Catholic Missions and African Responses I: 1450–1800

Prior to 1800, Catholic missionary engagement with sub-Saharan Africa reflected the energies of Portuguese missionaries. Thwarted by Muslim domination of northern Africa, the Portuguese established Catholic missions along coastal Africa, usually near their trading and military posts. Changing Vatican jurisdictions, sporadic efforts linked to different Catholic missionary bodies, diverse local circumstances, and historical processes like European conflicts, the slave trade, and internal African political dynamics shaped varying outcomes for Catholic evangelization. Only in Kongo did a longstanding Catholic presence appear, yet outstanding African Catholics emerged not only there in the remarkable King Afonso I and the controversial prophet Beatriz Kimpa Vita, but elsewhere in dynamic Catholics like Queen Njinga of Angola and the African martyrs of Mombasa. Vigorous and creative missionaries also pursued impressive evangelization at times—the Jesuit Pedro Paez in seventeenth-century Ethiopia and the Capuchin Cherubino de Savona in eighteenth-century Kongo, for example—yet in general missionary tactics remained unsophisticated and unsuccessful, tied to European Catholic models, and hampered by corruption and political interference.