Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça

Lourenço da Silva Mendouça was a 17th century member of the royal family of the Kingdom of Ndongo in what is now Angola. A Catholic, his dealings were mostly with Church authorities and those with whom they were associated.

His historical achievement had been largely forgotten and obfuscated until work by the historian Richard Gray in the 1980s and 1990s (who initially only had three or so sources to rely on), and the scholar José Lingna Nafafé, who discovered many new sources and details of the history of his life in the 2010s—including confirmation that he was an African prince.

Biography Lourenço da Silva Mendouça was a member of the Mbundu people from the city of Pedras.

Over the next few years he began to work on his arguments against slavery, travelling to the Royal Court of Madrid in Toledo, Spain, in late 1682, hosted and supported by Dom Carlos II, King of Spain and the Archbishop of Toledo, Luis Manuel Fernández de Portocarrero y de Guzman. He spent 18 months here, before journeying across Europe to the Vatican curia in Rome, arriving in 1684. Here he launched a criminal case against the (Catholic) European nations involved in the transatlantic slave trade at the time -in any case Spain, Portugal, the Papal States and various nations now part of Italy, accusing them of crimes against humanity. He had collected support over the years from the different black confraternities of Europe, His petitions presented a first-hand account of the cruelties inflicted by slavery.

His efforts convinced the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith and led directly to the March 20th, 1686 condemnation of slavery by Pope Innocent XI. He was given a coat of arms by the Vatican Nuncio in Portugal, Gasper de Mesquita, inscribed with the slogan morir es lo mas cierto, death is certain. This was derived from the Latin saying mors certa est, at eius hora incerta est, which describes the human condition: gods are immortal, animals are unaware of their mortality, only humans suffer the knowledge of death.

Mendouça died in 1698.