Paper short abstract:

This communication analyses the guides for missionary action produced by capucins, from late XVII and early XVIII centuries, in Kongo, in order to understand the ethnographic knowledge about the africans, and how that speech simultaneously structures and legitimizes the evangelization method.

Paper long abstract:

The baptism of the sovereign of Mbanza Kongo, which took place in 1491, sets the beginning of a long and complex relationship that left impressive marks on the historical dynamic of those african societies. Since that moment, but mostly, from the second half of the sixteenth century, hundreds of european missionaries, from several religious orders, crossed the region and produced vast literature regarding their activity on african soil. Built through defined rules, this textual Corpus exhibits rich content of information on those places' societies and cultures, from aspects of material culture, to those most directly connected to the belief systems, forms of organization of power or conviviality modes. Far from a mere deposit of curiosities, the knowledge collected through the observation and direct experience of the religious but, also, in a large scale, via african informers, is structured in an ethnographic speech on the African, which presents him as an other culturally different, in his habits and feelings. Therefore, the ethnographic knowledge is an asserted authority that makes the methodological orientations, particularly produced by the Capucins, as pertinent as effective to the work of missionaries, building a sort of African pastoral, mindful of the specificity of the context in which they acted.

This communication analyses the guides for missionary action produced by capucins, from late XVII and early XVIII centuries, in Kongo, in order to understand the ethnographic knowledge about the africans, and how that speech simultaneously structures and legitimizes the evangelization method.