Pedro Páez
Castilian Jesuit who reached Ethiopia in 1603 after seven years as a captive in Arabia. By the Jesuit account he received Emperor Susenyos into the Roman church in 1622 and died at Gorgora soon afterwards.
What is told of him here comes from the history that his fellow Jesuit Balthazar Tellez compiled, in part from Páez’s own manuscript. Tellez calls him a Castilian and says that he was chosen at Goa, with one other father, to go to Ethiopia (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 150). The two were taken on the way, and Tellez speaks of Páez’s “7 Years Captivity” in Arabia before he tried again (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 161). He landed at Massawa in April 1603 and reached Fremona on 15 May (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 162).
Tellez says that in 1621 Páez built a church of squared stone, which Susenyos travelled two days to see and entered barefoot; that in 1622 the emperor publicly professed “the Latin Faith”; and that Páez, “who had converted, and receiv’d him into the Church”, died soon afterwards at Gorgora, after nineteen years in the mission, leaving a written account of Ethiopian affairs (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 212). See Susenyos, the Jesuits and the Ethiopian Church.
In the timeline
- 1622 to 1632, firm dateSusenyos, the Jesuits and the Ethiopian Church
Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia professes the Roman faith under Jesuit guidance and in 1626 swears obedience to the pope. After years of revolt he restores the faith of Alexandria in 1632, and under his son Fasilides the Jesuits are sent out of the country.