Kimpa Vita

Kimpa Vita, baptized as Beatriz and therefore also known as Dona Beatriz (1684 1706), was a
Congolese prophet and leader of her own Christian movement, known as Antonianism. Her teaching
grew out of the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church in Kongo.
Early life
Beatriz Kimpa Vita was born near Mount Kibangu in the Kingdom of Kongo, now a part of modern
Angola around 1684. She was born into a family of the Kongo nobility, probably of the class called
Mwana Kongo, and was probably baptized soon after, as Kongo had been a Catholic kingdom for two
centuries. Some modern scholars believe that she was connected to King Antonio I of Kongo (166165), who died at the battle of Mbwila (Ulanga) in 1665, because his Kikongo name Vita a Nkanga
connects with her name. However, she cannot have been a child of his, given her birth date, and the
naming theory is not supported, nor does any contemporary document mention it.
At the time of her birth, Kongo was torn by civil war. These wars had started shortly after the death of
Antnio I and had resulted in the abandonment of the ancient capital of So Salvador (present day
Mbanza Kongo) in 1678 and the division of the country by rival pretenders to the throne.
According to her testimony, given at an inquest on her life and reported by the Capuchin missionary
Bernardo da Gallo, Beatriz had visions even as a youth, and her high spirits and otherworldly outlook
caused her two youthful marriages to fail and led her deeper into a spiritual life. Kimpa Vita was
trained as nganga marinda, a person said to be able to communicate with the supernatural world. The
nganga marinda was connected to the kimpasi cult, a healing cult that flourished in late seventeenth
century Kongo. However, sometime around 1700, she renounced her role and moved closer to the
views of the Catholic church.
Call to mission
Beatriz went to live among colonists sent out by King Pedro IV, one of several rival rulers of Kongo, to
reoccupy the ancient and now abandoned capital of So Salvador. There was a great deal of religious
fervor among these colonists who were tired of the endless civil wars in the country, and many had
become followers of an old prophet, Appolonia Mafuta, who was preaching that God would punish
Kongo.
During an illness in 1704 she claimed to have received visions of St. Anthony of Padua, and when, as
she reported to Father Bernardo, she died and St. Anthony entered her body and took over her life.
She began to preach, and Appolonia Mafuta supported her, claiming that she was the real voice of
God. From that point onward, she believed she had a special connection to God, among other things,
she died each Friday and spent the weekend in Heaven talking with God, to return to earth on
Mondays. While in this state, she learned that Kongo must reunite under a new king, for the civil wars
that had plagued Kongo since the battle of Mbwila in 1665 had angered Christ. She was ordered to
build a specific Congolese Catholicism and unite the Congo under one king. She destroyed "idols", the
various Kongo Nkisi or charms inhabited by spiritual entities, as well as Christian paraphernalia. When
she took her message to King Pedro IV, he considered it, but refused to hear her. She then went to
visit his rival Joo II at Mbula (near the Congo River close to modern Matadi), who also refused to
hear her. However, in short time she was able to gather a significant number of followers and became
a factor in the struggle of power. Her movement recognized the papal primate but was hostile against
the European missionaries in Congo.
While she was in So Salvador, which she and her followers occupied in 1705, she built a special
residence for herself in the ruined cathedral, and also called the formerly ruined and abandoned
capital to be reoccupied by thousands of mostly peasant followers. However, she soon won noble
converts as well, including Pedro Constantinho da Silva Kibenga, the commander of one of Pedro IV's
armies sent to reoccupy the city. Since he chose his devotion to Beatriz as an opportunity to rebel,
Pedro IV, who had been guardedly neutral to her, to decide to destroy her, all the more as his own
wife, Hipolita, had become an Antonian convert.
Beatriz sent out missionaries of her movement, called Little Anthonies, to other provinces. They were
not successful in the coastal province of Soyo, where the Prince expelled them, but they were much
more successful in the dissident southern part of Soyo and Mbamba Lovata, which lay south of Soyo.
There they won converts, especially among partisans of the old queen Suzana de Nbrega. Manuel
Makasa, one of these partisans also became an Antonian and moved to So Salvador.
Religious tenets
Much of her teaching is known from the Salve Antoniana, her prayer that converted the Salve Regina
(Hail Holy Queen) a Catholic prayer, into an anthem of the movement. Among other things, the Salve
Antoniana taught that God was only concerned with believers intentions not with sacraments or good

works, and that Saint Anthony was the greatest one, in fact, a "second God." In addition, she taught
that the principle characters in Christianity, including Jesus, Mary and Saint Francis, were all born in
Kongo and were in fact Kongolese. She upbraided the Catholic priests for refusing to acknowledge
this.
Execution and its aftermath
Kimpa Vita was captured near her hometown and burned at the temporary capital of Evululu as a
heretic in 1706 by forces loyal to Pedro IV. She was tried under Kongo law as a witch and a heretic,
with the consent and counsel of the Capuchin friars Bernardo da Gallo and Lorenzo da Lucca.
The Anthonian prophetic movement outlasted her death. Her followers continued to believe that she
was still alive, and it was only when Pedro IV's forces took So Salvador in 1709 that the political force
of her movement was broken, and most of her former noble adherents renounced their beliefs and
rejoined the church. Some hint of the strength of her teaching may be glimpsed by the fact that
eighteenth century Kongo religious art often shows Jesus as an African, and that Saint Anthony,
known as "Toni Malau" was very prominent. More recently, some see present day Kimbanguism as its
successor. Traditions circulating in Mbanza Kongo (formerly So Salvador) in 2002 also place great
significance in the role of Beatriz' mother as an inspiration for the prophet and also as playing a role in
its continuation, though contemporary sources make no mention of a role for her mother.

1706 Dona Beatriz

On July 2, 1706, Kimpa Vita, a Congolese noblewoman also known by her baptismal name Dona
Beatriz, was burned as a witch in Evululu.
This remarkable woman claimed to be a medium for the spirit of Saint
Anthony of Padua, a popular saint in the Catholicized Kingdom of Kongo,
and attracted a mass movement in the midst of civil war and social
breakdown in the proud Kongo state.
Executed Today is pleased to mark this occasion with an interview with
Boston University Prof. John K. Thornton, author of The Kongolese Saint
Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706.

This is a very unfamiliar story to most, as you point out in The

Kongolese Saint Anthony. So lets begin with some orientation the
Kingdom of Kongo is in the midst of a ruinous civil war. Why?
The civil war in Kongo was basically a dynastic affair, that is, a battle
between branches of the royal family for control over the throne. Kongo
had a very highly centralized political structure, the king and his council had
a lot of power not only over who held high office, but also who got what
income, because a lot of income derived from holding office. So controlling
the kingship and its related patronage was very important.
This story is very complicated, I try to lay it out as simply as possible in Chapter II of my book. To
make matters short, by D Beatiz day it had two branches duking it out the Kimpanzu and the
Kinlaza, with Pedro IV, conveniently descended from both these families, as a sort of conciliatory
figure.
And its a highly Catholic country. How did that come to be?
Pretty remarkable story.
Actually I think its the only real missionary victory that the Catholic church had in the early modern
period. By that I mean that they spread the faith to a completely independent country and not just by
conquest.
Officially, it was a series of miracles that both Catholic priests and Kongo elites witnessed in 1491 that
led Nzinga a Nkuwu, the king of Kongo to become a Christian and be baptized on May 3, 1491 (my
birthday is May 3, 1949 which I have taken to be a sort of sign that I should be studying Kongo).
However, it was Nzinga a Nkuwus son Afonso (ruled 1509-1542) that really established the church.
Afonso provided for the funding of the church, created schools for teaching literacy and Christian
religion for the nobility, had children educated in Portugal and returned to the country, and working
with his own educated people and Portuguese priests also figured out how to blend the two traditions
into a religion that was acceptable in the country. Its no wonder the Church called him the Apostle of
Congo.
The kings who followed elaborated and extended what Afonso started, especially by creating a
network of schools all over the country. By and large Rome and Portugal collaborated and blessed the
project, so the Pope allowed Afonsos son Henrique to be the first Sub-Saharan African bishop in 1518,
and assigned him to extend the church in Kongo (Henrique died in 1531). In 1596 the Pope made
Kongos capital city the seat of the Bishop of Congo and Angola.
The Church grew again in the late sixteenth century when a series of kings named Alvaro (I and II,
father and son, in particular) went a lot farther than Afonso had in Europeanizing Kongo. They gave
the nobles titles of nobility in European fashion (Counts, Dukes and Marquis), the brought in relics
from Europe (bones of martyrs, for example), established an embassy in Rome, renamed the capital
city as Sao Salvador, and so on. The Kongolese ambassador to Rome, Antonio Manuel, who died in
1608 and is honored in a wing in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, left personal papers
when he died now found in the Vatican archives. They show the sort of culture a person educated
entirely in Kongo could show, in addition to a fascinating array of Kongolese administrative documents
the only ones we have. He also studied Carmelite mysticism, and had correspondence from many
different people all over Europe. He was clearly at home among elite Europeans and was regarded by
those who met him as a cultured individual in a period when extra-Europeans were not always seen
that way.
The Jesuits established a college in Kongo in 1624 and it provided advanced education along
European lines until it was close just about the time that Beatriz was active. Kongo had a library, in
fact, though no trace of it exists any more, found on the second floor of the Jesuit college.
So in short, the answer is that the political elite of the country decided in the sixteenth century to make
their country a Catholic one, and they took vigorous steps to make it happen.

They put teachers out all through the country, visiting priests from Europe constantly met these
teachers in the rural areas, they were usually literate and possessed a good deal of knowledge of
European culture, some had even lived in Europe. These schoolmasters were the soul of the church;
they instructed the people (using a catechism in their own language after 1624), prepared them for the
sacraments and led weekly prayers at places of worship, usually large wooden crosses erected at key
points all around the country.
So theres a religious penetration that on the face of it might seem to be a religion of
colonization, of foreign domination. But thats clearly not the way most Kongolese thought
about it.
It was never a religion of conquest, and for that reason, the Kongos managed to make it their own
without feeling they were abandoning or being forced to give up something. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries foreign visitors often commented on how proud the Kongos were, of their
country, their language, their food and the like, thinking that they were the best people in the world.
Congo arrogance was a common epithet that the Portuguese who built the colony of Angola on
Kongos southern border used to describe them.
And its still very true today. I go to Angola quite a bit and have been to Mbanza Kongo twice. You can
feel and hear that pride even now. During the colonial period (roughly 1885 to 1975 in that area) the
Portuguese tried very hard to replace indigenous languages with Portuguese and to erase African
culture in a systematic way, especially after 1926. But the Kongos simply refused to be erased: they
continued their language secretly, kept their special foods and taught their children that they were still
the best. It worked.
Today in Angola, you see in so many places that Portuguese is the language of daily life even
street kids shout at each other in Portuguese in Luanda and the land east all the way to Malange. But
in Mbanza Kongo and elsewhere in the north, the language of daily life is Kikongo, the ancient
language of the country. Their pride has been a problem for Kongo, too. In 1992 a lot of them were
massacred in Luanda, partially for political reasons that are very complicated, but also I think because
other Angolans resent this pride. But enough on that.
Anyway, the Kongolese were proud to be not just Christians but Catholics. The Portuguese tried to
invade Kongo from Angola several times, first in 1622, then again in 1657, and finally in 1670. Each
time they were decisively defeated. On the other hand, the Kongos were also unable to invade Angola,
as they were repelled there also, first in 1580 and again in 1665 (when the famous Battle of Mbwila
was fought on the border between the two domains of Angola and Kongo).
This led to great hostility between Kongo and Portugal and especially its governors of Angola.
Portuguese were massacred in the wake of the 1622 invasion and after the Battle of Mbwila in 1665,
and by the 1670s they had been effectively forced to leave the country, trading their only with Africa
servants called pombeiros who represented their interests. (Priests were an exception).
Yet this history didnt impact on the way Kongos saw themselves as Catholics. King Garcia II (16411661) famously wrote a letter in which he proudly stated that they obeyed the Pope, vicar of Christ on
earth, even though the Portuguese, whom they hated, had introduced them to the religion. Indeed, the
only thing that we see in the correspondence of Kongolese kings that they do say good about Portugal
was that it introduced them to the religion.
The idea of a Catholic Kongo was reinforced when Kongo made an alliance with the Dutch. This took
place in 1622 in the aftermath of the failed Portuguese invasion. Pedro II, the king, sent a letter to the
Dutch States General proposing an alliance in which the Dutch would send a fleet to attack Angola by
sea, and Kongo would send an army by land. The first attempt to do this in 1624 failed, in part
because the Portuguese went out of their way to conciliate Kongo, but the second attempt, in 1641,
succeeded and for a time the Kongo-Dutch alliance (joined by the formidable Queen Njinga of
Ndongo-Matamba who was also at war with Portugal) nearly drove the Portuguese out of Angola.
The Dutch hoped to use this opportunity to also convert Kongo to the Calvinism of the Dutch
Reformed Church and they even had special literature designed to convert Catholics who spoke
Portuguese to Calvinism. But Garcia II would have none of it, and had the books burned (it was the
seventeenth century after all), and forced the ministers to leave. He wrote a letter to the Dutch Estates
General protesting the attempt and in it he made the statement I summarized in the paragraph above.
Kongo tried to make contact with Dutch speaking Catholic countries in the aftermath of the third failed
Portuguese invasion in 1670. It seemed like a good compromise though the Dutch never did come
back to Angola to fight, and the Catholic parts werent part of the Dutch program.
So, thats background now, who is Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita?
She was the daughter of a noble Kongo family from the region right around Kibangu, a flat-topped
mountain that lays some distance east of the capital of Mbanza Kongo (on a clear day you can see
that mountain from Mbanza Kongo).
She seems to have had spiritual gifts even as a youth, and had dreams of playing with angels and
visions and the like. Not surprisingly, she turned to religious pursuits, becoming a nganga Marinda, a
spiritual person whose role the Catholic missionaries did not like, but was widely accepted in the

Kongo as legitimate. She was probably too spiritual and independent to be married, since she had two
failed marriages by the time she began her prophecy.
Her movement combines both a religious renewal and a national restoration. Should one think
of her as a religious person whose cause happened to have political implications, or someone
whos very intentionally trying to alter the balance of power? Is it even right to separate the
secular and the religious dimensions?
I think Beatriz was trying to end war as much as anything else. This was at the height of the slave
trade: thousands of people were being exported annually to Brazil, to the Spanish Indies, to Suriname,
and some even to South Carolina.
The slave trade was one of the byproducts of war (along with death and destruction), and because
slavery was lucrative, it helped to continue the wars in a vicious cycle. As Beatriz understood it, the
solution was to end the civil war and restore the kingdom. None of the pretenders to the throne
seemed able to do that.
She thought that he had sent Saint Anthony do to that, and he had come to earth and chose to be
incarnate in her. It harmonized with Kongos belief that they were Gods chosen people (he had
created Kongo himself, sending his angels to create the rest of the world), and he would intervene to
set things right.
And who exactly are her followers?
Beatriz had followers from all ranks and walks of life. Pedro IV had her burned, but his own wife
Hipolyta became a devotee. Pedro was intrigued by her message himself. A number of the top
contenders also were either tempted or became her followers. The most notable of her followers was
Pedro Constantinho da Silva, one of Pedros generals who saw allying with her as a chance to
become king. Along with the political guys was a great mass of peasants, who really hoped for a better
time and thought that Beatriz movement could restore the kingdom.
It was the politics of her movement that got her in trouble. Once Beatriz threw herself in with Pedro
Constantinho she was doomed because the other contenders became her enemies. It was Pedro IV
who managed to capture her, and he had her burned as a heretic and witch. Before she went over to
Pedro Constantinho, Pedro IV had been very interested in her mission and protected her.
Dona Beatriz? Kimpa Vita?
Whats In A Name?
Kongos in those days usually had at least two names.
The first one was a zina dia santu (Saints name), given as a Portuguese name though often
pronounced as in Kikongo and always incorporating Dom or Dona as part of the name. So
someone named Joao would be called Ndozau, and someone named Miguel would be Ndomigel.
Their second name was a Kikongo name, like Mpanzu, Nkuwu, Vita, Nzinga and so on. As far as I can
tell people got both names from their parents when they were born, and they probably started using
the zina dia santu even before baptism. If people had two Kikongo second names, the second one
was the fathers first name, sort of like the Scandanavian system where a Johans child is named
Johansson.
Beatiz second names mean scheme or plan (Kimpa), and war (Vita). It might be because she
was born in a war and this was added, or it might just be her fathers first Kikongo name. King Antonio
I had Vita as an element in his name; some people use this as evidence she was descended from this
king who was killed in the Battle of Mbwila in 1665. I think such a fact would have been noted at the
time and I doubt it.
Nowadays, people in Angola and DRC tend to look down on the zina dia santu, which they view
(wrongly, I believe) as a remnant of the colonial past. Many Angolans believe that somehow the
Portuguese organized all that Christian stuff in Kongo and the local people resisted or rejected it.
I think the reason for this is twofold: first, because thats what the Portuguese claimed during the
colonial period, that they really more or less created the Kingdom of Kongo, which is totally untrue. A
second reason is because most Angolans with any nationalist feeling dont like to be identified with
Portugal and so look to a non-Portuguese past. Hence, D Beatriz is rather militantly known as Kimpa
Vita in Angola and one does not often hear her Christian name, though of course people know it.
-J.K.T.
Dona Beatriz rejects or alters a number of religious practices we might think of as essentially
Catholic, like the iconography of the cross, but shes not doing it in the name of rejecting
Catholicism shes doing it in the name of Saint Anthony of Padua. Was there simply a pentup need for renegotiating the way the faith worked for Kongolese? If so, did it happen in some
other way after she was executed?

I think she was concerned that Christianity was too European, and one of the things she chided the
missionaries about was that they did not represent any black saints.
She had direct revelation from God on her side, she died every Friday and spent each weekend in
Heaven conferring with the Heavenly Father about the affairs of Kongo and so what she got there was
pretty much undeniable. From these sessions in Heaven she learned the stories about Jesus being
born in Nsundi, baptized in Sao Salvador and Mary being a slave of a Kongo marquis. There was
probably a lot more richness to these stories that our accounts tell us.
Kongos were pretty sure, I think, that God was an African and their pride also gradually placed stories
in Africa, so in this way Beatriz was confirming what people believed or wanted to believe. After her
death, we find a lot of art objects, particularly crucifixes, in which Jesus is shown as an African (his
features are African) and is wearing a cloth with a specifically Kongo design. Cecile Froment has
recently competed a wonderful Ph.D. thesis at Harvard on this art which I think will really demonstrate
how much the Church in Kongo incorporated Kongo concepts. I dont know if Beatriz movement
inspired this art directly, but her movement and the art together represent what many people were
thinking.
An aside here. From Afonsos time onward, there was a desire to make an independent Kongo church
under its own bishop and with its own clergy. They had the educational resources to support this, so
they felt they should. Alvaro II entertained ideas that he could control such a church, that the king was
vicar of his kingdom and could appoint clergy at will. This wasnt canonical and the church didnt
support it, even going to far as to try some of those who advised him on this through the Inquisition.
But even when Kongo got its own bishop in 1596, the kings of Portugal managed to get control of
appointment and put Portuguese in there.
This was the cause of endless conflicts between the kings and the bishops, particularly because of the
hostility between Portugal and Kongo over Angola. Finally, a compromise was worked out. While the
bishop ended up residing in Angola, and he refused to ordain many Kongolese, the priestly needs of
Kongo were to be met by missionaries, who werent really there to spread the faith (it had already
spread) but to perform the sacraments that an ordained priest could. Because Portugal didnt want
Kongolese clergy, and Kongo didnt want Portuguese clergy, the compromise was to chose Italian
clergy who were from neutral states (mostly Florence, but others as well). These priests came from the
Capuchin order, a strongly Counter-Reformationist order that wanted to purge Kongos Catholicism of
its local elements in the name of purifying the faith. That didnt go so well, and the struggle over just
how Kongo the church could be was waged along these lines.
Beatriz came into this struggle on the Kongo side. While not denying the Capuchins their place as
priests, she contended with them over the theological questions. She lost this round, mostly for
political reasons and not theological ones. Maybe the African Jesus of Froments thesis was the
theological victory of Beatriz or at least her followers.
She occupies the ruined former capital. Whats the significance here? Had she remained
unmolested, what trajectory might her movement have been on?
I think that messianic religious leaders like her in a politically charged environment dont have much
chance unless they are very astute or their supporters are strong. Of course occupying the capital was
vital. It had been abandoned in 1678 and was in ruins, yet it was the very symbol of Kongo. The kings
were all buried there, the cathedral was there. Holding the city was in effect restoring the kingdom and
presumably ending the civil war.
She could only have remained in power if she had stayed with Pedro Constantinho and if his forces
had been enough to protect her and to fend off the inevitable attacks that the other two primary
contenders, Joao II of Bula and Pedro IV of Kibangu, would mount. Pedro ended up beating both of
these two, first Pedro Constantinho in 1709 and then Joao. So with Pedro Constantinho as patron she
could not have survived.
She also made the political mistake, which we can only put down to overconfidence or naivete, of
going back home to her parents who lived in Pedro IVs domain to have her baby. Having the baby
also upset her, and made her feel guilty since as a saint she should not have done this.
But lets be a bit speculative and say that Pedro IV didnt capture her, or he decided to follow her and
put distance between himself and the Catholic clergy who were obviously opposed to her. What might
have happened? Perhaps he would have re-founded the church in Kongo with a new relationship to
Rome, and decided to have Kimpa Vita and some sort of apostolic succession from her ordain priests
and bishops. These would clearly have been drawn from the schoolmasters who ran the church in
Kongo anyway. A good number of them did become Antonioans and they would have created a new
church. It would have had some of its own new traditions, like the stories that Beatriz told about Jesus
birth in Nsundi and baptism in Mbanza Kongo, or the descent of kings and the like. These might have
been written since the chruch was literate and perhaps formed a new scripture. And perhaps they
might have found, in time a way to reconcile this with Rome, but maybe not. It would have been an
independent church as we see all over Africa now.
What exactly leads to her execution? Cui bono?

Her execution was done following her capture as described above. She was tried in a civil not an
ecclesiastic court under Kongo and not church law. Kongo law prescribed punishment for witchcraft
and heresy and those were the charges against her.
We dont know what happened in her trial since the record has not survived (my dream is to find it,
since there probably was one once, and who knows, it might have been sent to the Inquisition in
Portugal or Angola). But all we know is what the Italian priests, Bernardo da Gallo and Lorenzo da
Lucca told us, and they were not invited to the trial (fine by them; they didnt want to be too closely
associated with the results). They questioned her about her beliefs, and da Gallos account of that
inquiry is our basis for knowing what she believed. But they could do no more on that end than hear
the result. They were happy for it since thats what they wanted too.
Her movement isnt destroyed by her execution. What happens over the next 2 1/2 years before
the Battle of Sao Salvador? And what happens after that battle: What was Dona Beatriz
immediate legacy? Was she remembered, was her name invoked? What became of her
followers?
We know the movement remained very strong in Mbanza Kongo after her death, and that Antonian
prayers were shouted out by the defenders of the city in 1709. But there is not documentary mention
of them further after that. But dont read too much into this, since the documentary record becomes
very, very quiet after 1710 or so we just dont have any details about it from any source. In fact, until
I discovered a kinglist written in 1758 (I think by a Kongo) we werent sure how long the reigns of the
kings were for the next fifty years or even what order they ruled in. It is possible that the movement
survived even there.
We also know that the movement had very strong bases in the southwest part of Kongo, in lands
belonging the the Kimpanzu faction that had been headed by Suzanna de Nobrega. This faction was
not involved in the war in 1709 and thus would not have suffered the inevitable persecution that took
place in Mbanza Kongo.
But Manuel II, the king who followed Pedro IV after his death in 1718, came from that faction and
region. He had abandoned the Antonians to join Pedro, and perhaps he also suppressed the
movement back home. We have a couple of letter from him, written early in his reign and dealing with
ecclesiastical matters, but the question of Antonians doesnt come up in them.
After my book was published, Simon Bockie, a librarian at Berkeley and an excellent ethnographer of
Kongo (hes a Kongo himself) wrote a critical review. He claimed that I had not made use of abundant
oral traditions that he had heard in his youth about Kimpa Vita in writing my book and thus I had
written an account based on only the testimony of her enemies.*
I had searched published sources in French, Portuguese and Kikongo for traditions that I could relate
to Beatriz when I did my research, and I did make as much use of these as I could when I wrote. But
at the time I had not been able to do research in Mbanza Kongo and so had to let that aspect go.
When my wife, Linda Heywood and I went to Mbanza Kongo in 2002, we specifically asked about
traditions concerning Kimpa Vita (as she is usually called today) and were taken to a man who claimed
to be the local expert on her. He asked us if we wanted to hear the tradition in French, Portuguese or
Kikongo (Mbanza Kongo is very near the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
probably half the population is trilingual). We said Kikongo, which he proclaimed to be the right answer.
He then went into a half-hour or maybe forty-five-minute discourse on the question. He had some
interesting things to say. First, I noticed that he gave dates in his account, but he stated them in
French. Likewise, he mentioned the names of the missionaries and the Christian names of Kongo
kings in French also. I thought this was strange and concluded that he had received a fed back
tradition, meaning that he had combined what he might have known from oral sources, such as his
parents or elders, with written sources that drew on the movement which was described in French at
least as early as 1953.
I might have easily concluded that both his traditions and those Bockie heard as a youth were simply
feed back stories made to surround an event known only from modern historical reconstruction. You
can hear such a tradition and have no idea that it is of modern creation, since you might not know its
sources and even the one telling you might have heard rather than read it. Personal elaboration
around a few set facts is a common point of oral tradition, and thus explaining things one receives
from tradition or even from books can be expanded this way.
But having said that I was very intrigued by other elements in the story which were purely Kikongo.
The most important was the very significant role played in the story I heard in Mbanza Kongo by
Beatrizs mother (ngudi andi Kimpa Vita), to the point where much of the inspiration of the movement
was in fact from the mother, and moreoever, the mother continued the movement after her daughers
death.
The traditionalist went on to link modern religious movements through the descent of this mother. Was
it possible that the movement did live on? I cant say. I do know that several independent churches
claim Kimpa Vita as their founder, or claim to be heirs to her message, most notably some branches of
the Kimbanguist church (founded in the 1920s by a prophet named Simon Kibangu) and the Bundu

dia Kongo, a rapidly growing church founded by Mwanda Nsemi in the 1960s. It could be true, or it
could be simply propaganda of these movements, also fed back into tradition.
Was it unusual that this movement was led/instigated by a woman? Or would that not have
been consequential to her followers and opponents?
The movement was led by Saint Anthony; D Beatriz was only his earthly form. Why he chose a woman
is harder to say.
Did it make a difference that he did? Probably. Beatriz realized that the woman/man thing was a
problem. When Pedros soldiers arrested her they challenged her, asking how Saint Anthony, who was
a man, could have a baby. Her only answer was that she didnt know, only that it had come from
Heaven. She certainly was attentive to women; for example, she could make the barren bear children,
and women were among her close followers.
I dont think, though, that we should read too much into the sex issue. There were also a number of
very powerful women in Kongo at her time: Queen Ana Afonso de Leao all but ruled the southeast,
and Queen Suzanna de Nobrega ruled the southwest. Although Joao II ruled Lemba, everyone knew
that his sister, Elena was the real ruler of that territory. There were provisions in Kongo law allowing
women who reached a certain political level to have male concubines and treat them more or less as
men treated female concubines.
Finally I confess that I didnt do as much as I wanted to or could about the question of women and
females in Kongo life when I wrote the book, and sacrificed some analytical asides in the interests of
narrative. I tried to remedy this ever so slightly in an dense and technical article I published in the
Journal of African History, called Elite women in the Kingdom of Kongo, not for the faint-hearted, that
addressed the question of female power. I had also addressed female power in the life of Queen
Njinga, who ruled in the Kimbundu speaking area south of Kongo, in another article some twenty years
ago, and I hope to write more about women in the future.
Has there been a reclamation or rediscovery of her in the postcolonial period? How does Dona
Beatriz/Kimpa Vita read in Angola now?
As long ago as 1996 there was an official decision to erect a statue to her somewhere in the country.
There is an image of her, drawn by Bernardo da Gallo from life, on the cover of my book, so it wouldnt
be hard to do. This would be the book D Beatriz Kimpa Vita, with the full apparatus of scholarship, as
opposed to the tradition Kimpa Vita, supported by the oral traditions and independent churches. It
will be interesting to see how these two versions, my book, and Kongo pride run into each other.
* Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (1998), pp. 645-647, in which Bockie writes,
As a child growing up in the Lower Congo listening to tales from our oral history, I heard many times
about the exploits of Kimpa Vita, who was still remembered after 250 years as a major cultural heroine
It was something of a shock to find that Thornton has chosen to present his account almost
exclusively through the eyes of her enemies and killers there remains no convincing Kongo voice or
presence in this book.
Also On This Date

1822: The audacious Denmark Vesey

Possibly Related Executions

1431: Joan of Arc

1615: Kate McNiven, the Witch of Monzie
1546: Anne Askew, the only woman tortured in the Tower

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40