The custom of ages had, however, struck too deeply into the heart of the Abyssinian. The power of the officiating clergy was paramount in the land. All the passions and the prejudices of the multitude were too firmly enlisted in the cause of ancient belief; and degraded as was the Christianity of the country, its forms and tenets were not more absurd, and not less pertinaciously supported, than those Romish innovations which were so fiercely, though so ineffectually, attempted.
The soft wily speech and the thunder of excommunication were alike disregarded. Treachery and force were both tried and found equally unavailing. Blood flowed for a season like water, and the sound of wailing was heard from the palace to the peasant’s hut; but the storm expended itself, and finally passed away; and after the struggle of a century, the discomfited monks relinquished their attempts upon the church of the Monophysite, without leaving behind one solitary convert to their faith, and bearing along with them the loud maledictions of an exasperated nation.
Volume Three—Chapter Twelve.
The Court of Prester John.
During the darkness of the middle ages, the church of Abyssinia had fallen into complete oblivion; but about the commencement of the sixteenth century rumours were whispered abroad of a Christian monarch and a Christian nation established in the centre of Africa; and the happy news was first brought to the court of Portugal that a Christian church still existed, which had for ages successfully resisted, among the lofty mountains of Abyssinia, the fierce attacks of the sanguinary Saracen.
In the year 1499, Pedro Covilham succeeded in reaching Shoa, where he was received with that favour which novelty usually secures; and although the stranger was prevented by the existing ancient laws from leaving the kingdom, the quest had been successfully performed. The first link was re-established of a chain which had been broken for ages; and shortly afterwards the glories of Prester John and his Christian court were fully disclosed, to abate the intense anxiety that reigned in the heart of every inhabitant of the West.
In due process of time an Abyssinian ambassador made his appearance in Portugal. Unbounded delight was experienced by King Emanuel, and every honour was lavished upon Matthew the merchant of Shoa. All believed that the Abyssinians were devout Catholics, and that a vast empire, estimated at four times its actual extent, was about to fall under the dominion of the Roman church. A mission on a great scale was fitted out—the journey was safely accomplished—and excited fancy rioted for a time in the description of palaces and fountains which never existed, and pomp, riches, and regal power, utterly unknown in the land.
Missions continued from either court during the succeeding forty years. An alliance was formed. Men learned in the arts and sciences were despatched to settle in Abyssinia. Zaga Zaba arrived in Lisbon, invested with full powers to satisfy the interests of both countries, temporal as well as spiritual. But the difference of faith was now for the first time understood. The bitter enmity of the Roman creed stood prominently to view; and the envoy, after studying the details of the Catholic doctrine, and refusing to subscribe a similar contract on behalf of his church, was unscrupulously put to a violent death in a Portuguese prison.