Envoys of a Human God: The Jesuit Mission to Christian Ethiopia, 1557–1632 by Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner (review)

In the 16th century, the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia confronted three major challenges that threatened its existence: an invasion by lowland Muslims, the migration of the Oromo into the northern highlands, and the attempt by Roman Catholic missionaries to transform its political, social, and especially its religious institutions. The present volume deals with this last challenge, which reached its climax in the early decades of the 17th century, during which the Society of Jesus religious order sought to “reform” the Ethiopian Orthodox Church into an institution compatible with Western Catholicism and subject to the Roman papacy. This task was a tall order, one rooted in a utopian view of the non-Western world in which almost anything was possible and in an exaggerated sense of self-confidence that characterized royal courts, religious institutions, and elite society in early modern Europe, especially in Iberia.

This book by Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner is the latest in a series of studies devoted to the Jesuit era in Ethiopia, among them those of Merid Wolde Aregay, Hervé Pennec, Leonardo Cohen, and Tewelde Beiene. Martínez acknowledges these scholars and incorporates their findings into his research. He proposes a comprehensive study of the Jesuit experience in Ethiopia from its beginning in the 1550s to its demise in the early 1630s, seeking to fill what he sees as gaps in the historical record and adding perspectives from art history, geopolitics, sociology, theology, and recent archeological excavations. He has two goals in mind: to integrate the Ethiopia mission into the global Jesuit missionary enterprise and network in the East—in India, China, and Japan—that reinforced and sustained the mission, and to connect this international network with local networks that supported the venture, such as parts of the nobility and clergy, high state officials, and the Ethio-Portuguese mixed-race group. He also proposes to address two issues that in his opinion deserve renewed attention: the ultimate goal of the conversion process, and the methods employed to bring about Catholicism in the kingdom.

Martínez appears well-suited to undertake a project of this scope. He is literate in the requisite European languages and is conversant with theological concepts and terms of the Western church. He undertook an investigative journey of more than ten years’ duration that resulted in the present publication.

He has consulted a wide variety of sources, primary among them records of the missionaries themselves, both published and unpublished. A most valuable resource cited repeatedly throughout the text is Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saeculo XVI ad XIX, a set of 15 volumes that includes the major descriptive accounts the Jesuits produced on the country—those of Pedro Páez, Manoel de Almeida, Afonso Mendes, and Manoel Barradas—as well as letters and reports exchanged among Ethiopia, India, and Europe. He has also examined records in archives and libraries in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, an especially important collection being the Jesuit archives in Rome. Among resources are Portuguese and papal treatises, Ethiopian royal chronicles and theological tracts, a multitude of secondary sources, and his recent fieldwork.

The volume consists of an introduction, eight substantive chapters, plus a ninth of review and conclusions. Footnotes are voluminous and detailed, referencing not only information in the text but often also comparative works, mostly by European scholars, that indicate the breadth of research that has gone into this monograph. The text is accompanied by 3 figures, 5 maps, 22 plates or photos, and 17 tables, many compiled by the author for this study. Examples: enrollment in Jesuit schools at Fǝremona and Gorgora, 1605–1626; evolution of conversions, 1605–1630; population and leaders of the Ethio-Portuguese, 1541–1646, and expenditures of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns as well as local Ethiopian expenditures on the mission, 1555–1630. Photos, some by the author...