10th Temple Guard: Mama Kimpa Vita

Guardian of A Temple Gate:

Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita was born in the year 1684 and ascended on the 2nd July 1706.

Kimpa Vita as she is best known, was a Kongo Empire prophetess and the leader of her own Christian movement, Antonianism. Her movement taught that Yahshuah (Jesus) and other early Christian figures were African and came from the Kongo Empire, she also reproach the white Catholic priests in the Kongo, for not believing as she did.

Kimpa Vita was born near Mount Kibangu in the Kingdom of Kongo, now a part of modern Angola around 1684. She was born into a family of the Kongo nobility.

Her doctrine and message had grown out of the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church in the Kongo.  Dona Beatriz had had a vision and as a consequence believed that she was a reincarnation of St. Anthony and tasked to restore the Great Kingdom of Kongo, as a unified Christian Kingdom.

She was ordered to build a specific Congolese Catholicism and unite the Congo under one king. She destroyed "idols", the various Kongo Nkisi or charms inhabited by spiritual entities, as well as Christian paraphernalia.

Kimpa Vita is seen as an antislavery figure and is known as a prefigure to all modern African democracy movements. Three months after her vision of Saint Anthony, Kimpa Vita led her followers to the abandoned capital of Sao Salvador (Old Kongo Empire), where they would call to the people in the countryside and rapidly repopulate the city.  Due to this rapid success, Kimpa Vita, soon became a major threat to the authorities, who accused of heresy, she was soon captured convicted of heresy and burned at the stake in July 1706.

The Credentials and Significance:

Her legacy continued after her martyrdom, as throughout eighteenth century Kongo religious art mostly featured Yahshuah as an African, and that Saint Anthony, known as "Toni Malau" was still very prominent.  More recently,  the expanding present day Kimbanguism is seen as a direct successor of her movement.  Dona Beatriz offers us another example throughout the history of Christianity in Africa, where the Christ, has been seen directly through the Spectacles of Ethiopia.