Pedro Páez

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Pedro Páez or Pêro Pais (1564 - May 25, 1622) was a Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia. He was the first European who saw and described the source of the Blue Nile. He was born in Olmeda de las Cebollas (now Olmeda de las Fuentes, near Madrid) sixteen years before the union of the Spanish and the Portuguese crowns (1580-1640). He studied at Coimbra.

Sent from Goa to Ethiopia as a missionary in 1589, Páez was held captive in Yemen for seven years, from 1590 to 1596, where he used his time to learn Arabic. He finally arrived at Massawa in 1603, and made his way to Fremona, which was the Jesuit base in that land. Unlike his predecessor, Andre de Oviedo, Paul B. Henze describes him as "gentle, learned, considerate of the feelings of others". When summoned to the court of the young negusä nägäst Za Dengel, his knowledge of Amharic and Ge'ez, as well as his knowledge of Ethiopian customs impressed the sovereign so much that Za Dengel decided to convert from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church to Catholicism -- 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 assumed the throne in 1607. Sissinios invited him to his court, where the two became friends. Sissinios 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. Eventually Páez also converted Sissinios to Catholicism shortly before his own death in 1622.

Some of the Catholic churches he designed are still standing and were an influence on Ethiopian architecture.

[edit] Writings

Páez was the first European to visit Lake Tana, one of the sources of the Blue Nile, and to write about tasting coffee. His account of Ethiopia, História da Ethiópia in 1620, has been printed as Volumes II and III of 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 addition to translating the Roman Catechism into Ge'ez, Paez is believed to be the author of the treatise De Abyssinorum erroribus. Páez's writings are one of the few works in Portuguese about Ethiopia that has not been translated into English.

[edit] Further reading

• 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.