Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and Antonianism

Record summary

Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita led the Antonian movement during the Kongo civil wars, teaching that Saint Anthony possessed her and promoting a Kongo-centered Christian restoration. She was captured and executed in 1706 after a trial ordered by King Pedro IV. The episode is important for comparing possession language, prophetic authority, Christian reinterpretation and political resistance. Contemporary Catholic accounts are central but partisan, and later scholarship debates how much of the movement’s theology can be reconstructed from hostile sources. AI-recalled; source quality 5; corroboration 0.