João dos Santos ( Évora – Goa, 1622) was a Portuguese Dominican missionary in India and Africa.

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, 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, Santos staying at Tete 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 The Quirimbas Islands lie in the Indian Ocean off northeastern Mozambique, close to Pemba, the capital of the province of Cabo Delgado. The archipelago consists of about 32 islands, including Ibo, Matemo, Medjumbe, Quirimba, Metundo, Quisiv ...

, 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 (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 Nationali ...

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