[378] Paiva Manso, p. 254.
[379] See Eucher, Le Congo, p. 176. Subsequently the Capuchins returned to Sonyo (Merollo in 1683, Zucchelli in 1703).
[380] Dionigi Carli paid a visit to these: see his Viaggio, Reggio, 1672.
[381] See Merolla’s Relatione del Regno di Congo, Naples, 1692; and Zucchelli’s Viaggi, Venice, 1712.
[382] His captain-general, D. Pedro Constantino, managed to get himself elected king, but was taken prisoner and beheaded at S. Salvador in 1709.
[383] It was not unusual to make a charge for the administration of the sacraments. In 1653, the parochial priests complained that the Capuchin friars administered the sacraments without claiming an “acknowledgment;” and the authorities at Rome (1653) prohibited their doing so within five leagues of the capital (Paiva Manso, p. 233). At Mbamba, the priest had a regular scale of prices. A baptism cost 7,000 cowries, for a marriage a slave was expected, and so forth; and thus, adds the Bishop of Angola (1722): “little children go to limbo, and grown-up people to hell!”
[384] Western Africa, London, 1856, p. 329.
[385] Boletim, Lisbon Geogr. Society, March 1889.
[386] In 1709, the Holy Office declared the slave-trade in Africa illicit. Only those persons were to be looked upon as slaves who were born such; who had been captured in a just war; who had sold themselves for money (a usual practice in Africa); or who had been adjudged slaves by a just sentence.
[387] Alguns Documentos, p. 107.