The New Christian Cadornega and his work on the Angolan wars in the seventeenth century

Abstract:

The article analyzes the trajectory of Antônio de Oli veira Cadornega, author of História Geral das Guerras Angolanas (1680). We examine aspects of the work linked to the author’s concerns - the wars involving the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the kingdoms of Congo and Angola - highlighting his Lusocentric position. The 1972 printed edition is used, as well as the bibliography about the work and its author. We seek connections between the writing of the text and the Portuguese political crisis in the seventeenth century, including the inquisitorial one, as well as between the history of its editions and the Portuguese context in the 20th century. The focus of our reflection, however, is that Cadornega was a New Christian, through his mother, and may have practiced Crypto-Judaism, whether in his youth in Vila Viçosa, or in Africa, like the group of Portuguese New Christians studied by Horta and Mark in Senegambia, in The Forgotten Diaspora (2011).

Keywords:
Cadornega; Angolan Wars; Inquisition

Resumo:

O artigo analisa a trajetória de Antônio de Oliveira Cadornega, autor de História geral das guerras angolanas (1680). Examinamos aspectos da obra ligados às preocupações do autor - as guerras envolvendo os portugueses, os holandeses, o reino do Congo e o de Angola - destacando a sua posição lusocêntrica. Para tanto, utilizamos a edição impressa de 1972 e a bibliografia sobre a obra e seu autor. Buscamos as conexões entre a escrita do texto e a crise política portuguesa no século XVII, inclusive a inquisitorial, bem como entre a história de suas edições e o contexto português no século XX. O foco de nossa reflexão reside, porém, na condição de cristão-novo do autor, por linha materna, e na possibilidade de ter praticado o criptojudaísmo, seja na juventude, em Vila Viçosa, seja na África, assim como o grupo de cristãos-novos portugueses estudado por Horta e Mark na Senegâmbia, em The Fortgotten Diáspora (2011).

Palavras-chave:
Cadornega; Guerras angolanas; Inquisição

From manuscript to publication

This article examines a work that is little cited in Brazilian historiography, except in the case of those who study Africa or authors concerned with the link between Africa, Brazil, and Portugal at that time. This is História Geral das Guerras Angolanas¹ by Antônio de Oliveira Cadornega. The Africa described by Cadornega is Angola, but not just, because it also includes descriptions of the kingdom of Congo and its involvement in the wars in West-Central Africa in the seventeenth century. It is worth noting that this Angola does not exactly correspond to the current country of Angola, as at the time it was one kingdom amongst others in the region. Cadornega’s work remained in manuscript, circulating in various copies over centuries, and was only published in 1940, in the context of Salazarist Portugal and the Second World War.

In this analysis of the work, as well as examining the seventeenth century context in Portugal and West-Central Africa, we seek to discuss the pertinence of the book to the historiographic genre, as understood in the seventeenth century, as well as its ethnogra phic potential, despite it being a Eurocentric work, or better Lusocentric.

In the case of HGGA, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the middle of the intensification of Portuguese colonization in Africa, there was an attempt to publish the second volume in 1902, in Revista Portugal em África, under the direction of Fr. José Maria Antunes. However, this lacked continuity. Between 1933 and 1938, Revista Diogo Cão, under the coordination of Fr. Ruela Pombo, published parts of Volumes I and III, in a serial format. The 1940 edition, annotated and corrected by Matias Delgado, afterwards reproduced in facsimile and published in 1972, finally presented the three complete volumes. However, although this edition included the three volumes under the same title, the way that Cadornega introduces volumes II and III shows that there was a clear difference in the way that he thought about his works. In volume II, he states that: “with this second volume of the general history of the Angolan wars, for a second time I dive into such a profound gulf” (Cadornega, v. II, n.p.). In v. III, he declared: “for the third time at much more risk to my person I will particularly describe all the things of these Kingdoms of Angola, which came to my notice, to fulfill what I promised in my History of the Angolan Wars” (Cadornega, v. III, p. 3). This corroborates the narrative of v. II, finished around September 1680, when the author takes his work to be finished, suggesting that another writer should continue the history - “some curious person will henceforth write what else happens in these kingdoms, giving news to the world of the progress of the wars of Angola and other things happening, and to tell what will be” (Cadornega, v. II, p. 434-435). Moreover, the volume ends with an indication that HGGA has come to an end and not just v. II: “End of the Second Volume and of the General History of the Angolan Wars” (Cadornega, v. II, p. 473).

In other words, the writer himself shows that v. III is not the third volume of HGGA, but belongs to another moment of writing, which he had promised to produce after completing the two volumes of HGGA. Moreover, v. III does not deal with territorial conflicts, but presents a descriptive nature of a geo-ethnographic nature. For this reason, Cadornega called it the “History of Angola (or Angolana)” or the “General History of Angola (or Angolan)”, without reference to wars. Whether on the frontispiece of the manuscript of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon or in the National Library of Paris, both reproduced side by side in publications between 1940 and 1972, the title of “History of Angola” can be seen.

Since José Matias Delgado had died in 1932,² he did not see the publication and also did not participate in the composition of the third volume. Did Delgado effectively publish this volume under the same title as the previous one? The fact is that the three volumes came to be published in 1940 as volumes of the same work, in the same year as the Exhibition of the Portuguese World - a commemoration of the foundation of the Portuguese kingdom (1140) and the Restoration (1640). Therefore, it is inevitable not to think of the edition of HGGA as a product of Salazarist propaganda. Consequently, the general title for the three volumes configures an idea of the history of Angola as an appendix of the history of Portugal, while the publication of an isolated volume with the title “History of Angola” could suggest an - undesirable - national character to the so-called Overseas Province of Angola, a credible hypothesis.

HGGA covers a century of history, from 1575 to 1680, with Cadornega having been a contemporary of events for around 40 years. Volume I covered events from 1575 to 1648, organized in a chronological form, according to the sequence of governors. Cadornega, thus, does not begin the narration with his arrival in Angola, in 1639 (which is only mentioned 190 pages into the work). Rather it goes back to the beginning of the occupation of the area by the Portuguese, through Pedro Dias de Novais, donatary captain and governor.

Divided into five parts and 38 chapters, the first volume of HGGA describes governmental successions, local territories and kingdoms, Dutch attacks, and the Flemish conquest (1641); the actions of Queen Njinga are discussed often, so often that he presents not only the Portuguese conquests, but also those of the “warlike queen”, which impressed him. It is also interesting to note that although he prioritizes the narrative of events in Angola, he seeks to relate this to events in Portugal. This is what can be seen in relation to the restoration, news of which, arriving in Luana in 1641, he recorded in some detail, celebrating it: “fulfilling in this (the Portuguese king proclaimed in 1640) the Word of God was given in Campo de Ourique to our first King Dom Afonso Henriques” (Cadornega, v. I, p. 225-226).

Volume II gives continuity to the narrative from 1648 onwards, the year of the reconquest of Angola by Portuguese, covering a period of a little more than thirty years up to 1680. It looks at the success of Salvador Correa de Sá e Benevides in expelling the Dutch and the difficulties faced in the Kingdom of Benguela. In it are narrated the arrival of the Italian Capuchins, the conquest of the region of Quissama, the laments resulting from the death of João IV in 1656, and confrontations with the king of the Congo. He highlights the effort to propagate the Catholic faith in the region, “overcoming difficulties for the good of souls […], ending with the Sobas as vassals [subjects] of Your Majesty who God may keep if they are baptized, marry, confess, and have an ecclesiastic burial” (Cadornega, v. II, p. 407). Throughout the volume, Queen Njinga continues to be the protagonist in the Angolan world, such as her contact with the Capuchins, the rites practiced in Matamba, until the report of the death of she “who appeared immortal” (Cadornega, v. II, p. 219), which occurred around 1663. At that time Cadornega highlights the grandeur of Njinga: “much can be said and written about what this valiant woman and queen did during the course of such a long life, but there is no one who gives reports of everything but a few things […], which this Author had no little care in reaching” (Cadornega, v. II, p. 220). He also stated that her deeds surpassed other famous women in universal history, such as Cleopatra. He also narrates the “unease” through which the kingdom of Matamba passed in the following years, especially after the death of Dona Bárbara, successor of Njinga.

In his 1959 article “The History of Cadornega in the British Museum,” Charles Boxer, states that when he consulted documents in the British Museum, he found in the catalogue of F. F. Figanière, from 1854, part of the second volume of HGGA, identifying the pages of this copy corresponding to the original written in Cadornega’s own hand, amongst other details, stating that “Cadornega’s handwriting is unmistakable” (Boxer, 1959, p. 291).

The man behind the work

Despite the acknowledged importance of HGGA for studies of seventeenth century Angola,³ it is interesting to note the lack of more robust biographic information about him. The work of HGGA overlapped with its author, who seemed to want to hide himself, as he actually did, exiling himself when still young in the kingdom of Angola.

In any case, it is in the work that we can find the first relevant biographic details about the Cadornega. It can be read in the introduction to v. I: “the Author shows the reason he had to dedicate this history to the Prince, may Our Lord Guard him”, and in it Cadornega provides part of his genealogy, though only the paternal side, as a form of justification for its dedication. The passage is still relevant for discovering his fidalgo origin:

Similar to my great-grandfather Damião Peres de Cadornega who was a servant in the Royal Household, my grandfather Cristóvão Peres de Cadornega, was taken into it as a fidalgo squire and raised for his services, after becoming a knight in the war in African, and he was granted, in the time of the Lord King Dom Sebastião and the Queen Regent Dona Catarina, with my grandmother Violante Gomes de Azevedo, the office of the Executor of Estremoz, receiving continued favors from the Royal House of Bragança; and my brother and uncle was a servant and chaplain; -my father Antônio de Cadornega e Oliveira had bread [money] with which to support his children; my brother and I - honors and favors with this Charter. These are obligations which accompany me, to take confidence to make this Dedication of this General History of the Angolan Wars to the Prince of the Kingdoms of Portugal and its Conquests, may we live many years, and God keep him (Cadornega, v. I, pp. 7-8).

As we have seen Diogo Cão published parts of volumes I and III of the work in 1934, but did not provide any information about the author, restricting to calling him “Father of the History of Angola”. Fr. Ruela Pombo, responsible for the work, highlighted his own effort in the reading of the manuscripts and praised Fr. José Matias Delgado as an “enlightened, but very modest, researcher of the History of Angola”.

In the presentation of v. I of HGGA, Cadornega also stated that he had lived in Angola for forty years, having arrived in the territory in 1639 (p. 9), information which says nothing to us about his age. Some readers have demonstrated a certain ingenuity in considering Cadornega’s words about himself reliable when he compared himself to Julius Caesar and Camões, in the conjunction of sword and pen, and declares that “in the time in which this general history of the Angolan wars is being written, he is the oldest author involved in them” (p. 10). This reference to Cadornega being the oldest in that land has been used by some scholars of his work to presume that 1610 was the year of his birth. This appears in the portentous Historiografia portuguesa by Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão (1973), and also in Beatrix Heintze (1996). However, this declaration does not explain the age question at all: he could have been the oldest in the land in the sense of having lived there longer, nothing more.

The imbroglio begins to clear up in Heitor Gomes Teixeira’s introduction to the 1982 edition of Descrição de Vila Viçosa, also written by Cadornega in 1683. It is stated here that he was born in 1624, based on a solid documentary foundation: his baptism register, from 2 March 1624, as shown in the certificate available at the Évora District Archive.⁴ Teixeira just points to the considerable distance between 1610 and the year of baptism to discard the data presented by Serrão almost a decade earlier, without making more commentaries. We consider it important to emphasize the proximity between birth (perhaps at the end of 1623) and baptism, taking into account the inquisitorial context and the genealogy of Cadornega, of Old Christian origin on his paternal side but New Christian on his maternal. For this reason, it is difficult to assume that the family had taken around 13 years to baptize their son Catholic, incurring the risk of being suspected of being Jewish.

Also in Heitor Gomes Teixeira’s introduction, we can find the first references to the inquisitorial processes of Antônia Simões Correa and Violante de Azevedo, respectively mother and sister of Cadornega, accused of Judaism. It is fundamental to consult these. In both there appears the writer’s name, Antônio de Cadornega, Antônia Simões Correia’s widowhood, and the genealogy of Violante. Heitor Gomes Teixeira does not enter into the question in any depth, only transcribing two small extracts of the records. It appears to us that references to these records in later works have been made without a proper reading of the manuscripts, due to the superficiality of the approach, only citing the family relationship between the writer and those being processed, with a brief allusion to the sentences, in some cases with dating errors or even in relation to the outcome of the processes.

In the genealogy session in Antônia Correia’s case, she declares that of her four children, only Violante, also being prosecuted, was alive, and only cites the name of another daughter, omitting the names of her sons: “who is the widow of Antônio de Cadornega, Old Christian, with whom she had children, boys who died, and Violante de Azevedo, single of 25 years of age, and Francisca de Azevedo, who died four years ago, and who was single”.⁵ Violante, in addition to the nominal mention of her brothers, declared that they did not live in the Kingdom: “And that she the declarant had two brothers and a sister, namely: Manoel Correa de Cadornega and Antonio de Oliveira de Cadornega, and both had been absent from the Kingdom [of Portugal] for years, and were single, and Francisca de Azevedo, who died some years ago, being single”.⁶

In any case, it is possible to presume, taking into account the episodes narrated above, that Cadornega could have been a Judaizante (a Judaizer) at least in his infancy, or perhaps afterwards in Africa. Not because he was a New Christian, since the majority of them tended to assimilate Catholicism over time if confined in the Portuguese world. Moreover, not all New Christians were Judaizantes. The hypothesis of the Judaizante Cadornega is strengthened exactly due to the cases in question taken against his mother and sister for the crime of Judaism. It is probable that in his childhood in Vila Viçosa he had experienced the food taboos of Judaism, and who knows the funerary rites of some relative on the maternal side, perhaps even the traditional shabat celebrated by New Christians. This hypothesis is credible if we remember that in families of a Jewish origin, the role of women, who were always decisive at home, expanded considerably after the forced conversion of 1497. The closure of Jewish schools and synagogues, as well as the confiscation of books in Hebrew, ruptured the eminently masculine synagogical Judaism. Identity based resistance in this situation of a siege depended on the initiative of women, especially the oldest in the family, who passed on to their daughters, and then to granddaughters, the norms of halachá - which we can characterize as Jewish customs linked to daily life, always related to the precepts of the Torah (Assis, 2012).

Returning to Cadornega. Was he first educated in the Catholic school in which he studied or at home? Like the celebrated Antônio Vieira, who was educated by his partly New Christian mother until 9 years of age, before studying with the Jesuits in Bahia? It is known that Cadornega studied in Convento dos Agostinhos (established in the thirteen century), in Vila Viçosa, taught by friars (classes of Latin and Portuguese). How much did he preserve of the Jewish customs transmitted by his mother in his childhood? Why was he afraid of the Inquisition, if he was only a New Christian loyal to the Church, to the point of fleeing Portugal in 1639 to the ends of the earth in Angola?

However, the cases taken against Cadornega’s mother and sister did not offer any evidence of crypto-Judaism on the part of the son, as we have stated. In the Genealogy session of the process, Antônia Simões Correia, declared that her two sons had died in childhood, as well as one of her daughters. Among those accused by the Holy Office of the crime of Judaism, it was usual to protect relatives, especially adult children, alleging that they had died or that their whereabouts was unknown.

In any case, Vila Viçosa, the city where he born and grew up, was full of New Christians, many of them Judaizantes. Antônio Borges Coelho, in a classic book about the Inquisition in Evora, found more than 8,000 cases between 1553 and 1688, of which 84% were about accusations cases of secret Judaism (Coelho, 1987, p. 72) The young Cadornega volunteered to fight in the kingdom of Angola, leaving Vila Viçosa, probably encouraged by his mother to protect him from possible accusations, since his father insisted on following a lettered career (Cadornega, v. I, p. 6).

It can be added that when she was arrested in 1662, Antônia Simões Correia was an old woman of 70, which indicates 1592 as the probable year of her birth, around 100 years after the conversion of Jews in Portugal (Correia, 2008). Her maternal great-grandmother was partly New Christian and could well have been one of the first converts, among the “baptized standing”, or a daughter of them (Lipiner, 1998). In any case, the “Jewish blood” of the future writer came from the maternal lineage, and with it the propensity to heresy, at least according to the logic of the modus faciendi inquisitorial.

Let us proceed with this conjecture. Cadornega landed in Africa at the end of the Iberian Union, a region where the Portuguese New Christians controlled a large part of trade, above all in Cabo Verde, São Tomé, and Angola. No longer in Guinea, since the Dutch captured São Jorge da Mina in 1637. In this scenario it was generally New Christians who won the contracts for trade along the African coast, of which there is ample documentation in the Overseas Archive (Arquivo Ultramarino) in Lisbon. On the coast of Guinea and Cabo Verde, for example, one of the most important slave traders was the New Christian João Soeiro, who won a contract for five years in 1609, with the right to send shipments of slaves to Brazil and the Antilles. He placed New Christians that he trusted, relatives and friends, in the administration of his business in Cacheu and Cabo Verde. He encouraged the apostasy of New Christians in Guinea and there is evidence he built an informal synagogue there, run by Rabbi João Peregrino (Horta and Mark, 2011). In 1622, the former governor of Guinea, Francisco de Moura, wrote that the “people of the Nation lived there without any respect for the Holy Catholic faith” (Salvador, 1981, p. 21-23).

Also in Angola New Christians were slave dealers and purchasers of contracts. Pedro Rodrigues de Abreu obtained the lease for the Angolan slave trade in 1636. Another was Lopo da Fonseca Henriques, one of various Portuguese who settled east of Angola after the capture of Luanda by the Dutch in 1641. All continued to work in the slave trade, sharing it with the Dutch, through Muxima, Cambambe, and Massangano. Lopo da Fonseca even won a slaving contract in 1645, in the reign of João IV, notwithstanding Dutch control of the region.

This commitment of New Christians to the African slave trade has been examined in depth in recent decades, above all in studies on commercial networks at a global scale (Curto and Molho, 2003, p. 569-579), which involved various types of goods on all continents interlinked by maritime expansion. Iberian Jews and New Christians were protagonists in these wide-ranging mercantile networks, even being disputed by kings and princes, due to the facility they had for European networks (Swetschinski, 2000). Janaína Guimarães summarizes this:

These family and friendship networks were fundamental for the commercial and maritime expansion process of European nations in the so-called modern era. However, we cannot forget that these elements, although mobile, were here for a while, living with the others from the colony (Brazil). They brought and carried away not only goods but also religious conceptions, behavior, ways of working and thinking (Guimarães, 2005, p. 10).

This is the point which interests us in relation to Sephardic networks: the possibility of the reconstruction of identity, albeit fragmented, in regions less monitored by the Inquisition. This was the case of the kingdom of Angola, although the region had been subjected to visitations by the Lisbon Tribunal in the sixteenth century, as well as the Congo: first in 1561-1562; then in 1589-1591; and for a third time in 1596-1598 (Graziani, 2015, p. 3). All in the sixteenth century, with the large majority of denunciations, according to Horta, being made by Old Christians against New Christians for the crime of Judaism (Horta, 1988, p. 387).⁷ In the seventeenth century there was another visitation in 1626, restricted to São Tomé. Putting together an inquisitorial structure of commissioners and familiars was a lengthy process (Silva, 2020, p. 193-194), as well as complicated after 1641 by the Angolan-Congo and Portuguese-Dutch wars.

The fact is that there was a significant number of New Christians in Angola, above all men of various ages involving in trade, many Judaizante apostates, to judge by the high level of accusations of the previous century. It can be said that if Cadornega intended to practice Judaism outside Portugal, Angola offered sufficient conditions for this.

A time of the Inquisition in check

In the year of 1681 Cadornega sent his HGGA to Lisbon, and the Portuguese Inquisition saw its jurisdiction over the crimes of heresy and apostasy restored, a prerogative suspended by the papacy since 1674. Mere coincidence. The imbroglio resulted from the pressure exerted by Antônio Vieira against the Portuguese Inquisition since the 1640s and afterwards in the 1670s. The latter period saw the production of the manuscript Notícias recônditas e póstumas do procedimento das inquisições de Espanha e Portugal, for a long time attributed to Vieira or a former notary of the Portuguese Holy Office, Pedro Lupina Freire. To the contrary of what many have stated, Notícias was not completed in 1672 or 1674, in the peak of the campaign led by Vieira in Rome, although part of the manuscripts then came to the knowledge of the Roman Holy Office (Mattos, 2019, p. 84-110).

However, there can remain no doubt that the Notícias were part of the offensive of Portuguese New Christians and their Old Christian supporters against the Inquisition. This was not the case of HGGA, although the author was of Jewish descent. Indeed, the Holy Office authorized the production and circulation of copies, at least of the first volume, in 1683. “Any bookseller can bind this volume without scruples”, wrote the examiner Cristóvão de Foyos, on 13 December 1683. The Holy Office saw nothing in the work which went against the Catholic faith. Manuscript copies circulated in the eighteenth century, various were lost, others were not. Did Cadornega intend to publish it at this time? Why did he get someone he trusted to submit his manuscripts to the Inquisition?

We saw that Cadornega left Portugal very young, at the age of 15 or almost 16. He never returned to Portugal, dying in São Paulo de Luanda in 1690, at the age of 66. In her doctorate Priscila Weber stated that:

We speculated that his departure was because Cadornega was a New Christian and needed to free himself of the inquisitorial yoke, while the Crown needed reinforcements in ‘Angola’ due to Dutch offensives. His remaining there is due to the avoid ance of inquisitorial persecution and the persecution his family had suffered, completely discouraging his return to Portugal (Weber, 2018, p. 24).

As Weber states, Cadornega closely followed the Dutch conquest of Luanda in 1641, as well as Benguela, and the islands of São Tomé and Ano Bom, coming to control the trade in slaves from West Central Africa. It is also known that he then took refuge in Massangano (to the north of Luanda, alongside the Kwanza River), along with a large group of Portuguese and Luso-Angolans, where he lived until around 1680. However, it is debatable if he left for Angola to avoid the inquisitorial wrath, since, at the age of 15, Cadornega could not have been accused of the crime of heresy and apostasy. Nevertheless, Weber is correct to state that the processes against his family can explain Cadornega’s decision never to return to Portugal. His mother and one of his sisters were persecuted in the 1660s by the Évora Inquisition Court, which had jurisdiction over Vila Viçosa. His mother, Antônia Simões Correia, died in prison in 1662 and her bones were unearthed in 1668 to burn in the inquisitorial fire. Violante de Azevedo, his sister, was condemned to exile from Vila Viçosa, where she was born and lived.

The Portuguese political environment had been extremely troubled since the 1660s. First, the palace group favorable to Afonso VI, and led by Earl of Castelo Melhor, triumphed in 1656. It was also the time of the inquisitorial investigation of Antônio Vieira, who was allowed remain free until 1665, when he was arrested. In 1667 he gave in, admitted his errors, and received a light punishment. In the same year a palace coup overthrew Afonso VI and Earl of Castelo Melhor. With the rise of the future Pedro II as Regent, there came to power the Earl of Cadaval and the Earl of Ericeira, nobles close to Vieira, who recovered his rights in the Company of Jesus and was authorized to live in Lisbon, being appointed confessor of the Regent in 1668. However, his political space in court was not what it had been twenty years previously. He then obtained authorization from Pedro to travel to Rome to try to annul the sentence which the Coimbra Holy Office had imposed on him. He also went with the secret mission of combatting the Inquisition in the papacy which since 1669, after Portuguese victory over Spain, had recognized the Bragança dynasty as the legitimate government of the kingdom.

It was then that the fight against the Holy Office which had begun during the Restoration was restarted. A battle that was partly successful, since Vieira managed in 1674, through the intervention of the Pope Clement X, to have the Portuguese Inquisition suspended so that its cases could be examined by the Congregation of the Hoy Office of Rome. He was also successful in his personal cause in 1675: the sentence imposed on him by the Portuguese Holy Office was annulled and he was granted immunity against the court. (Marcocci and Paiva, 2013, p. 181-209). However, conservative forces in Portugal united in the face of this unfavorable context. In 1671 - before the suspension - the theft of sacred objects from Odivelas Monastery was attributed to New Christians by grandees from the clergy and nobility, leading to countless disturbances in various cities. The upper nobility feared the unstoppable rise of merchants of a Jewish origin if the Inquisition was weakened or abolished. The plot of the conservatives of the old order took form in a common proposal submitted to the Cortes of Portugal in 1668. Its proponents came from factions of the nobility undermined in the post-restoration era, sectors of the upper clergy discontent with the new dynasty, Old Christian traders who disputed space with new Christians, as well as personal enemies of Vieira. The main objective was to create an insurmountable barrier to the rise of New Christians and, who knows, to once and for all extinguish (secret) Judaism in Portugal. The proposal can be summarized in three points: 1) prohibit New Christians from holding positions in the judicial system and dignities reserved to those “clean of blood”; 2) prohibit matrimonial unions between New Christians and Old Christians; 3) expel from Portugal New Christians who had been submitted to the Holy Office, including their families (Vainfas, 2011, p. 246-249).

However, the decree of 1671 was never officialized, above all because the true thief of Odivelas was discovered: a young man of 19, Antônio Ferreira, was arrested for returning to the scene of the crime to steal more. He ended up confessing and was summarily executed by the secular judicial system. However, the Portuguese Holy Office remained in its defensive position. During its period of suspension, it was harshly punished by the Crown and the papacy.

It was in the pontificate of Innocence XI that Rome gave into the Inquisition, above all during the administration of Veríssimo de Lencastre, inquisitor-general after 1676. Marcocci and Paiva claimed that “everything came to a head in 24 December 1678”, when the pontiff published a brief giving a short period of ten days for the inquisitor-general to send to the congregation of the Roman Holy Office five original processes of defendants who had been relaxados (i.e., they had been burnt) as they were negativos (i.e., they had vehemently denied their guilt), “under the penalty of excommunication and losing their positions” (Marcocci and Paiva, 2013, p. 206-207). After various missteps, the rift ended in negotiation. The procurator of New Christians in Rome was dismissed under pressure; the Pope softened the threats against the Portuguese Holy Office; finally in 1680 the latter sent the processes demanded by the pontiff.

It was the prelude for the rehabilitation of the Portuguese Inquisition. In August 1681, Innocence XI restored the prerogatives of the court, which returned with great strength. Antônio Vieira, who at this stage had left Rome for a place on the Council of State, closely accompanied the final chapters of the imbroglio. On discovering that autos de fé had been authorized again, he decided to exile himself in Bahia, at the age of 73, where he would die in 1697. João Lúcio de Azevedo (2008, p. 251), his greatest biographer, described Vieira at this time as “defeated”.

The upper nobility of Portugal took advantage of the new scenario to attack the New Christians. In 1683, the nobility returned to the terms of the stillborn royal decree of 1671, albeit in a slightly milder way: New Christians who had been in autos de fé had to leave Portugal, leaving behind their children. This measure became known at the time as the “Law of Extermination”, which should not be understood as something literal, in comparison with the Nazi Holocaust of Jews (Ribeiro, 2020, p. 24). It was not a law, only a legal opinion or parecer, included in a codex of opinions in the National Archive of Torre do Tombo. Nor does it refer to the physical extermination of Jews, but rather Judaism as a heresy, through the exile of those practicing it.⁸

It was in this context that Cadornega sent his manuscripts about Angola to Lisbon. In theory he could not have chosen a year as unfavorable as he was a New Christian - despite the persecutions of 1668 and 1671. If by chance he thought of returning to Portugal in the 1660s, the condemnation of his mother and sister in 1662 made him desist. In the 1680s the context was impeditive. He preferred perpetual exile in the kingdom of Angola.

The Congo-Angolan Wars

We will now move on to the region studied by Cadornega. Congo and Angola formed the stage of the wars narrated by him. It is correct to designate the region in this way, not only due to the dynamics of the Atlantic slave trade, but also because of the sociocultural profile of the native groups. In the first half of the twentieth century Brazilian ethnologists discussed the ethnographic dimension of the traditional Congo-Angolan relationship. To cite just one example, Nina Rodrigues, in Os africanos no Brasil (1932) was perhaps a pioneer in identifying the differences between the Bantu and Nagô linguistic branches, identifying among the Bantu, their ethnolinguistic composition as the Congo-Angolan group (Rodrigues, 1977).

However, these generalizations fell into disuse in the second half of the last century, and above all in the current century, due to the advance of long-term historical and anthropological research on African culture. Based on fieldwork crosschecked with travel accounts, the bibliography distinguishes various languages, thought of as a base of ethnically different cultures, such as Kimbundu, Umbundu, Bakongo, and other languages.

However, it is not the moment to discuss this question. For now it is enough to emphasize that both in Ngola and in Kongo, as well as in surrounding smaller kingdoms and confederations, the Catholic catechism was considerable (Marcussi, 2012), although not homogenous, whether due to cultural diversities within African peoples or the different styles of the religious orders acting there (Souza, 2006). Anyway, the mark of what John Thornton called African Catholicism, focused on the Congolese case, was the mixing of the Roman version of Christianity with native religions (Thornton, 2004). The conversion of Manicongo to Catholicism in 1506, when he assumed the title of Afonso I, was a landmark in this process, because it also led to the aportuguesamento of political institutions in Angola, as solicited by Manuel, King of Portugal. Justice thus came to be guided by Portuguese norms, since the embassy of Simão da Silva, who implemented the 1512 regulation, which also allowed the old provincial chiefs the right to use the titles of earls, dukes, and marquis. The Congolese state lost the characteristics of a multi-community leadership to assume aspects of a Western Christian monarchy in the institutional sphere and in terms of political etiquette.

In the reign of Afonso I, the Portuguese-Congolese partnership was consolidated, but soon gave signs of weakness which over time would increase. The link began to fray in the reign of Álvaro II, between 1597 and 1614. Belonging to the lineage of Afonso I, he was the first Congolese sovereign to question Portuguese protagonism in this alliance. Things were increasingly confused for the Congo, because it was the time of the Iberian Union and the King of Portugal, as understood by the Congolese, came to be the King of Castille, something inconceivable for them, as they saw Portugal as a sovereign kingdom and not a vassal. However, Idílio do Amaral points to the vast correspondence of Álvaro II with the Luso-Hispanic monarchy between 1597 and 1613, not to mention the permanent embassies of the Congo in Portugal and the Vatican (Amaral, 1997, p. 115-131). Actually, the years of the Iberian Union were the prelude to an unavoidable war in the Congo, because there were political factions opposing Catholicism and the centralized monarchy in São Salvador (the former Mbanza Kongo). After the death of Álvaro II in 1614, he was succeeded by eight kings, the longest of whose reigns was eight years, with the majority being between one and two years. Several were assassinated by rivals (Silva, 2002, p. 434).

After the Portuguese Restoration of 1640, despite the Crown reiterating that the King of Congo was not a vassal of Portugal but “a brother in arms of its kings”, the fact is that Portugal always saw Congo as an instrument for expanding the Catholic faith and guaranteeing the slave trade in the region. Portugal did little to meet the demands of the kings of Congo since the beginning of the sixteenth century, as can be perceived in the correspondence between the two crowns, and moved its interests in the slave trade to Angola at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Figure 1
- Map of West Central Africa with the location of the main kingdoms

The picture became more complicated in 1641, when the Dutch West Indian Company conquered Luanda, Benguela, and islands that were strategic for the slave trade. The Dutch then tried to get close to Congo, ruled by Garcia II, with the idea of replacing Portugal in the Congo-Europe connection. What ruined this attempt was the Calvinism professed by the Dutch - proof of how enrooted Catholicism was in the spheres of power of the Congo. Garcia II gave some support to the Dutch, but refused to unite with those he considered heretics.

This “game of kings”, as Frederico Antônio Ferreira calls it, changed in the middle of the century (Ferreira, 2014). First with the departure of the Dutch, expelled from Luanda and their other conquests in 1648, with the Portuguese being led by the Luso-Brazilians under Salvador Correia de Sá e Benevides (Boxer, 1973). Second, with the growing rivalry between Congolese nobility and the monarchy in relation to the autonomy of provinces versus centralization of power. There were many conflicts, but it is worth highlighting the struggle of the Earl of Songo or Soyo, whom the Portuguese called Sonho, a coastal region vital for the Atlantic slave trade. Various earls of Soyo challenged the kings of the Congo in the seventeenth century. Since the 1640s they had sent embassies to the Dutch government in Pernambuco (1643), where they were received by Earl Maurice of Nassau, in the same manner that was done with the kings of the Congo. The former wanted to construct a military alliance against the Portuguese and their Angolan allies; and the latter to guarantee Dutch neutrality in Africa, guaranteeing on their part the continuity of the African slave trade.

It was in this declining political climate that Antônio I came to the throne in 1660, willing to confront the Portuguese. As well as restricting the religious administration of the kingdom in contacts with Rome, he prohibited the exploration of gold and silver in the Congolese mountains and refused to pay taxes to Portugal. Congo was alone and marginalized. However, it was Portugal, in the reign of Afonso VI, which attacked the Congo, putting the command of the army under André Vidal de Negreiros, one of the heroes of the Pernambuco Insurrection.

The war was resolved at the Battle of Mbwila on 29 October 1665. According to Cadornega’s narration, Antônio I confided the command of the defense of the kingdom to the Duke of Mbamba, with 10,000 men under him. The Portuguese attacked with around 300 soldiers, as well as Jaga or Imbangala warriors, armed with muskets and cannons. São Salvador was captured with only 12 Portuguese and 250 to 300 Jaga casualties, between dead and wounded. The Congolese were massacred, losing 5,000 dead, an infinity of wounded and the sacking of the royal palace. Antônio was wounded and soon afterwards decapitated, with his head being placed on a stake in the capital.

A huge succession crisis was triggered in the Congo, aggravated by the fact that the main candidates to the throne had died in the 1665 battle. São Salvador was left in ruins, abandoned in 1678. In theory this strengthened the pretensions of the Earl of Soyo, but what prevailed was complete decentralization for decades, with various postulants proclaiming themselves as kings of Congo.

The missteps of Congolese history in the seventeenth century are interlinked with those of Angola. Alberto da Costa e Silva, the main Brazilian Africanist, states that “what the Portuguese called the State or Kingdom of Angola came to be the greatest danger to the integrity and stability of the Congo” (Silva, 2002, p. 435). Angolan history offers female protagonism in the figure of Queen Njinga, also spelt Nzinga, Jinga, and Njinga. A native of Dongo or Ngola, she was born in 1582 from a union between King Ngola Kiluanje (killed in 1617) and one of his slaves, the concubine Kenguela Cacombe. Since a young age she received military training, as well as being a rival to her brother King Ngola Mbandi (Ambandi), who assassinated his nephew (Njinga’s son) to inherit the throne.

The kingdom of Angola had been going through various difficulties since the sixteenth century, starting with Paulo Dias Novais’ expedition in 1575, opening the way for a more effective occupation of the region. The Portuguese received military support from the Jagas and the occupation was more direct than in the Congo. However, it was territorially superficial, as was the practice of Portuguese maritime expansion. The kingdom of Angola was at the same time a vassal and rival of the kingdom of the Congo, both involved in the slave trade. Portuguese expansion increased during the time of the Iberian Union, with successive attacks, above all in 1617 and 1621. It was in this phase that the king of Dongo-Ngola, in an attempt at reconciliation, ordered his sister Njinga to negotiate peace with the Portuguese in 1622. In her meeting in Luanda with Governor João Correia de Sousa, she managed to guarantee the withdrawal of Portuguese troops from Luanda and the recognition to the sovereignty of Dongo. The truce extended to the Imbangalas, rivals of the Angolans and allies of the Portuguese. In compensation, the Dongo allowed trade with the Portuguese (above all of captives) and promised the conversion of its sovereigns to Catholicism. Njinga gave the example, having herself baptized in Luanda with the name of Ana de Sousa.

It can be said that this agreement was similar to the one signed with Afonso I in the Congo in the sixteenth century, though Angola’s subjection to Portugal was clearer. However, this agreement lasted less than the Portuguese-Congo one and only favored the Portuguese. The slave trade grew, with the support of the Ngola monarchy, and Portuguese territory expanded. Recognition of the sovereignty of the Angolan kingdom was precarious; the Portuguese did not want to repeat, from what it seems, the Portuguese-Congolese formula, then in a process of eroding.

In addition to the conflicts with the Portuguese, the King of Dongo faced serious internal problems. King Ambandi died in 1624, perhaps assassinated at the command of Njinga, who had replaced her brother. Not without internal opposition, since she was a woman and the daughter of a concubine, according to various historians (Miller, 1975, p. 210-216). She also assumed a position of fighting against the Portuguese, between 1624 and 1626, but the main opposition came from within the kingdom when a palace rival, Hari, dissatisfied with the female power established within the kingdom, subjected himself to the Portuguese and converted to Catholicism, assuming the title of João I. With Portuguese support he attacked Njinga’s army. Realizing that her defeat was imminent, Njinga left Luanda and led her army to Matamba, where she took power. She was officially Queen of Matamba from 1631 to 1663, the year of her death. Njinga was never recognized by the grandees of Angola as their queen. The question of gender was decisive in this case.

It can thus be seen that the 1622 peace agreement was far from bringing any political stability to the region. The Portuguese continued to attack Njinga’s troops and to support João I’s offensives, as well as those of the Imbangalas, which broke the truce signed in the agreement. Njinga returned to being Njinga, Queen of Matamba, with the title of Ngola Njinga, leaving behind the name Ana de Sousa. Her kingdom had a relatively marginal position during the ten years when the Dutch held Luanda. The Angolans of Matamba soon made an alliance which initially counted on the support of a hesitant Garcia II, King of the Congo.

Various battles took place over the decades, all narrated by Cadornega, the foundation of contemporary historiography in this aspect. Alberto da Costa e Silva assessed the results of the pact from the Angolan point of view. He stated that, “of their alliance with the Dutch, despite some serious military reverses, there remains a more than positive balance: (Njinga) expanded her power over new populations and new territories and became, above all in exchange for firearms, the main supplier of slaves to the Dutch” (Silva, 2002, p. 480).

Actually, for some years Matamba became a military power in the region. However, the Queen still cherished the idea of reigning in Ngola. She transferred the capital of Matamba to Cavanga, in the north of Angola, and from there harassed the Portuguese in Massangano. She obtained an important victory in 1644 but did not advance further. Her army lost at Cavanga in 1646. Two of the Queen’s sisters were captured and executed by the Portuguese. The Dutch from Luanda sent reinforcements and arms to Njinga in 1647. All in vain. Njinga saw no choice but to return to Matamba. In 1648, as is well known, the Portuguese expelled the Dutch from Luanda and other conquests in the region. In 1665, as has been seen, they also defeated the Congolese. Two years earlier the warrior queen had died, at more than 80 years of age. Not without reconverting to Catholicism and returning to be Ana de Sousa again, after meeting Italian Capuchins.

Writing and the legacy of the História Geral das Guerras Angolanas

Commenting on French narratives about the natives of Brazil in the sixteenth century, Michel de Certeau saw in this literature the outline of ethnological knowledge, the first steps of a discipline which would only flourish in the nineteenth century (Certeau, 1991, p. 221-226). Knowledge dedicated to researching the cultural other in the logic of difference and not in the civilizational hierarchy. Certeau called it heterology, albeit aware that these chroniclers were men of their time and, thus, steeped to various degrees in Eurocentric prejudice. Laura de Mello e Souza, referring to the European vision of natives and Africans at the time, stated that European demonology “has to be understood in the framework that Certeau calls heterology, and in connection with the travel texts of the 1500s which founded the anthropological perspective...” (Souza, 1993, p. 125), certainly replicated in the following two centuries.

Is Cadornega’s work an example of the heterology defined above? Yes, in various aspects. Especially in volume III, Cadornega deals with customs, family, kinship, religion, sexuality, and more importantly, seeks to define everything through the vocabulary of the languages of the peoples described, giving them meaning in Portuguese. An exemplary ethnolinguist. An ethnographer also connected with geography - although in this point he did not have much expertise, he did not even use the cardinal points in his descriptions.

An example of the valuable ethnographic information and at the same time the fragility of his geography vocabulary,⁹ can be found, among other examples, in the “descriptions of the nations of gentiles of the kingdom of the Congo with different languages and customs”. He mentions the Mexicongos, “who are the nobles and the people of the Court”; the Mexilongos, who are vassals of Earl of Sonho”; the Anzicos, “from the interior of the Congo”; the Monjolos, “from the sertão within the Congo”; the Majacas, “who are like the Jagas, fierce and brave”; the Sundis, “vassals of the Marquis of Sonso”; the Mulambos, “another nation from that kingdom”, the Mulazas, “from Congo de Amulaca, deep within the sertão” (Cadernega, v. III, p. 192). We can also find in Cadornega, precious information about the political configuration of the same kingdom, mentioning dukes, marquises, and earls from there, one by one. The Duke of Bamba, captain general, the one from Sundi and Bata, of royal lineage, the Earl of Sonho, “with greater power and authority than each of the dukes”, and 22 marquises, identifying to which duke or earl they were linked through vassalage (Cadornega, v. III, p. 194-195)

Ethnolinguistics and ethnopolitics are the high points of this volume, although like Rui de Pina in the previous century (Radulet, 1992), Cadornega assimilated the “cultural other” to European, and above all Portuguese, culture. He compared, or better, “translated” the alterity of African people to Portuguese cultural and linguistic values. A more Lusocentric and Eurocentric translation. The Eurocentric dimension (not just Lusocentric) of the report resides in the author’s enthusiasm to mention the Catholic constructions of each settlement visited along the Cuanza River. In the description of the space he pontificates the ardor for Catholic expansion. In questions of religion, Cadornega demonizes the peoples he describes, stating that they worshiped devils and prayed to idols. Nothing that differentiates him from other chroniclers of the time, whom Certeau calls heterologues or protoethnographs. For this reason, it is difficult to identity, in Cadornega’s writing, marks of what Thornton calls “African Catholicism”. For him, the gentiles (in the plural) of those parts were either baptized Catholics or were devotees of the demon, without greater reflection on religious mixtures. When local practices appeared, these were generally in relation to opposition to Portuguese culture, or before and after contact with Catholicism, when for various reasons, they abandoned the Christian faith and returned to their traditions.

An evident exception is the treatment given by Cadornega to the description of the practices and customs of the Jagas, perhaps because they had a military force which was allied with the Portuguese:

they have great veneration and respect for what they call their quicullos, which turns out to be the bones of their ancestors, […] and they make many sacrifices of gentiles and animals, spilling much wine, from Portugal and made from palms. […] In all things these Jaga, and more important business, as well as war and peace, they consult with their deceased lords and corpses, who give them their solutions (Cadornega, v. III, p. 223-224).

A Catholic while writing (although perhaps Judaizante in secret), Cadornega assumed without hesitation the Christian moralist discourse, such as:

Among the gentiles of Angola there is much sodomy, some share their filth and profanities with each other, dressed as women. These are called by the name of the land: Quimbandas, which is the district or lands where they are found, and where they communicate with each other. Some of them are sorcerers and because they have everything bad all the gentiles respect them or do not offend them at all and if one of that band happens to die, the others congregate to bury him, and no one else touches him, except those from the dark and dirty profession. And when they help to take him out of the house, to bury him, it is not through the main door, but they open the door behind the house, where they leave with him, as they used the one in the back yard, they want to dead man to leave through it. This caste of people is the one who shrouds them and gives them burial. And no one else comes to him, as we have said, which are not of his rabble. They always walk shaved, looking like capons, dressed as women (Cadornega, v. III, p.259).

Valuable information about the homoerotic practices in Angola (which also applies to the Congo) and proof of the absence of prejudice against them in those cultures. Through this one can understand the case of Francisco Manicongo, accused of sodomy by the Bahian inquisitorial visitation of the sixteenth century and who dressed like an authentic Quimbanda. Even his master - a shoemaker - was afraid of him. As for Cadornega, there is profusion of prejudicial judgments (filth, profanity, etc.), related to homoerotism, which do not have a racist connotation. They were common in Christian homophobic treatises of the time - both Catholic and Protestant (Vainfas, 1997, p. 211).¹⁰

Beatrix Heintze had no doubts about calling Cadornega not only an ethnographer, but also a historian (Heintze, 1995-1996, p. 75-86). But what type of history is in question here? It involves a history which draws on conceptions and styles of Graeco-Roman antiquity in which the theme of war was essential. Thinking of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and so many others who wrote in Western Antiquity, it would not be an exaggeration to state that for ancient historians, war was an authentic “engine of history” derived from universal and almost immutable human nature. François Hartog believed that the invasion of Greece by the Persians, which resulted in the Persian Wars (fifth century BCE), as narrated by Herodotus, was the decisive fact for the emergence of a secular historic conscience, and as a result the historic account. Not by chance is Herodotus considered the “father of historiography”. The concept of history is barely distinguishable from the concept of memory and there is consensus among the scholars of Antiquity that the historical narrative that emerged in Greece was always loyal to the etymological histôr (witness): concerned with the ordering of human and divine facts; valuing authors who had participated in the narrated facts, even if they took part in one of the sides of the conflicts. Our Cadornega thus followed, in his HGGA, the assumptions of writing history in the classical manner, as well as concentrating on a central theme in original historical conscience: war. We thus agree with Heintze when she states that Cadornega was also a historian.

However, there is more: Cadornega practiced a writing of history which came to prevail in the modern era, which returned to the classical conception of “history as the master of life”. A conception of history which sought, if not to combat, at least to offer an alternative to the providentialist history consolidated in the Middle Ages, according to which human actions resulted from the will of God. Due to an absolute lack of space, we are unable to enter into this question in greater detail, but it is worth adding that, as a master of life, the history of a kingdom, of a war, or even a period functions as an example to guide the future. The cult of exemplarity which history can offer prevailed, not so much as knowledge of the past, but as a guide to the future. A history concerned with celebrating great deeds with a clear moralizing purpose (Catroga, 2006, p. 13-15). All of this is present in HGGA.

Also present in HGGA is the celebration of the kingdom of Portugal, starting with the dedication to the regent Pedro, a little after he was proclaimed king, as well as the Restored monarchy. What is certain is that HGGA - which in the future would be appropriated in various forms - was in its time a testimonial narrative, close to chronicles or memorialist accounts - narratives which can contain a historiographic dimension. In this case the work proves in detail the meaning of the “Angolan Wars” (valid for other African wars): a dispute over power and territory among noble tribal leaders; their profound engagement in the Atlantic slave trade. The image of “mother Africa” raped by the Portuguese is nothing but an illusion. It is enough to read Cadornega.

From the publications made in the twentieth century, whether in a fragmented form in journals or the 1940 and 1972 editions, a certain re-dimensioning of Cadornega’s writing can be seen, reinserted in a new context and based on other supports. The appropriation of the seventeenth century work in response to other anxieties in the 1930s and 1940s, inscribed in the new moment of Portuguese colonization in Africa and at the beginning of the Estado Novo, and in 1972 reinserted in the time of the Colonial War, begun in 1961, confers other possible readings on the text.

Cadornega’s words gain another survival, no longer linked to the colonial needs of the twentieth century but Angolan desires for freedom. HGGA has been a revealing source for Angolan literary writing concerned with a more distant past (Franco, 2011; 2019; 2022), in search for episodes and characters. This is the case of works about Queen Njinga, such as the novel Nzinga Mbandi (1975), by Manuel Pedro Pacavira, and A Rainha Ginga. E de como os africanos inventaram o mundo (2014), by José Eduardo Agualusa. However, it is undoubtedly in the novels of Pepetela - A gloriosa família: o tempo dos flamengos (1999) and A sul. O sombreiro (2011) - in which Cadornega is recovered, including as a character. And his magnum oeuvre from the 17th century was historically reappropriated, either by historiography with a colonialist bias, typical of Salazarism, or by the literature engaged in the struggles for emancipation and construction of Angolan identity (Carvalho, 2022).

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• WEBER, Priscila Maria. Angola como conceito: uma análise da obra “História geral das guerras angolanas”, de Antônio de Oliveira Cadornega (século XVII) Tese (Doutorado em História), Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre, 2018.

• 1
  Hereafter HGGA.
• 2
  The information about the death of Delgado appears in a footnote at the end of Prólogo do Anotador, signed by Delgado, in v. I.
• 4
  According to Teixeira’s note, the baptism cert is on fol. 52-v of Baptism Register, no. 3 of the main parish of Vila Viçosa. (1982, p. XXXVII).
• 5
  Antónia Simões Correia’s process. Available at: ANTT, PT/TT/TSO-IL/028/02056.
• 6
  Violante Azevedo’s process. Available at: ANTT, PT/TT/TSO-IL/028/09939, fl. 38.
• 7
  Referring to the document “Denunciations of the Kingdoms of the Congo and Angola”, registered between 1620 and 1632, Tahinan da Cruz Santos states however that: “these are accusations that were collected by the priests of the Holy Office, in which there appear reports against Africans as well as black informants” (Santos, 2011, p. 237).
• 8
  Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT). “Pareceres sobre o modo de atalhar o judaísmo no Reino, remédio para os judeus que ficarem no Reino, concessão de honras e mercês aos cristãos novos, lei do extermínio, remissões de culpados entre Portugal e Castela, nomeação de conselheiros, breve do Quinquénio, freiras reconciliadas”. Lisboa. Available at: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=2318853. “Advices on how to cut Judaism in the Kingdom, remedy for Jews who remain in the Kingdom, granting of honors and favors to new Christians, extermination law, remission of culprits between Portugal and Castile, appointment of advisers, Brief of the Quinquennium, reconciled nuns”.
• 9
  Manuel Alves da Cunha, who revised and annotated this volume, complements Cadornega’s information in precious notes in the 1942 edition, whether geographic or ethnographic.
• 10
  A pioneering author in this case was Luiz Mott (1986, p. 27).

• 22
  Translated by Eoin O’Neill

• 3
  See, for example, the mentions of Cadornega, always in footnotes, in Monumenta Missionária Africana.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  24 July 2023
• Date of issue
  May-Aug 2023

History

• Received
  18 Aug 2022
• Accepted
  31 Jan 2023