The Christians of Ethiopia and Kongo facing Rome: Writing a new history of the connections between Africa and Europe (15th-16th cent.) – ETHIOKONGROME

The purpose of the present research is to understand the multiple paths taken by the encounters between Ethiopia, an ancient Christian kingdom of the Horn of Africa, the Kongo, a Central African polity in contact with Roman Catholicism since the end of the 15th century, and Rome, both an urban centre and the capital of Latin Christianity. If Kongo and Ethiopia belong to very distinctive contexts, and although the question of the slave trade separates them, these kingdoms present astonishing similarities from the end of the 15th century, since they appear as powerful and hierarchical polities directed by Christian elites, using Christian religion as an instrument of their power. These similarities in their political and religious organisation also make Ethiopia and Kongo unique cases in the Medieval and Modern history of Africa. The ETHIOKONGROME project therefore argues for the relevance of a comparative approach of the Christian powers of Ethiopia and Kongo through the study of their political, religious and cultural connections to the city of Rome and to the papacy during the 15th and 16th centuries. The aim is to underline the Mediterranean dimension of the history of the Kongo kingdom, which historiography has often placed in the Atlantic network, and to highlight the complexity of the transformations of Ethiopian and Kongo Christianity in contact with Roman Catholicism.
This project aims at shifting perspectives by proposing a new history of relations between Africa and Europe, placing Ethiopia and the Kongo at the centre of reflections and no longer at the edge. The project is based on a multidisciplinary approach combining the methods of history, philology, linguistics, art history and musicology.