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RICHARD GRAY 421 moment, nor is it stated by whom the letter was to be conveyed to Ethiopia. All we know is that about this time Accoramboni, the papal collector in Lisbon, forwarded to Rome an anonymous report concerning "the supposed route from the Kingdom of Kongo to that of Prester John". This report describes how "in our time" a priest called Raffaello di Castro, a native of Jacuman in New Spain, "a man of an enquiring mind (uomo curioso) and of great experience" went to the kingdom of Ocanga 42 and "passed far beyond it in order to obtain information regarding people who wore a wooden cross from the necks and came from the country of Prester John". The anonymous author of this report stated that he had been an eyewitness when Raffaello reported to the Icing of Kongo on this journey. He stated that he was "sure that, if His Holiness wishes this route to be opened, the king of Congo will immediately do so". He had sometimes heard the king discussing this possibility with his courtiers, and he added the intriguing comment that the opening of this route was "one of the principal matters which the ambassador, Don Antonio Manuele, who died in Rome" had been charged to discuss with the pope 43 • There is no mention of this question in the formal instructions given by Alvaro II to Antonio, nor in any of the correspondence concerning this embassy. Yet the ambassador cer– tainly discussed this possibility, probably with Diego de la Encarnacion. A re– port, written after his death and drawing on information supplied by Diego, states that it was learnt from Antonio that "the greater part of these Xacchi" (i.e. Jaga), who previously had presented one of the principal obstacles to opening a route into the interior, "have received the faith" 44 . · The letter of Vives to Ethiopia forcibly demonstrates the extent to which these two African Christian kingdoms had become closely linked in the minds of missionary strategists in Rome during the period leading to the foundation of Propaganda Fide. Although the victory at Lepanto had greatly reduced their maritime threat, the Ottomans still represented a major threat to Catholic Europe. The possibility of co-operating with what was still seen as a potentially powerful ally, a concept nurtured originally more than two centuries earlier by the initiatives of the Ethiopian rulers, was now dramatically reinforced by the fact that the kings of Kongo, anxious to enlist papal help against Portuguese 42 Okango, on the lower Kwango, at the head of a route going towards the lower mid– dle Kwilu, was a source of slaves from the last quarter of the sixteenth century. J. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, London 1990, 201. 43 A. Brasio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, VI, 492. 44 B.A.V., cod. Vat. Lat. 12516, f. 122.