Paper short abstract:

The catechisms and the translators were important elements in the process of evangelization of Africans on both sides of the Atlantic, for this reason it is tried to emphasize its work and its importance in global history.

Paper long abstract:

For this paper we will emphasize on the movement of people and books between the kingdoms of Kongo and Ngola, and the New World. Missionaries of different religious orders that operated in African kingdoms and in the American colonies of the Iberian monarchies catechized slaves. The catechesis as a device of education in the faith has been throughout history a pedagogical instrument for teaching the Christian faith. In this process, the translators were essential part on both sides of the Atlantic. For example Congolese translators who studied in Portugal and Brazil, and later they were part of the secular clergy in the Kongo. Meanwhile, catechisms were a useful instrument of evangelization, which served the missionaries who did not know the language of the African people and they must supported by these to carry out their work. These catechisms circulated throughout the area of influence of the "padroado português", but in the text, will become more enfaces in those conducted by Jesuits and Capuchins during the seventeenth century. For example, the Catechism Jorge Mateus was translated into language Kongo for the evangelization of blacks in the Kongo; or the case of the instruction of the Archbishop of Seville, Pedro de Castro and Quinones, who ordered this instruction for the evangelization of Africans in the Spanish possessions. Both elements were important in the process of "black evangelization", and they circulated around the Atlantic.