Pedro Páez

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The Reverend
Pedro Páez Jaramillo
Roman Catholicism in Ethiopia
ChurchCatholic Church
Ordainedc. 1588

Pedro Páez Jaramillo,

Catholic missionary in Ethiopia. He is believed to be the first European to see and describe the source of the Blue Nile, which he reached on 21 April 1618.[1]

Páez' two-volume História da Etiópia (History of Ethiopia) is regarded by

scholars of Ethiopian history as one of the most valuable and accurate works on the contemporary Solomonic Empire and its history (as understood by local sources) up to his own time, particularly as the works of local writers, despite the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's long tradition of literate monastic scholarship and the regular compilation of imperial chronicles
, have in large part been lost in the centuries of intermittent conflict that followed or otherwise remained unknown to contemporary scholarship.

Life

Páez was born in 1564 in the village of Olmeda de la Cebolla (now

ordained a priest
.

In keeping with his

in 1562. The pair were finally ransomed by the Jesuits in Goa and returned to that city, where they spent some time recuperating from their ordeal. Unfortunately Monserrat never recovered, dying in 1600.

Upon his own recovery, Paez again set out on the mission. He finally arrived at

Ge'ez, as well as his knowledge of Ethiopian customs impressed the sovereign so much that Za Dengel decided to convert from the Coptic Church to the Roman—although Páez warned him not to announce his declaration too quickly. However, when Za Dengel proclaimed changes in the observance of the Sabbath
, Páez retired to Fremona, and waited out the ensuing civil war that ended with the emperor's death.

This caution benefited Páez when Susenyos I assumed the throne in 1607. Susenyos invited him to his court, where the two became friends. Susenyos made a grant of land to Páez on the peninsula of Gorgora on the north side of Lake Tana, where he built a new center for his fellow Jesuits, starting with a stone church, which was dedicated 16 January 1621.[6]

Eventually Páez also converted Susenyos to Catholicism shortly before his own death in 1622. Some of the Catholic churches he designed are still standing, most importantly in the area of

evangelizing methods which led to their expulsion from the territory in 1633.[3]

Writings

Páez's account of Ethiopia, História da Ethiópia, which he completed in 1620, was not published during his lifetime, although Manuel de Almeida borrowed extensively from it to compose his Historia de Etiopía a Alta ou Abassia decades later. After almost three centuries, Páez's history was printed as Volumes II and III of Camillo Beccari's Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores occidentales Inedtii (Rome, 1905–17). His work was published in 1945 at Porto in a new edition by Sanceau, Feio and Teixeira, Pêro Pais: História da Etiópia. In Spanish, his complete work was finally published in 2014 with the title Historia de Etiopía. História da Ethiópia has been translated to English by Christopher J. Tribe and published by The Hakluyt Society in 2011.

In addition to translating the

Ge'ez
, Páez is believed to be the author of the treatise De Abyssinorum erroribus.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ E.A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 (Oosterhout: Anthropological Publications, 1970), p. 397.
  2. ISBN 978-84-120210-7-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
    .
  3. ^ a b "The Jesuit Pedro Páez at the Spanish Embassy in Rome". Jesuits. February 13, 2020. Retrieved July 24, 2020.
  4. ^ Baltazar Téllez, The Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, 1710 (LaVergue: Kessinger, 2010), p. 162
  5. ^ Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 95
  6. ^ James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1805 edition), vol. 3, p. 355
  7. ^ Pankhurst, The Ethiopians: A History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 103

Further reading

  • Vida y hazañas de Pedro Páez de Jaramillo
  • Javier Reverte, Dios, el diablo y la aventura: La historia de Pedro Páez, el español que descubrió el Nilo Azul (God, the devil, and adventure: The story of Pedro Páez, the Spaniard who discovered the Blue Nile). Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 2001.
  • George Bishop, A Lion to Judah: The Travels and Adventures of Pedro Paez, S.J., the River Finder. Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1998.
  • Pedro Páez, Historia de Etiopía, (2 vol.). La Coruña: Ediciones del Viento, 2014.