Actors, Spaces, Translations: A History of Interactions and Relationships in the Capuchin Mission in the Kingdom of Kongo (c.1645–1715)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christina Brauner
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541763046

The historical Kingdom of Kongo in West Central Africa is known for its early and largely autonomous adoption of Christianity since the late 15th century. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how emerging Kongo Christianity can be fruitfully understood in terms of entanglements and processes of appropriation and translation. Building on this research, our project turns to the body of Capuchin missionary sources that were produced primarily between ca. 1645 and 1715 in and on the Kingdom of Kongo. Combining close reading with a systematic comparative approach, we focus on four selected mission reports (Girolamo da Montesarchio (1669), Luca da Caltanissetta (1701), Marcellino d’Atri (1708) and Antonio Zucchelli da Gradisca (1712)). We read these sources with a decentering approach, understanding them as products of a twofold translation process. In a first step, we consider interactions and conflicts between missionary and indigenous actors as spaces of cultural translation. By analyzing the positions of different actors from an intersectional perspective, we want to locate negotiations of social and religious roles in the context of dynamic power relations. A particular focus is on actors beyond the elites and spaces beyond urban centers in order to explore critical issues of everyday mission life such as supplies, mobility, and protection and to situate them in the broader context of a time of civil war and profound political and social change. In a second step, the missionary reports are analyzed as translations for European audiences. Thus, we trace their reception in the Capuchin Order, in the Roman Curia and beyond, in order to connect local interactions with global entanglements and to explore the role of this mission in the context of the history of global Christianities.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants