Antonio Zucchelli

Antonio Zucchelli (born in? with Gradisca d' Isonzo, in the Province of Gorizia in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia - died in? ) was an Italian monk, preacher of the Ordre of the Capuchins in the province of Stirie and missionary in the kingdom of Congo.

Biography

According to the accounts of the Portuguese, the introduction of Christianity to the Congo date of the time even of the discovery which they made of this country, in 1489. Of the monks Dominicain S were the first missionaries there; but at the same time it is agreed that their progress was extremely weak, and that persecutions had almost destroyed the results of their efforts, when, with the assent of the Portuguese government, the pope sent in this country, in 1645, of the Italian Capucin S.

For this time until the year 1704, which is that of the return of Zucchelii of Africa in Europe, the order of the Capuchins has not ceased sending to Congo dedicated missionaries, who had acquired on natural empire that they could have made very useful for the religion and the civilization, but which, exerted with violence and imprudence, was harmful with the one and to the other. During the interval of more than one half-century which was passed while the Italian capuchins almost exclusively exploited the missions of Congo, Angola and Benguella, they published a certain number of relations, in the goal to make known their work Apostolique S and the sorrows to which they were subjected, the dangers to which they were exposed, for the propagation of the religion. These relations were a long time the only ones where one could find concepts on the history and the geography of these vast and curious regions, but the modern travellers who, especially in these last years, visited them, published some newer and truer.

The first of these relations is that of the Father Francisco Fragio, who appeared with Rome in 1648; the second, that of the Spaniard Palixer de Tovar, printed with Madrid in 1649. These two works are almost only devoted to the narration of the progress of the missions in Congo.

It is not the same small twelvemo of Michel-Angelo de Guattini and Denis Carli, published in Reggio in 1672, and enormous folio of Antoine Cavazzi, which appeared with Bologna in 1687.

These two relations contain the history of work of the missionaries capuchins to the Congo, since 1645 until in and all that these monks could collect of information on the countries that they traversed and on the nations which live them. Also the P. Labat it believed to give a sufficient description of this part of Africa while being restricted to translate these two authors.

The relation of Merolla, which appeared with Naples in 1692, and that of Antonio Zucchelli da Gradisca, published in Venice in 1712, form the continuation of those from which we come to make mention.

They are much less known; the last especially had never been translated, nor analyzed into French, before the publication of the 13th volume of the general History of the voyages . It is however one of most curious and one about richest in interesting documents on Angola and Congo; it was also then the most recent relation. Merolla left Europe in 1682, and returned there in 1688. Zucchelli embarked in and returned in its convent of Gradisca only in 1704.

He wrote itself his work, that he divided into twenty-three distinct relations. He went initially Genoa to Malaga, Malaga in Cadiz and of Cadiz with Lisbon; then it crossed the Atlantique, and approached with San-El Salvador in the Brésil. It devoted its fifth relation to the description of this country, which drew then from Congo of many cargoes of Esclave S. In his sixth relation, Zucchelli tells its crossing of San-El Salvador with Loanda of Saint-Paul, in, the kingdom of Angola. The three following relations contain the account of the missions and the adventures of the author in the kingdoms of Angola, of Congo, and especially in the province of Sogno, with the mouth of the Zaire, which it first accepted the seeds of the christanism, and where Zucchelli resided longest. Also it devoted in entirety its ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth relations with the description of Sogno and that of manners of its inhabitants.

But in the other relations, it intermingles its account with the description of the places and details on the productions, the climate, breadths people and the aspect of the countries which it traverses. Its four last relations, i.e. since twentieth until the twenty-third and last, contain the accounts of its navigations of Loanda of St-Paul to El Salvador, from El Salvador to Lisbon, Lisbon to Malta and of Malta with Venice.

One is unaware of the time of his death and that of his birth. Its voyage has the same defects and same qualities as all those which were written by the monks of the same order and of which we gave the list. All these missionaries show a zeal burning, but ill-considered, for the interests of the religion; they show a great ignorance of the men and human businesses; but also they show much naivety and frankness. We think that the facts so terribly atrocious told by Cavazzi made wrongly reject all its accounts like impostures.

At the 19th century, the voyages of Prune of Pommegorge, of Dalzel at the Dahomey S, of Bowdich and Dupuis ches the Aschantis, confirmed what Cavazzi reports of the extreme ferocity of certain African tribes. With the remainder, if one excludes of it the account of certain miracles, the work of Zucchelli does not contain anything which feels reluctant with probability and as for the miracles, in the protest of use which is in tète of its book, it informs us that their belief is not divine obligation, and that we owe them only one purely human faith. The style of Zucchelli is clearer and less prolix than that of Gavazzi; there is more order in its accounts; it is true that it embraced a subject less extended, and that he reports only what he did, which what he saw; that he does not tell, like made Gavazzi, the voyages and the adventures of all the missionaries who preceded it or who cooperated of his time to work of the missions. But the too naive narration of Zucchelli proves, like all those of its predecessors, that all these missionaries capuchins were animated by a blind and brutal fanaticism, which moved away from the goal that they claimed to reach. These nations that they depict us like wildest that there is on the sphere feared the Portuguese, sought their alliance and did not push back their worship.

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