missionaries hoped or that Afonso and some of the other kings 

dreamed of.  By the 1640s the churches and other buildings in the city represented a 

blend of Kongo and European elements, constructed with stones and mortar but with 

thatched roofs. Moreover, the services held in the Cathedral and other places of worship 

did not replicate services in Europe.  In fact on many occasions European priests 

substituted palm wine for imported wine during communion, and candles made from 

palm oil often took the place of imports from Europe.  Furthermore the choirs that 

accompanied the Catholic services in were often sung hymns in Latin but were 

accompanied by musicians who played both European and African musical instruments. 

Furthermore, more Kongolese in the city learnt Church doctrine from Kongo lay preachers in Kikongo who served as interpreters when priests were around or who were 

solely responsible for bring church teaching church doctrine to the population. 

This cultural blend was most pronounced visible in the celebrations that took 

place in the city as well.  On St. James Day, the most important religious and cultural 

celebration in the city, thousands of Kongos from the provinces flocked to the city eager 

to participate in the public celebrations to honor St. James, Kongo’s patron Saint who 

they believed helped king Afonso defeat his pagan brother in 1509.  Despite its religious 

origin, the day was also one when people paid respect to the kings by bringing the 

traditional tribute and performing the ensanga/sangamento, the pre-Christian military 

dance.

Slavery which expanded as the city changed also changed as well. Although slavery 

pre-dated the physical and cultural transformation of the city, between 1491 and the 1670s’s 

however, slavery in the city had more in common with the slave holding patterns found in 

other Atlantic Creole cities than with Mbanza Kongo before 1491. Whereas in the early 

days most of the slaves in Mbanza Kongo were captives brought to Mbanza Kongo from 

conquests the kings made, by the 17th

 century the city was a slave trading and slave holding 

emporium. Most members of the elite --Kongos, Portuguese, and missionaries, merchants 

sold and owned slaves.  Many commoners also owned a slave or two as well.  Slaves in the 

city found creative ways to participate in the city’s culture.

  The inequalities associated 

with meant that there were more pronounced in the 1670s than in 1491 when the 

Portuguese arrived.  One longer long term impact of the transformation of Mbanza-Kongo/São 

Salvador was the appearance of a consciousness of a Kongo identity. This consciousness 

of a Kongo identity was not restricted to the elites, but was evident among all Kongos. 

Two aspects of this new identity stand out. One of this was that each Kongo considered 

himself a Christian and the other was that he regarded the king of Kongo as the ruler with 

Mbanza Kongo as the capital. The investments that the kings put into the city not only 

transformed the outlook of Kongos residents but also spread throughout the kingdom. 

The hundreds of thousands of Kongos who were enslaved and carried to places such as 

Brazil and elsewhere brought this Kongo identity with them.  The Brazilian folk festivals 

call congadas had their origins in the attempts of enslaved Kongo there to recreate the 

Christian festivals, coronations and other religious celebrations that had become an 

essential part of life in Mbanza Kongo. 

In conclusion one might ask whether the funds Kongo kings spent on building 

churches, supporting priests and the like in the city could have been better invested in 

other more productive projects? Could they have used it to diversify the economy and 

reduce the place of slave trading and slave holding in the city?  Could the funds have 

been invested in creating a strong central army that could have imposed central power 

more effectively on rebellious provinces, or that could have defeated the Portuguese in 

1665 and thus save the kingdom from the prolonged decline it suffered.? Was the 

appearance of a Kongo identity worth the investment?