Page 133 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

The Middle Ages

Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão located the mouth of the Congo River
in A.D. 1482 and erected a pillar of stone that was found centuries later.
The words on that stone have been translated into English:

In the year 6681 of the World…and in that of 1482 since the birth
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the most serene, the most excellent and
potent prince, King John II of Portugal did order this land to be
discovered and this pillar of stone to be erected by Diogo Cão, an
esquire in his household. (Forbath, 73)

Missionaries and traders took commerce and religion to Africa. From
the time of Portuguese Prince Henry, the goal was to take Christianity
to the stations along the new routes. Sanneh adds: “As in the Congo, so
in Cape Verde islands, Africans educated in Lisbon were encouraged
to become priests and to take an active part in the work of the church”
(19). In keeping with the cultural blindness of the time, some African
Christians were taken to Portugal and given to the church as revenue.
In approximately A.D. 1482, the uninhabited island of São Tome was
settled by the Portuguese and it became a primary center for Portugal’s
West African enterprise. It also became a base for missionary activity, as
Hastings notes:

In 1534, a diocese of São Tome was established to include the
whole southern half of West Africa. While its bishops were often
non-resident, they came, nevertheless, to fill an important role
as ecclesiastical entrepreneurs between Portugal and the African
mainland. (72–73)

With excellent insight, West African church historian, Lamin Sanneh,
comments about the joint enterprise of trade and missions:

Where West Africa is concerned, we may conveniently divide
the Christian age broadly into three periods. The first period,
from the disappearance of the Church in North Africa to about
the fifteenth century, we may call the incubation period.… The
second period we may date from about 1450 to 1750, when
Christianity was transported to West Africa, mostly as a sterilised
European institution, safely quarantined in hygienic enclaves
along the coast whence it occasionally timidly emerged to make

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