Peter Paez was the next missionary who attempted to bring Abyssinia into communion with the Catholic Church. After suffering shipwreck in the Red Sea and enduring a seven years’ captivity in the hands of the Turks he landed at Massowah in 1600. Paez was a man of prudence and ability. He prepared himself for his task by learning the Geez language and opening a school at Maiguagua, in which he was able to study the character of the Abyssinian people. He acquired a reputation as a teacher and disputant, and in 1604 was summoned to the court, where the reigning Emperor, Za Dengel, received him as a person of distinction. He soon acquired influence over this monarch, who sanctioned the use of the Roman ritual and shortly became a convert to Catholicism. A rebellion—one of the ordinary incidents of Abyssinian politics—was organized against him, and he was slain. A period of civil war ensued, during which his successor shared the same fate.
The crown then passed to the Emperor Segued (called also Socinios and Susneus).[180] Paez aroused his interest by his skill in architecture and his other talents, was received into favour, and for the second time induced the ruler of the country to recognize the authority of the Catholic Church. Letters announcing the event, signed by the Emperor himself, were sent to the Pope and the King of Portugal. Paez died in 1623, shortly after receiving Segued’s formal abjuration of heresy and administering to him the sacrament of penance.
Upon receipt of the Emperor’s letter, the Pope, in 1624, despatched to Ethiopia a mission headed by Alphonso Mendez, a Jesuit and doctor of divinity. This envoy and his followers reached Abyssinia in 1625. On February 11, 1626, before the court and the magnates of the country, the Emperor avowed his submission to the head of the Catholic Church, and took the oath of obedience to the Holy See. A proclamation was then made that “all persons intended for priests should embrace the Catholic religion under pain of death, and that all should follow the forms of the Church of Rome in the celebration of Easter and Lent under the same penalty.”
The change of creed was not popular in the country. It was opposed by force, and became the occasion of a renewal of civil war. The Emperor found that he had alienated his subjects, and, in spite of the protests and resistance of Mendez, he issued, in 1632, an edict by which he restored the ancient religion to its former authority, and abdicated in favour of his son. Segued died a few months afterwards, still professing the Catholic faith. His successor banished Mendez and his retinue, whereupon they sought protection with the Prince of Bar, who had been at enmity with the Abyssinian king; but this chieftain delivered them to the Turks. Father Jerome Lobo, who wrote a history of the mission, and some of his companions, reached Europe after many adventures; others were ransomed from the Pasha of Souakim and proceeded to India, and the few Jesuits who had remained in Abyssinia were put to death.
Of nine Capuchins who endeavoured to enter the country soon after these events, seven were killed, the three who arrived last being murdered by the Pasha of Souakim, at the Emperor of Abyssinia’s request, as soon as they reached the coast.
No subsequent attempt of similar importance was made to convert the Abyssinian nation to Catholicism, and the story of the struggle between the Roman and the Alexandrian forms of belief may be said to have ended with the banishment of Mendez.
There have been theological contentions in the Abyssinian Church as in others, and it has not escaped schism. The fiercest dispute arose about the number of the births of Christ, and the sword has been used—as elsewhere—to lend force to arguments. Major Harris wrote: “At the expense of a bloody civil war, Gondar, with Godjam, Damot, and all the south-western provinces of Amhára, has long maintained the three births of Christ—Christ proceeding from the Father from all eternity, styled ‘the eternal birth;’ His incarnation, as being born of the holy Virgin, termed His ‘second or temporal birth;’ and His reception of the Holy Ghost, denominated His ‘third birth.’ The Tigre ecclesiastics, on the other hand, whose side is invariably espoused by the Primate of Ethiopia, deny the third birth, upon the ground that the reception of the Holy Ghost cannot be so styled.”[181] Bishop Samuel Gobat, whose book was published in 1834, gave a fuller account of the controversy, which Parkyns quoted.[182] In Stern’s time the Abouna (primate) was supported by King Theodore in his opposition to the doctrine of the three births, and “the royal herald made proclamation that in future all who adhered to the obnoxious dogma of the threefold birth would be taught obedience by the giraffe (scourging). The Shoa clergy denounced this decision as arbitrary and tyrannical, as indeed it was; but an application of the promised whip wrought a wonderful change among that insubordinate body.”[183] The same author on one occasion saw about a dozen priests in chains, who were brought before the Abouna to be admonished because “they had pertinaciously clung to the abolished dogma of the three births of Christ.”[184] The penalty which they incurred “consisted of several months’ successive fasts, divers fines, and the promise of the giraffe.”
For a detailed account of Abyssinian Christianity and ecclesiastical history, reference should be made to the books already mentioned in this volume—Bruce, Gobat, Harris, Lobo, Legrand, Stern, Dufton, Plowden, and Parkyns especially—and to the works of F. Alvarez[185] and Job Ludolphus.[186] A digest of the writings of the early travellers and missionaries in Abyssinia was published by F. Balthazar Tellez, and translated into English by John Stevens (1710).
Mention has already been made of the Falashas (Jews) of Abyssinia. These people, said Stern, “claiming a lineal descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, pride themselves on the fame of their progenitors and the purity of the blood that circulates in their own veins. Intermarriages with those of another tribe or creed are strictly interdicted,[187] nay, even the visit to an unbeliever’s house is a sin, and subjects the transgressor to the penance of a thorough lustration and a complete change of dress before he can return to his own home. Their stern uncompromising sectarian spirit has been highly beneficial in excluding from their community that licentious profligacy in which all the other inhabitants of Ethiopia riot; and it is generally admitted that Falasha men and women seldom, if ever, stray from the path of virtue, or transgress the solemn law of the decalogue.”[188]
Various accounts, of which two have already been mentioned, are given of the origin of the Jewish colony in Abyssinia. It is commonly believed among the people that a large retinue returned with Maqueda, Queen of Sheba, from her visit to King Solomon. Harris remarked, “The tradition of Queen Maqueda has been ascribed to the invention of those fugitive Jews, who, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor Titus, emigrated into the northern States by way of the Red Sea, who disseminated it with the design of obtaining the desired permission to settle in the country, and whose descendants are the Falashas still extant among the mountains of Simien and Lasta.”[189] According to Stern, “the most probable conjecture is that at a very early period—perhaps when Solomon’s fleet navigated the Red Sea—some adventurous Jews, impelled by love of gain, settled among the pleasant hills of Arabia Felix; whilst others of a more daring and enterprising spirit were induced to try their fortune in the more remote mountain scenes of Ethiopia. . . . Subsequent troubles in Palestine and the final overthrow of the Jewish monarchy by Nebuchadnezzar increased the number of the emigrants, and in the lapse of a few centuries the Jews formed a powerful state in Arabia, and a formidable and turbulent people in the Alpine regions between Tigre and Amhara in Ethiopia.”[190] Mr. Vivian alluded to “a colony of aboriginal Jews up in the mountains of Tigre. They live in pastoral fashion, like the old Hebrew patriarchs, upon the produce of the flocks and herds. They have been there for centuries, perhaps even for thousands of years, and the Abyssinians confess that they have always failed to dislodge them from their inaccessible fastnesses.”[191] Falashas are also found in the provinces bordering on Lake Tsana, including Godjam, and it was in this district that Stern visited them. It seems probable that the Jews who have retained their religion are the descendants of those who refused to conform to the doctrines of the Coptic Church when they were generally adopted in the country. Bruce mentions that “about one hundred and eighty years after the establishment of Christianity, a religious war is said to have taken place between the converted and unconverted Abyssinians (the Christians and the Jews),”[192] and if one may judge by the steady and successful opposition which Hebrews in other countries have offered to the most strenuous methods of conversion, it appears likely that a portion of those in Abyssinia adhered to their ancient creed.