Season 7: “Community”
Episode 7: “Healers in Seventeenth-Century Angola”
Sky Michael Johnston:
Hello and welcome to 90 Second Narratives, I’m Sky Michael Johnston. Today, our storyteller is Dr. Kalle Kananoja, a senior researcher in the Department of History at the University of Oulu. Here he is with the story, “Healers in Seventeenth-Century Angola.”
Kalle Kananoja:
In 1698, a batch of denunciations was collected in the Jesuit college of Luanda, Angola. Following an edict distributed by the Inquisition, witnesses came forth to denounce people who had allegedly taken part in suspicious religious ceremonies. Many of these depositions described the activities of African healers and diviners and were given by slaves owned by the Jesuits.
This was the case, for example, with Gregório, who told how a healer named Vitoria had called him to participate in sacrificial veneration of an ancestral spirit. Gregorio referred to Vitoria as a ‘surgeon’, who was consulted by many people seeking a cure for their illness, and who served as a link between the communities of living and the dead.
A similar sacrifice had taken place on one of the Jesuit estates. This was relayed by Matheos, who had seen a healer named Paulo Cambundo and other diviners from ‘distant lands’, sacrificing chickens and a goat, and placing a pot over a fire. In the pot, Matheos observed blood, wild honey, bones, and red feathers. Accompanied by musicians, three men proceeded to dance around the fire. The purpose of the ritual was to cure a sick woman. Paulo, the master of the ceremony, invoked powerful ancestral spirits, again showing how the dead had a central role in the restoration of health.
These denunciations point out, how in West-Central Africa, healers did not work simply in their home villages but also travelled to serve patients in other locations, enjoying considerable fame in so doing. The powers of healers were made manifold by their mobility, because they offered the possibility of novel cures, both spiritual and medicinal, that were central to communal well-being.
Sky Michael Johnston:
Dr. Kananoja has just authored a new book entitled, Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa: Medical Encounters, 1500–1850. You can find a link to the book in the episode description. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.
If you haven’t listened to the first six episodes of this season, I invite you to check those out now. You’ll hear more fascinating stories about communities from around the world. And come back every Monday for a new episode featuring a “little story with BIG historical significance.”