Pedro Páez

Pedro Páez Jaramillo (* 1564, † May 3, 1622 ) was a Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia. He was born in a Castilian village named Olmeda de las Cebollas 50 km east of Madrid, 1582 with only 18 years, he joined the Jesuits and studied in Coimbra, Portugal.

Life

1588 he was first a missionary in the Jesuit monastery, the Indian port city of Goa ( India), which belonged to the Portuguese colony since 1510, and was sent from there to Ethiopia. On the way he was captured by Arabs and sold as a slave. A total of seven years of rebuilding his imprisonment, which he used to learn fluent Arabic. Then he was ransomed, returned to Goa for some time before he left again and finally arrived in Massawa in 1603. From there he traveled to Fremona, the former headquarters of the Jesuits in Ethiopia. When he was summoned to the court of the Negus Za Dengel, impressed by his knowledge of Amharic and Ge'ez and the Ethiopian customs the young ruler so much that it decided to convert to Catholicism - although Páez advised him to this decision not too will leave too quickly known. As Za Dengel announced changes in the observance of the Sabbath, to Paez moved back to Fremona, where he awaited the outcome of the resulting civil war, which ended with the death of the Emperor.

This precaution was Páez benefit, as Susenyos who ascended the throne in 1607, invited him to his court and joined with him later friendship. Susenyos gave him a piece of land on the Gorgora peninsula on the north shore of Lake Tana, where he built a new Jesuit center with a stone church. Eventually Páez before his own death in 1622, that also Susenyos converted to Catholicism.

Some of the designed by Páez Catholic churches still stand today and have the Ethiopian influenced architecture.

He was the first European who discovered the Lake Tana, who is regarded as a source of the Blue Nile. He wrote:

"I see first two small sources, each about as large in extent as two hand spans. What neither Cyrus, king of the Persians, nor Cambyses, nor Alexander the Great, nor the significant Julius Caesar could ever discover, as I see now. The second source is located a stone's throw away from the first. The sources of the Nile are found in the upper part of a valley surrounded by mountains. "

Páez wrote in 1620 a work on the history of Ethiopia ( Ethiopia História da ), which was published in Volume II and III of Beccaris in Rome occidentales as Rerum Scriptores Aethiopicarum Inedtii ( 1905-1917 ). The work was in 1945 in Porto from Sanceau, Feio and Teixeira under the title Péro Pais: História da Etiópia republished.

Páez translated the catechism in the Ethiopian language. It is also believed that he is the author of the treatise De Abyssinorum erroribus.