ABSTRACT
João de Barros, author of the sixteenth-century chronicle Asia, reports that when Diogo Cão came back from the Congo in 1486,1 the king of Benin addressed a request to the king of Portugal, João II, asking for “sacerdotes pera o doctrinarem em Fé”.2 Although we know that Portuguese missionaries had been active on the Guinea Coast since the early explorations,3 sources do not report any reply from the Portuguese king, and we do not know whether the king of Benin was eventually catechized and baptized. It is surprising that the Portuguese, who, since the same year 1486, had been fully developing their relations with the Courts of the Congo and immediately satisfying their desire to convert to Christianity,4 were, on the contrary, refraining from involving themselves with the king of Benin, whose kingdom was closer to the coast of Mina (the Gold Coast). It appears that doubts were raised about the reason for his request, and the chronicler suspects that the man had a keen desire to overwhelm his antagonists on the coast.5 Were the Portuguese aware that conversion to Christianity might have an ulterior motive, and that the king of Benin was perhaps looking for a supernatural support stronger than that offered by his traditional deities? Were they combining political reasons with religious scruples in keeping that king on the edge of Christianity in order to protect their commercial allies on the coast of Mina? Anyhow, the Portuguese were aware that Christian faith was seen by the natives as a means of establishing an alliance with the Europeans, and as an instrument – reputed to be much stronger than their traditional cults – to achieve or consolidate political power. Should we suspect that the Portuguese were to some extent sharing the same ideology professed by their African interlocutors, i.e. an ideology that makes people convinced that success, either individual or collective, like military advance and destruction of adversaries, is a sign of celestial favor or even of predestination depending upon the will of superior nonhuman entities? The same ideology makes it possible to manipulate this superior will through some spiritual force, either possessed by some human agents or granted by more powerful entities.
