Susenyos

The Ethiopian chronicle gives his throne name as Seltan Sagad and traces his descent through his father Fasiladas and his grandfather Ya’qob to Wanag Sagad (Ethiopian Chronicle (trans. Basset) p. 121). It records that he made his residence at Gorgora in the sixth year of his reign and at Danqaz in the twelfth (Ethiopian Chronicle (trans. Basset) pp. 122–123). The Jesuit historian Tellez counts his reign from 1607 to 1632 (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 76).

Tellez says that he publicly professed “the Latin Faith” in 1622 (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 212) and on 11 February 1626 swore obedience to the pope before the patriarch Afonso Mendes (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 233). The chronicle tells that in his twenty-fifth year, after defeating a rebel army, he returned to the faith of Alexandria by proclamation and named his son Fasilides to reign, saying that he was weak and ill, and that he died on the tenth of Maskaram in his twenty-seventh year (Ethiopian Chronicle (trans. Basset) pp. 125–126). Tellez dates his death to September 1632 and gives his age as sixty-one, which is the basis of the birth year shown; he adds that the emperor declared at his death that he died in the Roman faith (Tellez, Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia p. 243). See Susenyos, the Jesuits and the Ethiopian Church.