Fasilides

When Susenyos swore obedience to the pope in 1626, the Jesuit historian Tellez says, the nobles also took an oath to “Prince Faciladas” as heir to the crown (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 233). The Ethiopian chronicle tells that in his father’s twenty-fifth year he came to him and said that the land was troubled by the belief of the Franks, which was not in the books of their fathers, and asked him to pray as the faith of Alexandria taught (Ethiopian Chronicle (trans. Basset) p. 125). His father’s proclamation restoring that faith named him to reign, and he succeeded when Susenyos died (Ethiopian Chronicle (trans. Basset) p. 126). The chronicle gives his throne name as Alam Sagad and says that in his first year a new patriarch arrived and the Frank Afonsu, Afonso Mendes, returned to his country (Ethiopian Chronicle (trans. Basset) p. 285).

The Jesuit writers judge him as an enemy. Lobo says that he had embraced the Catholic religion “rather through complaisance than conviction” and showed his hatred of the missionaries while his father still lived (Lobo, Voyage to Abyssinia part 2, chapter 12). Tellez calls him a persecutor of Catholics “like another Dioclesian” (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 244) and tells how, on his orders, the patriarch and the Jesuits were handed to the Turks on the coast in 1634 (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia pp. 254–255). See Susenyos, the Jesuits and the Ethiopian Church.