1
THE DIOCESE OF GOA:
THE PORTUGUESE IN EAST AFRICA
1.3 The south coast: evangelization and colonization
The Portuguese in 1505 took the trading port of Sofala and established trading outposts at Delagoa Bay and Quilimane. In 1507 they took Mozambique island and in 1558 built a fort on it, making it their central base in the south, just as Mombasa was in the north. The Swahili who formerly conducted all the trade with the interior were quickly displaced by the Portuguese, who after 1550 moved up the Zambezi river and founded settlements at Sena and Tete. These towns were in territory belonging to the kingdom of Mwanamutapa (also the title of the king) whose capital was near Mt. Darwin in present day Zimbabwe. Relations between the Portuguese and the people of Mwanamutapa were at first very cordial, but quickly deteriorated.
The Jesuits
In 1541 St. Francis Xavier SJ, who did not stop in West Africa at all on his way to the East, made several stops in East Africa, holding discussions with Muslims in Malindi before going on to India. In 1555 Manuel Fernandes, another Jesuit on his way to India, stopped at Mozambique and complained that Portuguese oppression was deterring the Africans from the faith.[1]
One day in 1559 the son of the king of Inhambane came to Mozambique island. Treated honourably and given baptism, Prince Sebastião returned home and convinced his father and his people of the advantages of Christianity and friendship with the Portuguese. King Gamba sent his son back to Mozambique to ask for missionaries. In 1560 three Jesuits came from Goa. After three weeks of instruction they baptized the king and everyone in Tonga his capital. But the fame of Mwanamutapa beckoned onwards, and Fr. Gonçalo da Silveira left behind Fr. Fernandez and the brother who accompanied them and went on to the king of Mwanamutapa. After twenty-five days he baptized the king and a large number of his people. Then some Swahili Muslims told the king that the Jesuit was a sorcerer and plotted his downfall. Fr. Gonçalo was then strangled in the night and his body thrown into the river. Back in Inhambane Fr. Fernandes found King Gamba and his people refractory to the ethical demands of Christianity. Fr. Fernandes was consequently abandoned to grope in his ignorance of the language and customs of the people and, after selling even his Mass equipment to buy food, he pulled out. Other Jesuits who were waiting to join the first group then changed their minds.
In 1571 the Portuguese sent an expedition to Mwanamutapa to avenge the death of Fr. Gonçalo and capture the gold mines, but the soldiers had to turn back because of hunger and sickness. Some Jesuits who accompanied this expedition found the people whom their predecessors had baptized completely disinterested in Christianity. In 1573 the Portuguese succeeded in extracting from King Nogomo of Mwanamutapa the concession of a number of gold mines and possession of a strip of territory on the south bank of the Zambezi from Tete to the ocean. More and more Portuguese settlers came to take advantage of African land, resources and labour.
The Dominicans
In 1577 the Dominicans established a house on Mozambique island which was made a priory in 1579. From this priory they went up and down the coast, in the north to Mombasa and Malindi, where they worked among African non-Muslims as well as the Portuguese, and in the south to Quilimane and Sofala and up the Zambeze river to Sena, Tete and the Mwanamutapa heartland. In 1609 João dos Santos OP, who had been a long time in East Africa, published his Ethiopia Oriental, an important work on East Africa at that time. He himself had baptized 1,644 “kafirs” (the name given by the Muslims to the pagan Africans which has survived to this day in South Africa as an appellative for a Black man), and noted that in 1591 the baptism books of Sena and Tete registered 20,000 baptisms. In Sena town there were 800 Christians, of whom only 50 were Portuguese; in Tete there were 600, including 40 Portuguese. João dos Santos was concerned about the purity of faith of the African Christians who continued to take part in the practices of their traditional religion or of Islam. In trying to meet this challenge the Dominicans did not begin schools, as the Jesuits were to do, but promoted prayer and catechetical societies, such as those of the Rosary, the Holy Name of Jesus, the Immaculate Conception and St. Anthony of Padua.
Events of the 17th century
In the meantime the Dominicans were losing their zeal and in 1605 had to be warned against accumulating private funds and sending the money home to their relatives. The competition of the Jesuits, who returned in 1607, was good for them. The Jesuits began a school in Chemba, on the Zambeze river, where among other things they had the children sing their catechism in their won language. In 1624 they had eight stations in the Zambeze region, including Sena, Chemba and Tete, with twenty priests. In the same year they started a college on Mozambique island, taking over the hospital building of the Brothers of St. John of God, who had been there since the middle of the 16th century.[2] In 1628 this college had twelve Jesuit teachers. The students, however, as in other Jesuit colleges in Africa, were almost exclusively the sons of Portuguese settlers. At the same time there was a house of eight or nine Augustinians in Mozambique, while the Dominicans had thirteen stations in the Zambeze region with twenty-five men. Eleven diocesan priests also served the region.
In 1623 Miguel Rangel OP reported that the Mwanamutapa king Gatsi Rusere (1596-1627) allowed his sons Filipe and Diogo to be baptized. Yet he said the progress of evangelization faced two obstacles: the efforts of Muslims to subvert it and the oppression and enslaving practised by the Portuguese. Portuguese-Mwanamutapa tensions came to a head in 1628 when the Portuguese refused to pay their annual tax. The king Kapararidze took punitive action, and the Portuguese, who got little help from Mozambique, raised a citizens army of 250 Portuguese and many thousand Africans, led by Luiz do Espirito Santo OP. In 1629 they deposed Kapararidze and installed his uncle Mavura as king. After eight months of daily instruction Mavura was baptized, taking the name Felipe (after the Spanish ruler of Portugal), and signed a capitulation which made him a vassal of the king of Spain and Portugal, and gave the Portuguese many privileges. He also agreed to expel the Swahili Muslims within one year. The new king’s son and nephews were baptized and the son sent to Goa for education. The deposed king Kapararidze with a band of followers succeeded in capturing and killing Luiz do Espirito Santo and another Dominican in 1633, but King Mavura defeated him afterwards in battle. Kapararidze’s brother Miguel, who was a friend of Luiz do Espirito Santo, entered the Dominican Order and was ordained a priest.[3]
Also in 1633 and East African Dominican priest called “Dominicus Africanus” finished a long period of studies in Italy and returned to his homeland. In 1652 the new king of Mwanamutapa, Mavura’s son, was baptized with the name Domingos. His son entered the Dominican novitiate in Goa, taking the name Constantin do Rosário. He served as prior and vicar provincial and taught for a long time in the Goa House of Studies. In 1670 the Master General of the Order honoured him with the title “Master of Sacred Theology”.[4] Another Dominican priest of Mozambique is recorded in the 17th century named Lucas do Espirito Santo.[5]
Madagascar
The Portuguese discovered Madagascar in 1500 and called it the island of San Lourenço. They had intermittent contact with the island and raided Arab trading stations several times. In the south they built two small forts or shipping posts. In 1570 seventy Portuguese with their Dominican chaplain were invited to a feast where most of them were murdered.[6] In 1585 some other Dominicans made the first serious attempt to preach the Gospel to the people when they accompanied some Portuguese traders to the west of the island. The preaching was terminated in 1587 when some Muslims attacked the Portuguese and poisoned Fr. Joãõ de São Tomé.
Because the French, Dutch and English were visiting Madagascar frequently, the Portuguese sent another exploratory expedition in 1613 which included two Jesuits, Pero Freire and Luis Mariano. At Antanosy in the southeast of the island they persuaded the king to allow evangelization and to send his son Ramaka to Goa. Baptized with the name André, Ramaka returned in 1616, accompanied by more Jesuits. In the meantime the king held two Jesuits hostage while the Portuguese sent his nephew to Goa. The latter returned in 1617, baptized with the name Jerónimo. By this time the king tired of the Portuguese and forbade his people to help them or to have anything to do with them. The Jesuits left for Sahadia on the west of the island, where other Jesuits had begun working the year before. They had to leave that place too in the same year because Muslim influence and the reputation of the Portuguese turned the people against them. The Jesuits returned several times in the following years but did no more than visit.
In 1642 the French took over from the Portuguese and established Fort Dauphin in the southeast as their main centre. Attempts to get Carmelites and Capuchins to come ended in failure because of the intrigue of many parties. In 1648 St. Vincent de Paul sent two priests of his society. One died within a year and the other after two years. The latter, Charles Nacquart, learned the language, enjoyed the respect of André Ramaka who was now king, and had great success. But after Nacquart’s death the French came to war with the natives and pillaged their land. Rival shipping companies made it impossible for more Vincentians to come until 1654, and the newcomers only lived a few months. One, Fr. Bourdaise, succeeded in reestablishing peace during his three months of work, but after his death in 1657 war broke out again and King André was killed. Shipwrecks and other difficulties prevented any more priests from coming until 1663. Fr. Étienne and a few companions resumed the work that had been interrupted and started a seminary which had 20 students in 1672. But many obstacles led the Vincentians to pull out of Madagascar. Only two brothers were left in 1674 when all the remaining Frenchmen on the island were either massacred or fled. The Vincentians continued their work on Réunion and Mauritius islands, but no more evangelization was attempted in Madagascar until the 19th century.
[1]Documentos, VII, 303.
[2]Brásio (1950), 271-9.
[3]Axelson (1964), 71 and note 73. See also the anonymous report written around 1655, in the Dominican General Archives (Santa Sabina, Rome), XIII, 56900, p. 23. Most other Dominican records of African missions are lost.
[4]Loedding (1974), 102; Brásio (1963), n. 10. Brásio, however, following Lucas de Santa Caterina, VI, 335, gives the Dominican’s name as Miguel. This must be a confusion with Kapararidze’s brother, whom Brásio does not mention. The report in the Dominican Archives (supra cit., p. 24) says that Domingos had three sons, named Philip, Alexius and John. There is no mention of a Miguel.
[5]Brásio (1963), n. 11.
[6]Jadin (1973), Loedding (1974), 100, and Rommerskirchen (1951), 1786, place the event in 1540.