The Florentine relation: a newly discovered sixteenth-century description of the Kingdom of Kongo
Date
2023-11-30
Authors
Thornton, John K.
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
Thornton JK. The Florentine Relation: A Newly Discovered Sixteenth-Century Description of the Kingdom of Kongo. History in Africa. 2023;50:237-258. doi:10.1017/hia.2023.7
Abstract
A newly discovered Spanish description of Kongo increases our knowledge of the country, joining Filippo Pigafetta’s famous account to expand our knowledge of Kongo in this early period. This research shows that the MS was written in 1587 or 1588 and was written by Carmelite Diego de la Encarnación. It adds details on the history of the country, daily life culture, and links to other Carmelite works, including an unpublished chapter of an account by Diego de Santissimo Santo and shows the author could have written a longer but well-known account in the Vatican Library. It includes extensive quotations from the new text.
Description
License
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the African Studies Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. This article has been published under a Read & Publish Transformative Open Access (OA) Agreement with CUP.