Jan Mathijs Schoffeleers (1928–2011), who published many of his works in English as Jan Matthew Schoffeleers or Matthew Schoffeleers was a Dutch missionary and member of the Montfort Fathers order who became an important figure in African research as an anthropologist of African religion, particularly that in Malawi, where he spent around 16 years, first as a missionary and then as a lecturer. He continued his academic career later as reader and professor in religious anthropology in the Netherlands, continuing to concentrate on African themes.
Early life and ordination Schoffeleers was born on 31 August 1928, the eldest son of a farming family in the small village of Geverik, near the town of Beek, in the province of South Limburg in the southeast Netherlands. At that time, this was strongly Roman Catholic region, and education beyond the elementary level was directed toward religious careers. Schoffeleers was encouraged by his family to become a priest, and he began his secondary education in a so-called “small seminary” in Schimmert, which combined an education in the humanities with religious training, at the age of 14 in 1942, and he already had the intention of becoming a missionary.Meyer and Reis (2006), pp. 23, 43–4 In 1949, he joined the seminary of the missionary congregation of Montfort at Oirschot as a brother and, after training in theology, he was ordained as a priest in that order in March 1955.van Binsbergen (2011) pp. 455–6
Activities in Malawi In 1955, Schoffeleers was sent as a missionary priest to Nyasaland, as Malawi was then known, and spent over two years based near Thyolo, where he witnessed an initiation ceremony soon after his arrival, which stimulated his interest in local religious customs.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 24 From 1958, he was based in the Lower Shire Valley, where he remained for five years. Here, he found it difficult to convert local people to the Roman Catholic faith because of the activities of the local M'Bona Cult and the masked Nyau society. Schoffeleers spent much of his time investigating the M’Bona martyr cult and Nyau society, although the latter in particular was strongly anti-Christian. This led him into conflict with his religious superiors, and Schoffeleers began to redefine himself as an anthropologist rather than a missionary.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 24van Binsbergen (2011) pp. 455–6
At the end of over seven years in Malawi without a holiday, Schoffeleers was entitled to a sabbatical to study: he wished to study anthropology, but to do so without leaving Africa.Meyer and Reis (2006), pp. 25–6 At that time, the Catholic university Lovanium University at Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo offered an anthropology course aimed at missionaries, and Schoffeleers studied there in the academic year 1963–1964.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 24 At the end of his first academic year, he returned to Malawi to undertake further fieldwork on the M’Bona cult.
The deteriorating security situation in the Congo prevented his return to Kinshasa,Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 26 so he transferred to the University of Oxford in 1966, joining St Catherine's College to study Social anthropology and, after gaining his B. Litt degree in June 1966, he registered for a D. Phil degree and returned to Malawi for further study of the M’Bona cult, masked societies and spirit possession in the south of that country.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 29 After intensive fieldwork in Malawi, where he supported himself through part-time teaching, Schoffeleers returned to Oxford in January 1968 and wrote his thesis examining the M’Bona cult, the Nyau society and spirit possession cults based on his fieldwork in the Lower Shire Valley over the next nine months.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 29van Binsbergen (2011) p. 456 He later recalled that he wanted to study anthropology to understand Africans better, but the knowledge he gained also gave him a new perspective on religion.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 28
Immediately after receiving his doctorate, Schoffeleers returned to Malawi, and from 1968 to 1971 he taught in a Catholic seminary there. However, his attempts to Africanise the Roman Catholic liturgy and sacraments were opposed by the Catholic archbishop of Malawi, and he resigned from the seminary in 1971Meyer and Reis (2006), pp. 32–3 to take up a post as Senior lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Malawi, based in Zomba, a post he retained until 1976.van Binsbergen (2011) pp. 456 Schoffeleers later said that he left Malawi because the increasingly repressive regime of Hastings Banda had imprisoned some university students and was causing others to leave the country, so he saw no point in remaining there.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 34
Later academic career In 1976, Schoffeleers was appointed Reader in the Anthropology of Religion at the Free University Amsterdam, and became a full professor in 1980. He also served as deputy chairman on the board of the African Studies Centre, Leiden. During his time in Amsterdam, he worked as an assistant priest in the city and, although still a member of the Montfort order, he had little contact with it.Meyer and Reis (2006), p. 35 During his time at the Free University, he encouraged his colleagues to make more international contacts and to publish their work in English to reach a wider audience. However, by 1988, Schoffeleers found the increasing workload and changes to the anthropology curriculum had made that department less attractive, so he resigned.Meyer and Reis (2006), pp. 35–7
In 1989, he was awarded a personal chair as Professor of Religious Anthropology at Utrecht University, and remained there until his retirement in 1998 at the age of 70.van Binsbergen (2011) pp. 456
Research interests Religious anthropology Schoffeleers saw his main task as an anthropologist was to give a scholarly account of the religious life of the Malawian Mang'anja people, a subdivision of the Maravi cluster of peoples. Instead of adopting the perspective of a detached observer, he attempted to understand the basis of the spirituality and religious practices of the local population, and to analyse the M’Bona cult in the context of similar cults.van Binsbergen (2011) pp. 457 As well as recording the present-day organisation and ceremonies of the cult, Schoffeleers identified M’Bona as a martyr, an historical person who had lived several centuries before the present, and whose story could be recovered from accounts he recorded in the 1960s.Schoffeleers (1980), p. 249 He did, however, accept that certain martyr motifs originated as borrowings from Christian theology after many Mang'anja were converted to Christianity in the early 20th century by Catholic missionaries. The cult had then begun to see M'Bona as a prophet and martyr, the black parallel of Jesus, saviour of black people as Jesus is for whites.Schoffeleers (1975), pp. 23–4Schoffeleers (1980), pp. 264–5
Schoffeleers considered that the M’Bona cult almost certainly originated around 1600, and was connected to the rise of a dynasty of paramount chiefs with the title Lundu. In his view, the first Lundu combined both political and religious power, the latter through his role in rain-making rituals. Various versions of M’Bona’s story recorded, that when the Lundu was unable to bring rain at a time of severe drought, he saw the success of his sister’s son, M’Bona, in creating plentiful rainfall as a challenge to his authority.Schoffeleers (1980), pp. 247–9 Lundu then ordered the killing of M’Bona, who escaped from the Lundu’s capital and fled to the Lower Shire Valley where he was killed.Schoffeleers (1980), pp. 257–9 Schoffeleers linked the place of his death an earlier rain shrine at Khulubvi that the first Lundu had destroyed as a possible rival centre of power, and did not exclude the possibility that the historical M’Bona was a priest there, killed when Lundu destroyed that shrine. He notes that a central cult rituals is the periodic rebuilding of the shrine, which he believed commemorated its earlier restoration.Schoffeleers (1980), pp. 248, 260
The religious context of the story is one of the relationship between a society and its leaders and the order of nature. Schoffeleers suggested that many pre-modern cultures considered that, if the social order were disturbed by a ruler exceeding their accepted role and oppressing their people, the natural order would also be disordered, and natural calamities such as floods or drought would result. These disasters could best be avoided by restoring and maintaining checks on such abuses of power, such as restoring the Khulubvi shrine as the focus of rain making rituals, a role than the first Lundu had usurped.Schoffeleers (1980), p. 247-9
The interpretation by Schoffeleers of M'Bona as an historical person has been debated by other scholars. Although not specifically referring to M’Bona, Terence Ranger described a "territorial cult" among the Maravi people as one where a spirit was believed to secure the well-being of the people in a particular area through rain-making, the control of floods, securing the fertility of the soil or success in fishing or hunting. The spirits venerated were originally nature spirits related to specific local sites, often with female priestesses or mediums.Ranger (1973), pp. 582–3 Over time, Ranger believed, many such cult sites came under the control of locally-powerful families, who changed the nature of the spirit to that of a deified ancestor and reduced the priestesses’ role to being that ancestor’s wives.Ranger (1973), pp. 582–5
More specifically, M'Bona was said to have originated as a river god or spirit of a type known in the area of the Zambezi and its tributaries, either as a protector against floods or a provider of rain.Wrigley (1988), pp. 369–71 The M'Bona spirit was also linked to the snake, part of a widespread African mythology of the conflict between the eagle, representing lightning and flood and the python, representing the rainbow and sufficient rainfall, without flood or drought.Wrigley (1988), pp. 370–2 It is unlikely that there was originally a single M'Bona cult with many shrines over a wide area, rather that a range of shrines were originally devoted to different aspects of this myth.Wrigley (1988), p. 372 This scholar also doubted whether a strong Lundu state existed around 1600.Wrigley (1988), p. 372
The response that Schoffeleers made to Wrigley’s criticisms was that myth and history were not mutually exclusive, but could co-exist, so that M’Bona could be both an historical person and a manifestation of the mythical snake. He also argued that available historical documents were sparse and written by Portuguese with little insight into African political or religious matters, so must be supplemented by oral history, including the various versions of the M’Bona story.Schoffeleers (1988), pp. 387–9