Abstract
In the present essay, I examine religious conversion as anthropophagic practice in the early modern Kingdom of Kongo. Through a close analysis of primary sources, I focus on King Nzinga a Nkuwu's conversion to Christianity in 1491 and the subsequent transformation of European religious beliefs and practice within the kingdom. Unlike converts in most other areas of Africa (and Brazil), Bakongo elites accepted Christianity largely on their own terms, and this allowed them to adapt their new faith to autochthonous tradition. In order to describe this process of adaptation, I link Bakongo conversion to Oswald de Andrade's call for 'blood transfusers' in his Manifesto Antropófago. In the end, my goal is to offer a more detailed account of Bakongo conversion while extending anthropophagic concepts to early modern contexts not primarily defined by coloniality.
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