Officially, the Kingdom of Kongo became the first Catholic state in Africa. But how closely did its people follow the religion? Includes discussion their religion before Catholicism.
The Kingdom of Kongo was a medieval state in west-central Africa, located south of the Congo River (present-day Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo).
From the fourteenth until the twentieth centuries, the central African Kingdom of Kongo developed a unique cultural heritage. It also left an outsized influence among European observers.
A broad range of crafts emerged from the Kongo and its client states: metal work, pottery and raffia textiles, much of it practised exclusively by the ruling class.
