João dos Santos (
Évora
Évora ( , ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. It has 53,591 inhabitants (2021), in an area of 1307.08 km2. It is the historic capital of the Alentejo and serves as the seat of the Évora District.
Due to its well-preserved old to ...
–
Goa
Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...
, 1622) was a Portuguese
Dominican missionary in India and
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
.
Life
On 13 August 1586, four months after leaving
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
, Santos arrived in
Portuguese Mozambique. He was at once sent to
Sofala
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Mwenemutapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique. It was founded by Somali merchants. This name wa ...
, where he remained four years with Father João Madeira.
Between them they baptized some 1694 natives and had built three chapels when they were ordered back to Mozambique.
After a journey of hardships, they were forced to remain on the
Zambesi River
The Zambezi River (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers , slightly less than hal ...
, Santos staying at
Tete
Tete is the capital city of Tete Province in Mozambique. It is located on the Zambezi River, and is the site of two of the four bridges crossing the river in Mozambique. A Swahili trade center before the Portuguese colonial era, Tete continues ...
for eight months. From registers found there he discovered that the Dominicans had baptized about 20,000 natives before the year 1591 at Tete alone.
From Mozambique he was sent to the small island of
Querimba, where he remained for two years.
[ The registers here gave the information that 16,000 natives had been baptized before the year 1593. Next, he was appointed commissary of the Bulla da Cruzada at Sofala, where he stayed more than a year.
His labours in Africa ended on 22 August 1597, when he left Mozambique for ]Portuguese India
The State of India ( pt, Estado da Índia), also referred as the Portuguese State of India (''Estado Português da Índia'', EPI) or simply Portuguese India (), was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a se ...
. With the exception of eleven years spent in Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
(1606–17) he lived the rest of his life in India.
Works
His book ''Ethiopia Oriental'' is a description of the Portuguese colonization of Africa at the end of the sixteenth century. He gives an account of the manners and customs of the Bantu
Bantu may refer to:
*Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages
*Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language
* Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle
*Black Association for National ...
tribes at that date; he was a keen observer, and generally a sober narrator of things that he saw.[
]
References
* The entry cites:
**''Ethiopia Oriental'' (Lisbon, 1891)
**Theal, ''The Portuguese in South Africa'' (Cape Town, 1896)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Santos, Joao Dos
1622 deaths
Portuguese Dominicans
Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries
Year of birth unknown
People from Évora
16th-century Portuguese people
17th-century Portuguese people
Dominican missionaries
Roman Catholic missionaries in Mozambique
Roman Catholic missionaries in India