Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonine Movement

Abstract In 1704, on Mount Kibangu, near the mouth of Mbidizi river, Kimpa Vita, a woman apparently from the Kongo aristocracy baptized as Beatriz, proclaimed that Saint Anthony appeared to her while she was deeply ill. He urged for the recomposition of the Kongo political entity through the reaffirmation of the centrality of Mbanza Kongo, its symbolic capital, then known as São Salvador. Kimpa Vita’s prophetic call, deeply rooted in local cosmologies, incorporated a complex reinterpretation of Christian figures, rituals, and symbolic elements, visible from the outset in the veneration of Saint Anthony, anointed as the savior of Kongo. This reflected a long relationship with Christianity and Europe, which began two centuries earlier with the baptism of mwene Kongo Nzinga Nkuwu in 1491. The rapid growth of the movement launched by Kimpa Vita is inseparable from the warfare in the region at the time. The Atlantic slave trade multiplied, and, with it, the fear associated with transoceanic travel and an uncertain fate marked by violence, the rupture of all social ties, and submersion into the complete unknown. In a sense, without ever mentioning it expressly, Beatriz Kimpa Vita’s appeal gave voice to these popular concerns, challenging the different segments of the aristocracy who benefited from this unstable and fearful context, fighting amongst themselves to conquer spheres of power and influence, and precipitated the evolution of political forms in the region. The Antonine movement, as it is known in historiography, had a short life. On July 2, 1706, Kimpa Vita was burned at the stake on the orders of Pedro Afonso Água Rosada Nusamu a Mvemba, known as Pedro IV, with the direct participation of Capuchin priests in Kongo at the time who classified her as a heretic. Echoes of the movement, however, carried across space and time. Artifacts of material culture, such as the Toni Malau figurines, and similar prophetic appeals involving expressions and figures of Christianity, including St. Anthony, crossed the ocean aboard slave ships and emerged in slave revolts in the Americas led by Africans from that region. The influence also spread to prophetic movements in the 20th century.