The Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia
A Jesuit history of the mission to Ethiopia, digested by Balthazar Tellez from the writings of the missionaries Pedro Páez, Manuel de Almeida and Afonso Mendes, in its English version of 1710. It tells the conversion of Susenyos and the expulsion from the Jesuit side.
The preface to the English version calls Tellez a learned Jesuit whom his society employed to digest what those of its members who had been in Ethiopia had written, and it names them: Pedro Páez, whose manuscript history reached to his death in 1622; Manuel de Almeida, who was superior of the mission; and the patriarch Afonso Mendes. Long passages are given in Almeida’s own words, among them the funeral of Susenyos, at which he was present. The Portuguese original, Historia geral de Ethiopia a Alta, was printed at Coimbra in 1660; the English version cited here appeared in 1710 without a translator’s name.
The book is the mission’s own account. It calls the Ethiopian clergy schismatics and the opponents of the union rebels, and it presents the restoration of the old faith as a defeat. It is cited for the dates and documents the Jesuits recorded, and each use says whose account it is. The Ethiopian court’s record is in Abridged Chronicle of the Kings of Ethiopia.
Cited in
- 1622 to 1632, firm date