D. Alvaro II, 1574-1614.
Alvaro II, a son of Alvaro I, is described by Bishop D. Manuel Baptista as a “zealous Christian, father and friend of all;”351 but it is evident that he looked not with overmuch favour upon the Portuguese residents in his country, and he is charged, in a memoir addressed by Domingos d’Abreu Brito to King Philip I, in 1592 with having plotted with the kings of Ndongo and Matamba against the Portuguese. An army which he sent ostensibly to the aid of the Portuguese in 1583 retired, apparently without striking a blow, whilst he furnished a contingent to the forces of Matamba which invaded Angola in 1590. He hindered, by specious excuses, the completion of a stone fort at Mpinda, which had been commenced in 1609 by Antonio Gonçalves Pitta, until all the workmen had died. He favoured Dutch traders to the great detriment of the Portuguese; and we know from Samuel Braun,352 that an effort was made in 1612 to expel the Dutch from the Kongo, and that it would have been successful, had not the natives sided with these heretical enemies, whose dealings appeared to them to be more generous. Moreover, the King, although he had promised Sebastian da Costa (1580) that he would allow the supposed silver mines to be sought for, eventually refused his consent.353
Turning to Church affairs, we hear of the usual applications for missionaries, and of several episcopal visitations by D. F. Antonio de Goiva (1578), D. Manuel de Ulhoa, D. Miguel Baptista Rangel, and D. Manuel Baptista. D. Manuel de Ulhoa presided over a synod at S. Salvador, in 1585, and laid down statutes for the government of his see. D. Miguel Baptista Rangel was the first Bishop of Kongo, which had been separated from the diocese of S. Thomé by a Bull of May 20th, 1596. His successor, D. Manuel Baptista, resided for several years in Kongo, where he died in 1621; and a letter addressed to King Philip II, in 1612,354 speaks of the results of over a century of missionary effort as insignificant, and describes the people as incurable barbarians, full of vice.