Rare 18th century bronze sculpture depicting Saint Anthony of Kongo, also known as Toni Malay, Dontoni Malau or “Anthony of Good Fortune”[1]. It is inspired by a European prototype of Saint Anthony of Padova or of Lisbon (1195-1231)[2], introduced into the Congo in the late 15th century by Portuguese missionaries[3].

The integration of this iconography in the art and culture of the various Congolese peoples, relates to Portuguese popular beliefs and established practices of devotion to Saint Anthony. This Saint performed a major role within the Order of Friars Minor, related to the Capuchins, a congregation that exerted a determinant role in the Christianising of the Kingdom of Kongo.

The figure, a pendant with a suspension hoop to the back, is three-dimensional, depicted in its entirety, and characterized by indigenous physiognomic characteristics. Of some formal geometry, it is cast in a metal alloy with reasonable accuracy of details. The skull is ovoid, macrocephalus and with correctly defined facial appearance of clear African ethnic origin - broad nose, almond shaped eyes suggesting exorbitism, protruding eyelids, full lips, baldness and small, lightly outlined ears.

In affectionate attitude, Saint Anthony embraces The Child Jesus with the left arm, while holding the Latin Cross with the right. The child features identical facial characteristics, His flattened body as if part of the main figure, and extends the left arm as if holding onto the Saint, that is attired in the Franciscan habit of double collared long tunic tied by a double cord, from which hangs the rosary. The absence of the hood and of the three knotted cord – representing the three perpetual vows of the Order – Obedience, Poverty and Sanctity – may be related to some naivety by the maker or, more likely, to Kimpa Vita’s purpose of abolishing these symbols, in her fight against the Capuchin friars.

In the late 17th century, Saint Anthony was claimed as the symbol of a religious reform movement from the Former Kingdom of Congo (1684 – 1706), known as ‘Antonianism’ and led by the prophetess Beatriz Kimpa Vita. Originally from Mbanza Congo, the kingdom’s capital city, this priestess, who had previously belonged to the cult of Marinda (nganda marinda), and simultaneously educated in the Catholic faith, proclaimed to have received from God, through the intermediation of Saint Anthony who had taken possession of her body, the mission of curing the suffering of her people.

Through this movement, this priestess[4] attempted at intervening in the Kingdom of Kongo’s destiny, by then undergoing a civil war said to have been caused by the domination of the white missionaries, with the purpose of reuniting it[5]. According to Kimpa Vita those missionaries represented an impediment to the kingdom and the crown restoration that opposed the various local factions.

Taking ownership of the imported Catholic Saints and transferring them to the traditional logic of the Congolese cult of ancestors, Kimpa Vita identified Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Saint Anthony and others, as Congolese ancestors, explaining that the Kingdom was the true Holy Land, and that the founding figures of Christianity had been born in there. Without as much as challenging the Pope’s authority, she rejected the local clergy for its distancing from the spiritual needs of the Congolese people, and converted “Toni Malau”, the Congolese Saint Anthony, in the mystic axis of this ample movement, that searched simultaneously for redemption in life and for the radical Africanisation of Christ. The cult imposed by this prophetess reaches syncretic processes that obey to rites of mixed cultural codes - catholic concepts that were altered in a very original manner, implying a new reading of the Christian message – symbolically featured in these small sculptures.

The hoop enabled the suspending of these figures close to the body of the faithful, for increased protection and for its therapeutic properties. They were equally relevant in recovering lost or stolen objects, protecting boats and passengers against shipwrecking and in pregnancy, against complicated childbirths.

As such, Toni Malau was converted into a Saint-amulet, a magical-religious object that could be considered a minkisi sculpture.[6] The present figure’s surface is worn and polished due to vigorous rubbing on the body’s infirm areas, hoping for a cure to the illness. In a syncretic current, this movement allowed for a new conception of Catholicism: known as ‘Congolese’, it corresponded to a resignification and Africanisation phenomenon of that doctrine.

Congolese sculpture bequeathed these unassuming images of Saint Anthony to posterity. Produced in wood, ivory, brass or bronze these precious objects can now be seen in various international museum collections, such as the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, Tervuren (Inv. nr.1955.9.23), or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Inv. nr.1999.295.1), amongst others. Outstanding treasures from this Antonian movement, are undoubtedly the small sculpture herein described, as well as another Toni Malau figure now at the Saint Anthony Museum, in Lisbon (Inv. nr.MLSA.ESC.0234), but formerly also in our collection.

Bibliography:

- Cecile Fromont, The Art of Conversion. Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo, Chapel Hill, N.C. University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

- SANTOS, Eduardo, Religiões de Angola, Lisboa, Junta de Investigações de Angola, 1969.

— SOUZA, Marina de Mello e, “Evangelização e Poder na Região do Congo e Angola: A Incorporação dos Crucifixos por Alguns Chefes Centro Africanos, Séculos XVI e XVII”, in Actas do Congresso Internacional Espaço Atlântico do Antigo Regime, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, U.N.L.

— FRANCO, Anísio, “Santo António (Toni Malau)” in Masterpieces – Pégadas dos Portugueses no Mundo, Porto, ARPAB, 2010.

— THORNTON, John K., “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491 – 1750”, in Journal of African History, n.º 25, 1984.

— THORNTON, John K., The Kongolese Saint Anthony – Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684 – 1706, USA, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

— VAINFAS, Ronaldo e MELLO e SOUZA, Marina de “Catolização e Poder no Tempo do Tráfico: O Reino do Congo da Conversão Coroada ao Movimento Antoniano, Séculos XV – XVIII”, in Tempo, Rio de Janeiro, Universidade Federal Fluminense, v. 3, n.º 6, dez/1998.

— WYATT, MacGAFFEY, Religion and Society in Central Africa, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1986.

[1] “Malau” is the plural for “Lau” whose meaning can be translated as “good fortune”.

[2] Saint Anthony was born in Lisbon and dyed in Padova, becoming the most popular Franciscan Saint after Saint Francis of Assisi.

[3]“Portuguese missionaries introduced this Saint for the first time into Congo following the conversion of King Nzinga-a-Nkuwu (João I of Congo) to Catholicism, and his baptism in 1491. In 1595, Saint Anthony was the focus of an elite brotherhood, and of an homonymous church, patronized by the Kings of Congo in the capital city of Mbanza Kongo” Cf.: Kongo Christian Art: Cross-Cultural Interaction in the Atlantic World | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org).

[4] Raised in an ethnic Congo aristocratic family, Kimpa Vita had received the traditional Kimpassi initiation (a rite of passage for a traditional Congolese faith), beyond the catholic education of devotion to the Virgin Mary, the Saints, the Sacraments and the use of the Rosary and crucifixes; it is documented that she was familiar with the Lord’s Prayer, The Hail Mary, and the Salve Regina. Cf.: Aurélien Mokoko Gampiot, “Kimpa Vita”, in James Crossley and Alastair Lockhart (eds), Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements, 2021.

[5] Kimpa Vita emerged in a period of chaos in the Kingdom of Kongo, due to internal conflicts between the elites that sympathized with the kingdom’s westernization and those defending traditional institutions. Cf.: John K. Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and The Antonian Movement, 1684 – 1706, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 2.

[6] “minkisi” is the plural of “nkisi” – a Bakongo peoples’ sculpture of magical-religious meaning, inhabited by an ancestral spirit with the power to act in everyday matters.