Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi
Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi
Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Appendix Theta: The <strong>Gondar</strong> Intellectual Line<br />
Connecting brothers of <strong>Phi</strong> <strong>Kappa</strong> <strong>Psi</strong> Fraternity at Cornell University,<br />
tracing their fraternal Big Brother/Little Brother line<br />
to tri-Founder John Andrew Rea (1869)<br />
John Andrew Rea, tri-founder of<br />
<strong>Phi</strong> <strong>Kappa</strong> <strong>Psi</strong> at Cornell . . .<br />
<br />
. . . we begin towards the end of Appendix<br />
Gamma: The Halle Intellectual Line . . .<br />
. . . . Archbishop Bilson was a descendant<br />
of Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria . . . <br />
. . . Wilhelm Vth founded the University<br />
of Ingolstadt, home of the Jesuits . . . <br />
. . . Ingoldstadt was an intellectual base for<br />
Peter Canisus (1549-1552) . . . <br />
. . . Brother Pedro went on mission to<br />
Ethiopia, succeeding brother Oviedo . . . <br />
. . . Oviedo served God and Susenyos of<br />
Ethiopia . . .<br />
. . . Susenyos was preceded by Yekuno<br />
Amlak of Ethiopia . . .<br />
. . . Canisus inspired Francis Xavier and<br />
his Conferes . . . <br />
. . . and Yekuno came to power with the<br />
support of the Ethiopian theologians: Tekle<br />
Haymanot, Iyasus Mo'a and the Abbot<br />
Yohannes . . . <br />
. . . One of Xavier’s conferes was Pedro<br />
Paez . . . <br />
Below we present short biographies<br />
of the Gondor intellectual line of<br />
the <strong>Phi</strong> <strong>Kappa</strong> <strong>Psi</strong> Fraternity<br />
at Cornell University.<br />
“Who defends the House.”
New York Alpha’s intellectual, Archbishop William Laud, above,<br />
was mentored by Bishop Thomas Bilson, below:<br />
Dr. Thomas Bilson the great<br />
grandson of Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, a<br />
major force in the Catholic Reformation.<br />
He descended from a line “bar sinister”,<br />
meaning it was illegitimate, but Dr. Bilson<br />
was proud of the association, nonetheless.<br />
Duke Wilhelm’s liaision produced a<br />
daughter, who married Albert Belsson, and<br />
the union of this marriage was Hermann<br />
Bilson, father of the Bishiop. Bilson was<br />
educated in the school of William de<br />
Wykeham. He entered New College, at<br />
Oxford, and was made a Fellow of his<br />
College in 15645. He began to distinguish<br />
himself as a poet; but, on receiving<br />
ordination, gave himself wholly to<br />
theological studies.<br />
New College, Oxford<br />
He was soon made Prebendary of Winchester, and Warden of the College<br />
there. In 1596, he was made Bishop of Worcester; and three years later, was<br />
translated to the see of Winchester, his native place.<br />
He engaged in most of the polemical contests of his day, as a stiff partizan<br />
of the Church of England. When the controversy arose as to the meaning of the<br />
so called Apostles’ Creed, in asserting the descent of Christ into hell, Bishop<br />
Bilson defended the literal sense, and maintained that Christ went there, not to<br />
suffer, but to wrest the keys of hell out of the Devil’s hands. For this doctrine he<br />
was severely handled by Henry Jacob, who is often called the father of modern<br />
Congregationalism, and also by other Puritans.<br />
Much feeling was excited by the controversy, and Queen Elizabeth, in her ire,<br />
commanded her good bishop,<br />
“neither to desert the doctrine, nor let the calling which he bore in<br />
the Church of God, be trampled under foot, by such unquiet<br />
refusers of truth and authority.”<br />
Dr. Bilsons’ most famous work was entitled “The Perpetual Government of<br />
Christ’s Church,” and was published in 1593. It is still regarded as one of the<br />
ablest books ever written in behalf of Episcopacy. Dr. Bilson died in 1616, at a<br />
good old age, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It was said of him, that he<br />
“carried prelature in his very aspect.” Anthony Wood proclaims him so “complete
in divinity, so well skilled in languages, so read in the Fathers and Schoolmen, so<br />
judicious is making use of his readings, that at length he was found to be no<br />
longer a soldier, but a commander in chief in the spiritual warfare, especially<br />
when he became a bishop!”
Bishop Thomas Bilson was the great grandson of Wilhelm V,<br />
“the Pious” von Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria:<br />
Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, son<br />
of Duke Albrecht V. Born at Munich, 29<br />
September, 1548; died at Schlessheim, 7<br />
February, 1626. He studied in 1563 at the<br />
University of Ingolstadt, but left on account<br />
of an outbreak of the pest. Nevertheless,<br />
he continued his studies elsewhere until<br />
1568, and retained throughout life a keen<br />
interest in learning and art. In 1579 he<br />
became the reigning duke. He made a<br />
reputation by his strong religious opinions<br />
and devotion to the Faith, and was called<br />
"the Pious". His life was under the direction<br />
of the Jesuits. He attended Mass every<br />
day, when possible several times a day,<br />
devoted four hours daily to prayer, one to<br />
contemplation, and all his spare time to<br />
devotional reading.<br />
House of Wittelsbach
He received the sacraments weekly, and twice a week in the Advent<br />
season and during Lent. Whenever possible he took part in public devotions,<br />
processions, and the pilgrimages; thus in 1585 he went on a pilgrimage to Loreto<br />
and Rome. His court was jestingly called a monastery, and his capital the<br />
German Rome. He founded several Jesuit monasteries, in particular that of St.<br />
Michael at Munich, and contributed to the missions in China and Japan.<br />
He did everything possible in Bavaria and the German Empire to further<br />
the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and laboured to prevent the spread of<br />
Protestantism. Thus it was largely through his efforts that the Archbishopric of<br />
Cologne did not become Protestant, due mainly to the vigorous support he gave<br />
his brother Ernst, who had been elected archbishop against Gebhard Truchsess.<br />
On the other hand, the manner in which he bestowed benefices upon<br />
members of his family makes an unpleasant impression at the present day,<br />
though, at that time, this was not considered so unseemly. In the end his brother<br />
Ernest had, besides other benefices, five dioceses, and Wilhelm's son Ferdinand<br />
was bishop of an equal number; another son intended for the clerical life, <strong>Phi</strong>lip,<br />
was made Bishop of Ratisbon in 1595 and cardinal in 1596, but died in 1598.<br />
Wilhelm had his eldest son Maximilian educated with much care, and in 1597 he<br />
resigned the government to Maximilian and led a retired life, devoted to works of<br />
piety, asceticism, and charity, and also to the placid enjoyment of his collections<br />
of works of art and curiosities.<br />
The house of Wittelsbach in the years before William the Vth reign was<br />
allegedly governed by a series of “compacts”. In spite of the decree of 1506<br />
William IV was compelled in 1516, after a violent quarrel, to grant a share in the<br />
government to his brother Louis X, an arrangement which lasted until the death<br />
of Louis in 1545.<br />
William followed the traditional Wittelsbach policy of opposition to the<br />
Habsburgs until in 1534 he made a treaty at Linz with Ferdinand, king of Hungary<br />
and Bohemia. This link strengthened in 1546, when the emperor Charles V<br />
obtained the help of the duke during the war of the league of Schmalkalden by<br />
promising him in certain eventualities the succession to the Bohemian throne,<br />
and the electoral dignity enjoyed by the count palatine of the Rhine.<br />
William also did much at a critical period to secure Bavaria for<br />
Catholicism. The reformed doctrines had made considerable progress in the<br />
duchy when the duke obtained from the pope extensive rights over the bishoprics<br />
and monasteries, and took measures to repress the reformers, many of whom<br />
were banished; while the Jesuits, whom he invited into the duchy in 1541, made<br />
the university of Ingolstadt their headquarters for Germany. William, whose death<br />
occurred in March 1550, was succeeded by his son Albert V, who had married a<br />
daughter of Ferdinand of Habsburg, afterwards the emperor Ferdinand I. Early in<br />
his reign Albert made some concessions to the reformers, who were still strong in<br />
Bavaria; but about 1563 he changed his attitude, favoured the decrees of the
Council of Trent, and pressed forward the work of the Counter-Reformation. As<br />
education passed by degrees into the hands of the Jesuits the progress of<br />
Protestantism was effectually arrested in Bavaria. Albert V patronised art<br />
extensively. Artists of all kinds resorted to his court in Munich, and splendid<br />
buildings arose in the city; while Italy and elsewhere contributed to the collection<br />
of artistic works. The expenses of a magnificent court led the duke to quarrel with<br />
the Landschaft (the nobles), to oppress his subjects, and to leave a great burden<br />
of debt when he died in October 1579.<br />
The succeeding duke, Albert's son, William Vth (called the Pious), had<br />
received a Jesuit education and showed keen attachment to Jesuit tenets. He<br />
secured the archbishopric of Cologne for his brother Ernest in 1583, and this<br />
dignity remained in the possession of the family for nearly 200 years. In 1597 he<br />
abdicated in favour of his son Maximilian I, and retired into a monastery, where<br />
he died in 1626.
Wilhelm Vth studied at, and patronized, the<br />
University of Ingoldstadt :<br />
The University of Ingolstadt was<br />
founded in 1472 by Louis the Rich, the<br />
Duke of Bavaria at the time, and its first<br />
Chancellor was the Bishop of Eichstätt. It<br />
consisted of five faculties: humanities,<br />
sciences, theology, law and medicine, all of<br />
which were contained in the Hoheschule<br />
('high school'). The university was modeled<br />
after the University of Vienna, its chief goal<br />
was the propagation of the Christian faith.<br />
The university closed in May 1800, by<br />
order of the Prince-elector Maximilian IV<br />
(later Maximilian I, King of Bavaria). In its<br />
first several decades, the university grew<br />
rapidly, opening colleges not only for<br />
philosophers from the realist and<br />
nominalist schools, but also for poor<br />
students wishing to study the liberal arts.<br />
University of Ingoldstadt<br />
Among its most famous instructors in the late 1400s were the poet Conrad<br />
Celtes, the Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin, and the Bavarian historian<br />
Johannes Thurmair (also known as "Johannes Aventinus").<br />
The Lutheran movement took an early hold in Ingolstadt, but was quickly<br />
put to flight by one of the chief figures of the Counter-Reformation: Johann Eck,<br />
who made the university a bastion for the traditional Catholic faith in southern<br />
Germany. In Eck's wake, many Jesuits were appointed to key positions in the<br />
school, and the university, over most of the 1600s, gradually came fully under the<br />
control of the Jesuit order. Noted scholars of this period include the theologian<br />
Gregory of Valentia, the astronomer Christopher Scheiner (inventor of the<br />
helioscope), Johann Baptist Cysat, and the poet Jacob Balde. The Holy Roman<br />
Emperor Ferdinand II received his education at the university.<br />
The 1700s gave rise to the Enlightenment, a movement that was opposed<br />
to the church-run universities of which Ingolstadt was a prime example. The<br />
Jesuits gradually left the university as it sought to change with the times, until the<br />
university finally had become so secular that the greatest influence in Ingolstadt<br />
was Adam Weishaupt, founder of the secret society of the Illuminati. On<br />
November 25, 1799, the elector Maximilian IV announced that the university's<br />
depleted finances had become too great a weight for him to bear: the university<br />
would be moved to Landshut as a result. The university finished that year's<br />
school term, and left Ingolstadt in May 1800, bringing to a quiet end the school
that had, at its peak, been one of the most influential and powerful institutes of<br />
higher learning in Europe.<br />
The University of Ingolstadt (1472-1800), was founded by Louis the Rich,<br />
Duke of Bavaria. The privileges of a studium generale with all four faculties had<br />
been granted by Pope Pius II, 7 April, 1458, but owing to the unsettled condition<br />
of the times, could not be put into effect.<br />
Ingolstadt, modelled on the University of Vienna, had as one of its<br />
principal aims the furtherance and spread of Christian belief. For its material<br />
equipment, an unusually large endowment was provided out of the holdings of<br />
the clergy and the religious orders. The Bishop of Eichstätt, to whom diocese<br />
Ingolstadt belongs, was appointed chancellor. The formal inauguration of the<br />
university took place on 26 June, 1472, and within the first semester 489<br />
students matriculated. As in other universites prior to the sixteenth century, the<br />
faculty of philosophy comprised two sections, the Realists and the Nominalists,<br />
each under its own dean.<br />
In 1496 Duke George the Rich, son of Louis, established the Collegium<br />
Georgianum for poor students in the faculty of arts, and other foundations for<br />
similar purposes were subsequently made. Popes Adrian VI and Clement VII<br />
bestowed on the university additional revenues from ecclesiastical property. At<br />
the height of the humanistic movement, Ingolstadt counted among its teachers a<br />
series of remarkable savatns and writers; Conrad Celtes, the first poet crowned<br />
by the German Emperor; his disciple Jacob Locher, surnamed <strong>Phi</strong>lomusos;<br />
Johann Turmair, known as Aventinus from his birthplace, Abensber, editor of the<br />
"Annales Boiorum" and of the Bavarian "Chronica", father of Bavarian history and<br />
founder (1507) of the"Sodalitas litteraria Angilostadensis". Johanees Reuchlin,<br />
restorer of the Hebrew language and literature, was also for a time at the<br />
university.<br />
Although Duke William IV (1508-50) and his chancellor, Leonhard von<br />
Eck, did their utmost during thirty years to keep Lutheranism out of Ingolstadt,<br />
and though the adherents of the new doctrine were obliged to retract or resign,<br />
some of the professors joined the Lutheran movement. Their influence, however,<br />
was counteracted by the tireless and successful endeavours of the foremost<br />
opponent of the Reformation, Dr. Johann Maier, better known as Eck, from the<br />
name of his birth-place, Egg, on the Gunz. He taught and laboured (1510-43) to<br />
such good purpose that Ingolstadt, during the Counter-Reformation, did more<br />
than any other university for the defence of the Catholic Faith, and was for the<br />
church in Southern Germany what Wittenberg was for Protestantism in the north.<br />
In 1549, with the approval of Paul III, Peter Canisus, Salmeron, Claude<br />
Lejay, and other Jesuits were appointed to professorships in theology and<br />
philosophy. About the same time a college and a boarding school for boys were<br />
established, though they were not actually opened until 1556, when the statutes
of the university were revised. In 1568 the profession of faith in accordance with<br />
the Council of Trent was required of the rector and professors. In 1688 the<br />
teaching in the faculty of philosophy passed entirely in the hands of the Jesuits.<br />
Though the university after this change, in spite of vexations and conflicts<br />
regarding exemption from taxes and juridical autonomy, enjoyed a high degree of<br />
prosperity, its existence was frequently imperilled during the troubles of the Thirty<br />
Years War. But its fame as a home of earning was enhanced by men such as the<br />
theologian, Gregory of Valentia; the controversialist, Jacob Gretser (1558-1610);<br />
the moralist, Laymann (1603-1609); the mathematician and cartographer, <strong>Phi</strong>lip<br />
Apian; the astronomer, Christopher Scheiner (1610-1616), who, with the<br />
helioscope invented by him, discovered the sun spots and calculated the ime of<br />
the sun's rotation; and the poet, Jacob Balde, from Ensisheim in Alsacc,<br />
professor of rhetoric. Prominent among the jurists in the seventeenth century<br />
were Kaspar Manz and Christopher Berold.<br />
During the latter half of that century, and especially in the eighteenth, the<br />
courses of instruction were improved and adapted to the requirements of the<br />
age. After the founding of the Bavarian Academy of Science at Munich in 1759,<br />
an anti-ecclesiastical tendency sprang up at Ingolstadt and found an ardent<br />
supporter in Joseph Adam, Baron of Ickstatt, whom the elector had placed at the<br />
head of the university. Plans, moreover, were set on foot to have the university of<br />
the third centenary the Society of Jesus was suppressed, but some of the ex-<br />
Jesuits retained their professorships for a while longer.<br />
A movement was inaugurated in 1772 by Adam Weishaupt, professor of<br />
canon law, with a view to securing the triumph of the rationalistic "enlightment" in<br />
Church and State by means of the secret society of "Illuminati", which he<br />
founded. But this organization was suppressed in 1786 by the Elector Carl<br />
Theodore, and Weishaupt was dismissed. On 25 November, 1799, the elector<br />
Maximilian IV, later King Maximilian I, decreed that the university, which was<br />
involved in financial difficulties, should be transferred to Landshut; and this was<br />
done in the following May. Among its leading professors towards the close were<br />
Winter the church historian, Schrank the naturalist, and Johann Michael Sailer,<br />
writer on moral philosophy and pedagogy, who later became Bishop of Ratisbon.<br />
Oh yeah, Victor “the Doctor” Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel<br />
Frankenstein was a fictional student at the University of Ingolstadt.
The University of Ingoldstadt was an intellectual base<br />
for Peter Canisus, S.J.:<br />
Blessed Peter Canisius. Born at<br />
Nimwegen in the Netherlands, 8 May, 1521;<br />
died in Fribourg, 21 November, 1597. His<br />
father was the wealthy burgomaster, Jacob<br />
Canisius; his mother, Ægidia van<br />
Houweningen, died shortly after Peter's birth.<br />
In 1536 Peter was sent to Cologne, where he<br />
studied arts, civil law, and theology at the<br />
university; he spent a part of 1539 at the<br />
University of Louvain, and in 1540 received<br />
the degree of Master of Arts at Cologne.<br />
Nicolaus van Esche was his spiritual adviser,<br />
and he was on terms of friendship with such<br />
staunch Catholics as Georg of Skodborg (the<br />
expelled Archbishop of Lund).<br />
Köln University<br />
Other mentors included Johann Gropper (canon of the cathedral),<br />
Eberhard Billick (the Carmelite monk), Justus Lanspergius, and other Carthusian<br />
monks. Although his father desired him to marry a wealthy young woman, on 25<br />
February, 1540 he pledged himself to celibacy.<br />
In 1543 he visited Peter Faber and, having made the "Spiritual Exercises"<br />
under his direction, was admitted into the Society of Jesus at Mainz, on 8 May.<br />
With the help of Leonhard Kessel and others, Canisius, labouring under great<br />
difficulties, founded at Cologne the first German house of the order; at the same<br />
time he preached in the city and vicinity, and debated and taught in the<br />
university.<br />
In 1546 he was admitted to the priesthood, and soon afterwards was sent<br />
by the clergy and university to obtain assistance from Emperor Charles V, the<br />
nuncio, and the clergy of Liège against the apostate Archbishop, Hermann von<br />
Wied, who had attempted to pervert the diocese. In 1547, as the theologian of<br />
Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, Bishop of Augsburg, he participated in<br />
the general ecclesiastical council (which sat first at Trent and then at Bologna),<br />
and spoke twice in the congregation of the theologians. After this he spent<br />
several months under the direction of Ignatius in Rome. In 1548 he taught<br />
rhetoric at Messina, Sicily, preaching in Italian and Latin. At this time Duke<br />
William IV of Bavaria requested Paul III to send him some professors from the
Society of Jesus for the University of Ingolstadt; Canisius was among those<br />
selected.<br />
On 7 September, 1549, he made his solemn profession as Jesuit at<br />
Rome, in the presence of the founder of the order. On his journey northward he<br />
received, at Bologna, the degree of doctor of theology. On 13 November,<br />
accompanied by Fathers Jaius and Salmeron, he reached Ingolstadt, where he<br />
taught theology, catechized, and preached. In 1550 he was elected rector of the<br />
university.<br />
In 1552, Peter was sent by Ignatius to the new college in Vienna; there he<br />
also taught theology in the university, preached at the Cathedral of St. Stephen,<br />
and at the court of Ferdinand I, and was confessor at the hospital and prison.<br />
During Lent, 1553 he visited many abandoned parishes in Lower Austria,<br />
preaching and administering the sacraments. The king's eldest son (later<br />
Maximilian II) had appointed to the office of court preacher, Phauser, a married<br />
priest, who preached the Lutheran doctrine. Canisius warned Ferdinand I,<br />
verbally and in writing, and opposed Phauser in public disputations. Maximilian<br />
was obliged to dismiss Phauser and, on this account, the rest of his life he<br />
harboured a grudge against Canisius. Ferdinand three times offered him the<br />
Bishopric of Vienna, but he refused. In 1557 Julius III appointed him<br />
administrator of the bishopric for one year, but Canisius succeeded in ridding<br />
himself of this burden (cf. N. Paulus in "Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie",<br />
XXII, 742-8). In 1555 he was present at the Diet of Augsburg with Ferdinand, and<br />
in 1555-56 he preached in the cathedral of Prague.<br />
After long negotiations and preparations he was able to open Jesuit<br />
colleges at Ingolstadt and Prague. In the same year Ignatius appointed him first<br />
provincial superior of Upper Germany (Swabia, Bavaria, Bohemia, Hungary,<br />
Lower and Upper Austria). During the winter of 1556-57 he acted as adviser to<br />
the King of the Romans at the Diet of Ratisbon and delivered many sermons in<br />
the cathedral. By the appointment of the Catholic princes and the order of the<br />
pope he took part in the religious discussions at Worms. As champion of the<br />
Catholics he repeatedly spoke in opposition to Melanchthon. The fact that the<br />
Protestants disagreed among themselves and were obliged to leave the field was<br />
due in a great measure to Canisius. He also preached in the cathedral of Worms.<br />
During Advent and Christmas he visited the Bishop of Strasburg at<br />
Zabern, started negotiations for the building of a Jesuit college there, preached,<br />
explained the catechism to the children, and heard their confessions. He also<br />
preached in the cathedral of Strasburg and strengthened the Catholics of Alsace<br />
and Freiburg in their faith. Ferdinand, on his way to Frankfort to be proclaimed<br />
emperor, met him at Nuremburg and confided his troubles to him. Then Duke<br />
Albert V of Bavaria secured his services; at Straubing the pastors and preachers<br />
had fled, after having persuaded the people to turn from the Catholic faith.<br />
Canisius remained in the town for six weeks, preaching three or four times a day,
and by his gentleness he undid much harm. From Straubing he was called to<br />
Rome to be present at the First General Congregation of his order, but before its<br />
close Paul IV sent him with the nuncio Mentuati to Poland to the imperial Diet of<br />
Pieterkow; at Cracow he addressed the clergy and members of the university.<br />
In the year 1559 he was summoned by the emperor to be present at the<br />
Diet of Augsburg. There, at the urgent request of the chapter, he became<br />
preacher at the cathedral and held this position until 1566. His manuscripts show<br />
the care with which he wrote his sermons. In a series of sermons he treats of the<br />
end of man, of the Decalogue, the Mass, the prophecies of Jonas; at the same<br />
time he rarely omitted to expound the Gospel of the day; he spoke in keeping<br />
with the spirit of the age, explained the justification of man, Christian liberty, the<br />
proper way of interpreting the Scriptures, defended the worship of saints, the<br />
ceremonies of the Church, religious vows, indulgences. urged obedience to the<br />
Church authorities, confession, communion, fasting, and almsgiving; he censured<br />
the faults of the clergy, at times perhaps too sharply, as he felt that they were<br />
public and that he must avoid demanding reformation from the laity only. Against<br />
the influence of evil spirits he recommended the means of defence which had<br />
been in use in the Church during the first centuries—lively faith, prayer,<br />
ecclesiastical benedictions, and acts of penance. From 1561-62 he preached<br />
about two hundred and ten sermons, besides giving retreats and teaching<br />
catechism. In the cathedral, his confessional and the altar at which he said Mass<br />
were surrounded by crowds, and alms were placed on the altar. The envy of<br />
some of the cathedral clergy was aroused, and Canisius and his companions<br />
were accused of usurping the parochial rights. The pope and bishop favoured the<br />
Jesuits, but the majority of the chapter opposed them. Canisius was obliged to<br />
sign an agreement according to which he retained the pulpit but gave up the right<br />
of administering the sacraments in the cathedral.<br />
In 1559 he opened a college in Munich; in 1562 he appeared at Trent as<br />
papal theologian. The council was discussing the question whether communion<br />
should be administered under both forms to those of the laity who asked for it.<br />
Lainez, the general of the Society of Jesus, opposed it unconditionally. Canisius<br />
held that the cup might be administered to the Bohemians and to some Catholics<br />
whose faith was not very firm. After one month he departed from Trent, but he<br />
continued to support the work of the Fathers by urging the bishops to appear at<br />
the council, by giving expert opinion regarding the Index and other matters, by<br />
reports on the state of public opinion, and on newly-published books. In the<br />
spring of 1563 he rendered a specially important service to the Church; the<br />
emperor had come to Innsbruck (near Trent), and had summoned thither several<br />
scholars, including Canisius, as advisers. Some of these men fomented the<br />
displeasure of the emperor with the pope and the cardinals who presided over<br />
the council. For months Canisius strove to reconcile him with the Curia. He has<br />
been blamed unjustly for communicating to his general and to the pope's<br />
representatives some of Ferdinand's plans, which otherwise might have ended<br />
contrary to the intention of all concerned in the dissolution of the council and in a
new national apostasy. The emperor finally granted all the pope's demands and<br />
the council was able to proceed and to end peacefully. All Rome praised<br />
Canisius, but soon after he lost favour with Ferdinand and was denounced as<br />
disloyal; at this time he also changed his views regarding the giving of the cup to<br />
the laity (in which the emperor saw a means of relieving all his difficulties), saying<br />
that such a concession would only tend to confuse faithful Catholics and to<br />
encourage the disobedience of the recalcitrant.<br />
In 1562 the College of Innsbruck was opened by Canisius, and at that time<br />
he acted as confessor to the "Queen" Magdalena (declared Venerable in 1906 by<br />
Pius X; daughter of Ferdinand I, who lived with her four sisters at Innsbruck), and<br />
as spiritual adviser to her sisters. At their request he sent them a confessor from<br />
the society, and, when Magdalena presided over the convent, which she had<br />
founded at Hall, he sent her complete directions for attaining Christian perfection.<br />
In 1563 he preached at many monasteries in Swabia; in 1564 he sent the first<br />
missionaries to Lower Bavaria, and recommended the provincial synod of<br />
Salzburg not to allow the cup to the laity, as it had authority to do; his advice,<br />
however, was not accepted. In this year Canisius opened a college at Dillingen<br />
and assumed, in the name of the order, the administration of the university which<br />
had been founded there by Cardinal Truchsess. In 1565 he took part in the<br />
Second General Congregation of the order in Rome. While in Rome he visited<br />
<strong>Phi</strong>lip, son of the Protestant philologist Joachim Camerarius, at that time a<br />
prisoner of the Inquisition, and instructed and consoled him.<br />
Pius IV sent him as his secret nuncio to deliver the decrees of the Council<br />
of Trent to Germany; the pope also commissioned him to urge their enforcement,<br />
to ask the Catholic princes to defend the Church at the coming diet, and to<br />
negotiate for the founding of colleges and seminaries. Canisius negotiated more<br />
or less successfully with the Electors of Mainz and Trier, with the bishops of<br />
Augsburg, Würzburg, Osnabrück, Münster, and Paderborn, with the Duke of<br />
Jülich-Cleves-Berg, and with the City and University of Cologne; he also visited<br />
Nimwegen, preaching there and at other places; his mission, however, was<br />
interrupted by the death of the pope. Pius V desired its continuation, but Canisius<br />
requested to be relieved; he said that it aroused suspicions of espionage, of<br />
arrogance, and of interference in politics (for a detailed account of his mission<br />
see "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach", LXXI, 58, 164, 301).<br />
At the Diet of Augsburg (1566), Canisius and other theologians, by order<br />
of the pope, gave their services to the cardinal legate Commendone; with the<br />
help of his friends he succeeded, although with great difficulty, in persuading the<br />
legate not to issue his protest against the religious peace, and thus prevented a<br />
new fratricidal war. The Catholic members of the diet accepted the decrees of the<br />
council, the designs of the Protestants were frustrated, and from that time a new<br />
and vigorous life began for the Catholics in Germany. In the same year Canisius<br />
went to Wiesensteig, where he visited and brought back to the Church the
Lutheran Count of Helfenstein and his entire countship, and where he prepared<br />
for death two witches who had been abandoned by the Lutheran preachers.<br />
In 1567 he preached the Lenten sermons in the cathedral of Würzburg,<br />
gave instruction in the Franciscan church twice a week to the children and<br />
domestics of the town, and discussed the foundling of a Jesuit college at<br />
Würzburg with the bishop. Then followed the diocesan synod of Dillingen (at<br />
which Canisius was principal adviser of the Bishop of Augsburg), journeys to<br />
Würzburg, Mainz, Speyer, and a visit to the Bishop of Strasburg, whom he<br />
advised, though unsuccessfully, to take a coadjutor. At Dillingen he received the<br />
application of Stanislaus Kostka to enter the Society af Jesus, and sent him with<br />
hearty recommendations to the general of the order at Rome. At this time he<br />
successfully settled a dispute in the philosophical faculty of the University of<br />
Ingolstadt. In 1567 and 1568 he went several times to Innsbruck, where in the<br />
name of the general he consulted with the Archduke Ferdinand II and his sisters<br />
about the confessors of the archduchesses and about the establishment of a<br />
Jesuit house at Hall. In 1569 the general decided to accept the college at Hall.<br />
During Lent of 1568 Canisius preached at Ellwangen, in Würtemberg;<br />
from there he went with Cardinal Truchsess to Rome. The Upper German<br />
province of the order had elected the provincial as its representative at the<br />
meeting of the procurators; this election was illegal, but Canisius was admitted.<br />
For months he collected in the libraries of Rome material for a great work which<br />
he was preparing. In 1569 he returned to Augsburg and preached Lenten<br />
sermons in the Church of St. Mauritius. Having been a provincial for thirteen<br />
years (an unusually long time) he was relieved of the office at his own request,<br />
and went to Dillingen, where he wrote, catechized, and heard confessions, his<br />
respite, however, was short; in 1570 he was obliged again to go to Augsburg. A<br />
year latter he was compelled to move to Innsbruck and to accept the office of<br />
court preacher to Archduke Ferdinand II.<br />
In 1575 Gregory XIII sent him with papal messages to the archduke and to<br />
the Duke of Bavaria. When he arrived in Rome to make his report, the Third<br />
General Congregation of the order was assembled and, by special favour,<br />
Canisius was invited to be present. From this time he was preacher in the parish<br />
church of Innsbruck until the Diet of Ratisbon (1576), which he attended as<br />
theologian of the cardinal legate Morone. In the following year he supervised at<br />
Ingolstadt the printing of an important work, and induced the students of the<br />
university to found a sodality of the Blessed Virgin. During Lent, 1578, he<br />
preached at the court of Duke William of Bavaria at Landshut. The nuncio<br />
Bonhomini desired to have a college of the society at Fribourg; the order at first<br />
refused on account of the lack of men, but the pope intervened and, at the end of<br />
1580, Canisius laid the foundation stone. In 1581 he founded a sodality of the<br />
Blessed Virgin among the citizens and, soon afterwards, sodalities for women<br />
and students; in 1582 schools were opened, and he preached in the parish<br />
church and in other places until 1589.
The canton had not been left uninfluenced by the Protestant movement.<br />
Canisius worked indefatigably with the provost Peter Schnewly, the Franciscan<br />
Johannes Michel, and others, for the revival of religious sentiments amongst the<br />
people; since then Fribourg has remained a stronghold of the Catholic Church. In<br />
1584, while on the way to take part in another meeting of the order at Augsburg,<br />
he preached at Lucerne and made a pilgrimage to the miraculous image of the<br />
Blessed Virgin at Einsiedeln. According to his own account, it was then that St.<br />
Nicholas, the patron saint of Fribourg, made known to him his desire that<br />
Canisius should not leave Fribourg again. Many times the superiors of the order<br />
planned to transfer him to another house, but the nuncio, the city council, and the<br />
citizens themselves opposed the measure; they would not consent to lose this<br />
celebrated and saintly man. The last years of his life he devoted to the instruction<br />
of converts, to making spiritual addresses to the brothers of the order, to writing<br />
and re-editing books. The city authorities ordered his body to be buried before<br />
the high altar of the principal church, the Church of St. Nicolaus, from which they<br />
were translated in 1625 to that of St. Michael, the church of the Jesuit College.<br />
Canisius held that to defend the Catholic truths with the pen was just as<br />
important as to convert the Hindus. At Rome and Trent he strongly urged the<br />
appointment at the council, at the papal court, and in other parts of Italy, of able<br />
theologians to write in defence of the Catholic faith. He begged Pius V to send<br />
yearly subsidies to the Catholic printers of Germany, and to permit German<br />
scholars to edit Roman manuscripts; he induced the city council of Fribourg to<br />
erect a printing establishment, and he secured special privileges for printers. He<br />
also kept in touch with the chief Catholic printers of his time &151; Plantin of<br />
Antwerp, Cholin of Cologne, and Mayer of Dillingen &151; and had foreign works<br />
of importance reprinted in Germany, for example, the works of Andrada,<br />
Fontidonio, and Villalpando in defence of the Council of Trent.<br />
Canisius advised the generals of the order to create a college of authors;<br />
urged scholars like Bartholomæus Latomus, Friedrich Staphylus, and<br />
Hieronymus Torensis to publish their works; assisted Onofrio Panvinio and the<br />
polemic Stanislaus Hosius, reading their manuscripts and correcting proofs; and<br />
contributed to the work of his friend Surius on the councils. At his solicitation the<br />
"Briefe aus Indien", the first relations of Catholic missioners, were published<br />
(Dillingen, 1563-71); "Canisius", wrote the Protestant preacher, Witz, "by this<br />
activity gave an impulse which deserves our undivided recognition, indeed which<br />
arouses our admiration" ("Petrus Canisius", Vienna, 1897, p. 12).<br />
With apostolic zeal he loved the Society of Jesus; the day of his admission<br />
to the order he called his second birthday. Obedience to his superiors was his<br />
first rule. As a superior he cared with parental love for the necessities of his<br />
subordinates. Shortly before his death he declared that he had never regretted<br />
becoming a Jesuit, and recalled the abuses which the opponents of the Church<br />
had heaped upon his order and his person. Johann Wigand wrote a vile<br />
pamphlet against his "Catechism"; Flacius Illyricus, Johann Gnypheus, and Paul
Scheidlich wrote books against it; Melanchthon declared that he defended errors<br />
wilfully; Chemnitz called him a cynic; the satirist Fischart scoffed at him; Andreæ<br />
Dathen, Gallus, Hesshusen, Osiander, Platzius, Roding, Vergerio, and others<br />
wrote vigorous attacks against him; at Prague the Hussites threw stones into the<br />
church where he was saying Mass; at Berne he was derided by a Protestant<br />
mob. At Easter, 1568, he was obliged to preach in the Cathedral of Würzburg in<br />
order to disprove the rumour that he had become a Protestant. Unembittered by<br />
all this, he said, "the more our opponents calumniate us, the more we must love<br />
them".<br />
He requested Catholic authors to advocate the truth with modesty and<br />
dignity without scoffing or ridicule. The names of Luther and Melanchthon were<br />
never mentioned in his "Catechism". His love for the German people is<br />
characteristic; he urged the brothers of the order to practise German diligently,<br />
and he liked to hear the German national hymns sung. At his desire St. Ignatius<br />
decreed that all the members of the order should offer monthly Masses and<br />
prayers for the welfare of Germany and the North. Ever the faithful advocate of<br />
the Germans at the Holy See, he obtained clemency for them in questions of<br />
ecclesiastical censures, and permission to give extraordinary absolutions and to<br />
dispense from the law of fasting. He also wished the Index to be modified that<br />
German confessors might be authorized to permit the reading of some books, but<br />
in his sermons he warned the faithful to abstain from reading such books without<br />
permission. While he was rector of the University of Ingolstadt, a resolution was<br />
passed forbidding the use of Protestant textbooks and, at his request, the Duke<br />
of Bavaria forbade the importation of books opposed to religion and morals. At<br />
Cologne he requested the town council to forbid the printing or sale of books<br />
hostile to the Faith or immoral, and in the Tyrol had Archduke Ferdinand II<br />
suppress such books. He also advised Bishop Urban of Gurk, the court preacher<br />
of Ferdinand I, not to read so many Protestant books, but to study instead the<br />
Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers. At Nimwegen he searched the libraries<br />
of his friends, and burned all heretical books. In the midst of all these cares<br />
Canisius remained essentially a man of prayer; he was an ardent advocate of the<br />
Rosary and its sodalities. He was also one of the precursors of the modern<br />
devotion of the Sacred Heart.<br />
During his lifetime his "Catechism" appeared in more than 200 editions in<br />
at least twelve languages. It was one of the works which influenced St. Aloysius<br />
Gonzaga to enter the Society of Jesus; it converted, among others, Count<br />
Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm of Neuburg; and as late as the eighteenth century in<br />
many places the words "Canisi" and catechism were synonymous. It remained<br />
the foundation and pattern for the catechisms printed later. His preaching also<br />
had great influence; in 1560 the clergy of the cathedral of Augsburg testified that<br />
by his sermons nine hundred persons had been brought back to the Church, and<br />
in May, 1562, it was reported the Easter communicants numbered one thousand<br />
more than in former years. Canisius induced some of the prominent Fuggers to<br />
return to the Church, and converted the leader of the Augsburg Anabaptists.
In 1537 the Catholic clergy had been banished from Augsburg by the city<br />
council; but after the preaching of Canisius public processions were held,<br />
monasteries gained novices, people crowded to the jubilee indulgence,<br />
pilgrimages were revived, and frequent Communion again became the rule. After<br />
the elections of 1562 there were eighteen Protestants and twenty-seven<br />
Catholics on the city council. He received the approbation of Pius IV by a special<br />
Brief in 1561. Great services were rendered by Canisius to the Church through<br />
the extension of the Society of Jesus; the difficulties were great: lack of novices,<br />
insufficient education of some of the younger members, poverty, plague,<br />
animosity of the Protestants, jealousy on the part of fellow-Catholics, the<br />
interference of princes and city councils. Notwithstanding all this, Canisius<br />
introduced the order into Bavaria, Bohemia, Swabia, the Tyrol, and Hungary, and<br />
prepared the way in Alsace, the Palatinate, Hesse, and Poland.<br />
Even opponents admit that to the Jesuits principally is due the credit of<br />
saving a large part of Germany from religious innovation. In this work Canisius<br />
was the leader. In many respects Canisius was the product of an age which<br />
believed in strange miracles, put witches to death, and had recourse to force<br />
against the adherents of another faiih; but notwithstanding all this, Johannes<br />
Janssen does not hesitate to declare that Canisius was the most prominent and<br />
most influential Catholic reformer of the sixteenth century (Geschichte des<br />
deutschen Volkes, 15th and 16th editions, IV, p. 406). "Canisius more than any<br />
other man", writes A. Chroust, "saved for the Church of Rome the Catholic<br />
Germany of today" (Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, new series,<br />
II, 106). It has often been declared that Canisius in many ways resembles St.<br />
Boniface, and he is therefore called the second Apostle of Germany. The<br />
Protestant professor of theology, Paul Drews, says: "It must be admitted that,<br />
from the standpoint of Rome, he deserves the title of Apostle of Germany"<br />
("Petrus Canisius", Halle, 1892, p. 103).<br />
Soon after his death reports spread of the miraculous help obtained by<br />
invoking his name. His tomb was visited by pilgrims. The Society of Jesus<br />
decided to urge his beatification. The ecclesiastical investigations of his virtues<br />
and miracles were at first conducted by the Bishops of Fribourg, Dillingen, and<br />
Freising (1625-90); the apostolic proceedings began in 1734, but were<br />
interrupted by political and religions disorders. Gregory XVI resumed them about<br />
1833; Pius IX on 17 April, 1864, approved of four of the miracles submitted, and<br />
on 20 November, 1869, the solemn beatification took place in St. Peter's at<br />
Rome. In connection with this, there appeared between 1864-66 more than thirty<br />
different biographies. On the occasion of the tercentenarv of his death, Leo XIII<br />
issued to the bishops of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland his much-discussed<br />
"Epistola Encyclica de memoria sæculari B. Petri Canisii"; the bishops of<br />
Switzerland issued a collective pastoral; in numerous places of Europe and in<br />
some places in the United States this tercentenary was celebrated and about fifty<br />
pamphlets were published.
In order to encourage the veneration of Canisius there is published at<br />
Fribourg, Switzerland, monthly since 1896, the "Canisius-Stimmen" (in German<br />
and French). The infirmary of the College of St. Michael, in which Canisius died,<br />
is now a chapel. Vestments and other objects which he used are kept in different<br />
houses of the order. The Canisius College at Buffalo possesses precious relics.<br />
In the house of Canisius in the Broersstraat at Nimwegen the room is still shown<br />
where he was born. Other memorials are: the Canisius statue in one of the public<br />
squares of Fribourg, the statue in the cathedral of Augsburg, the Church of the<br />
Holy Saviour and the Mother of Sorrows, recently built in his memory in Vienna,<br />
and the new Canisius College at Nimwegen. At the twenty-sixth general meeting<br />
of German Catholics held at Aachen, 1879, a Canisius society for the religious<br />
education of the young was founded. The general prayer, said every Sunday in<br />
the churches originated by Canisius, is still in use in the greater part of Germany,<br />
and also in many places in Austria and Switzerland. Various portraits of Canisius<br />
exist: in the Churches of St. Nicolaus and St. Michael in Fribourg; in the vestry of<br />
the Augsburg Cathedral; in the Church of St. Michael at Munich; in the town hall<br />
at Nimwegen; in the town hall at Ingolstadt; in the Cistercian monastery at Stams.<br />
The woodcut in Pantaleo, "Prosopographia", III (Basle, 1566), is worthless.<br />
Copper-plates were produced by Wierx (1619), Custos (1612), Sadeler (1628),<br />
Hainzelmann (1693), etc. In the nineteenth century are: Fracassini's painting in<br />
the Vatican; Jeckel's steel engraving; Leo Samberger's painting; Steinle's<br />
engraving (1886). In most of these pictures Canisius is represented with his<br />
catechism and other books, or surrounded by children whom he is instructing.
Peter Canisus was sent forth by Ignatius Loyola, founder of the<br />
Society of Jesus – “the Jesuits” – who worked with<br />
his brothers, Francis Xavier and his<br />
conferes, to revive orthodoxy<br />
beyond the Suez:<br />
University of Paris in 1529,<br />
Pierre Favre, Francisco Xavier, and Iñigo<br />
de Loyola began sharing a room. They<br />
went on to change the world. Early 16thcentury<br />
Paris was a time of major changes.<br />
Influenced by the discovery of the<br />
Americas and an ongoing European<br />
Renaissance, the culture began<br />
embodying the new values of a modern<br />
world. Economies were shifting, and a time<br />
of scientific innovation was dawning.<br />
Stirred by the advent of the printing press,<br />
information spread with hitherto unmatched<br />
ease. Similar to how the Internet is<br />
influencing our times, mass-produced<br />
printed materials fueled a new level of<br />
literacy, as publications of the Bible,<br />
theological concepts, and philosophical<br />
musings blew a spirit of inquiry through the<br />
Church.<br />
University of Paris<br />
“the Sorbonne”<br />
Long before electricity had been discovered and harnessed, the urban<br />
landscape of The emblematic image of University of Paris today—an edifice<br />
constructed as part of a rebuilding of the university, launched the same year<br />
Loyola and Xavier were canonized.<br />
This was the city into which Iñigo Lopez de Oñaz y Loyola (Ignatius of<br />
Loyola) trekked, on fire with a desire to attend the University of Paris and expand<br />
his own intellectual and spiritual horizons. He was assigned to a room with two<br />
younger men—Pierre Favre (Peter Faber) and Francisco de Isaau de Xavier<br />
(Francis Xavier). The friendship of these three college roommates would<br />
profoundly affect the times in which they lived and all the centuries since.<br />
Historians usually search for deep causes of developments that reshape<br />
the world, but sometimes luck or chance play the major role. Such was the case<br />
in 1525 when fate, fortune, or maybe the mysterious working of divine providence<br />
assigned Pierre Favre and Francisco Xavier to the same room at the University<br />
of Paris, which they shared until 1536. A third roommate, Iñigo de Loyola, joined<br />
them for six years (1529-35) until returning to Spain.
From their relationship, the Society of Jesus arose. The blessings that<br />
have flowed from this event reach down to our day and affect more than half the<br />
nations of our world. St. Francisco Xavier and Blessed Pierre Favre were both<br />
born in 1506, so this is the 500th anniversary of their births. St. Ignatius of Loyola<br />
died 450 years ago, in 1556. We celebrate all three of these anniversaries in<br />
In 1534, the three roommates and four friends celebrated Mass in a<br />
chapel atop Montmarte. All seven took a vow to work for souls in Jerusalem.<br />
2006.<br />
Of peasant origins, Favre worked as a shepherd in the hill country of<br />
Savoy in his youth and was fortunate to receive an excellent education in the<br />
cities of Thônes and La Roche, both near his home village of Villaret. His training<br />
included Latin, Greek, philosophy, and some theology—a fine combination for<br />
success at Europe’s finest university. A degree from Paris would open many<br />
doors for a peasant lad. An accomplished student, and almost certainly more<br />
learned than his more famous roommates, he helped Loyola grapple with the<br />
Greek text of Aristotle. Loyola more than returned the favor.<br />
Favre was a devout student but tortured by scruples till Loyola opened his<br />
eyes to see and rejoice in the God of mercy and forgiveness. After returning to<br />
Paris from a seven-month visit to Villaret, Favre spent 30 days in 1534 on retreat<br />
making the Spiritual Exercises under the direction of Loyola, their originator.<br />
Favre was ordained a priest in May of the same year and became a superb<br />
director of retreats. St. Peter Canisius made the Spiritual Exercises under<br />
Favre’s direction in 1541 and wrote, “Never have I seen nor heard such a learned<br />
or profound theologian, nor a man of such shining and exalted virtue.... I can<br />
hardly describe how the Spiritual Exercises transformed my soul and senses...I<br />
feel changed into a new man.”<br />
Xavier and Favre made an odd pair. Favre was a peasant, pious and<br />
studious; Xavier was a Basque nobleman—dark haired, tall, a fine athlete,<br />
outgoing. Noblemen of that era seldom took university degrees, but Xavier had<br />
few career opportunities in Spain since his family had fought against Charles V<br />
during the same French invasion in which Loyola was wounded. This<br />
undoubtedly influenced Xavier’s decision to seek an academic career in Paris.<br />
While Favre was pious, Xavier was worldly, so Loyola, who wanted to recruit<br />
others to serve God, needed a different strategy to win over Xavier. Loyola<br />
attended some classes in philosophy taught by Xavier at the College of St.<br />
Bauvais and helped pay some of his debts. Several accounts relate that he kept<br />
asking Xavier the question of Jesus: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole<br />
world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
Gradually Loyola won Favre and Xavier over to his own plan to spend<br />
their lives in Jerusalem working for souls. Once won over, Xavier, with his usual<br />
enthusiasm, wanted to cancel his three-year commitment to teach at Paris.<br />
Loyola and Favre dissuaded him, but as a result he could not devote 30 days to<br />
making the Spiritual Exercises until late 1534.<br />
Meanwhile Loyola was winning other gifted students to his Jerusalem<br />
plan. On the feast of the Assumption 1534, the three roommates plus four new<br />
companions (Diego Laínez, Alfonso Salmerón, Simón Rodrigues, and Nicolás<br />
Alonso Bobadilla) climbed up to a chapel atop Montmarte in central Paris. Favre,<br />
the only priest among them, celebrated a Mass at which all seven took a vow to<br />
work for souls in Jerusalem. From these seven companions sprang the Society<br />
of Jesus, the religious order of priests and brothers commonly called the Jesuits.<br />
Loyola always regarded the original seven as the Society’s co-founders.<br />
Loyola returned to Spain while the others completed their academic<br />
degrees and recruited three more students for the Jerusalem project. They<br />
gathered at Venice in 1537, where all but the previously ordained Favre and<br />
Salmerón became priests.<br />
Again chance and luck intervened. Bad luck: War between Venice and the<br />
Ottoman Empire (which controlled Palestine) broke out. There would be no ship<br />
to Palestine. Good luck: The Turks would never have allowed 10 companions to<br />
proselytize in Jerusalem. They would have been executed or made into galley<br />
slaves, never to be heard from again.<br />
Fortunately, the Montmarte vow had a backup clause: If the companions<br />
could not go to Jerusalem, they would put themselves at the pope’s disposal to<br />
work for souls. They waited several months, preaching and helping the needy,<br />
before they went to Rome and undertook work suggested by Pope Paul III. Favre<br />
lectured on scripture at the University of Rome. Loyola directed people through<br />
the Spiritual Exercises. Later the pope assigned others of the companions to<br />
preaching in various Italian towns. While this arrangement offered opportunities<br />
to serve God, it placed their companionship at risk, prompting them to form a<br />
religious order whose rules and goals would bind them together, however<br />
dispersed their work.<br />
In 1540 they requested and received papal approval for the Society of<br />
Jesus. Loyola remained in Rome as superior general of the Jesuits until his<br />
death in 1556. The others brought the good news of Christ to the far corners of<br />
the world.<br />
Favre helped reform the diocese of Parma in north-central Italy before<br />
being sent to the famous Colloquy of Regensburg in Germany, which tried and<br />
failed to work out a doctrinal agreement between Lutherans and Catholics.<br />
There, Favre gave the Spiritual Exercises to bishops and priests. His next stops
were his native Savoy, then on to Madrid where he spent three months<br />
preaching, hearing confessions, and explaining that new order—the Jesuits. He<br />
also lectured on the psalms at the University of Cologne, where he gave the<br />
Exercises to Peter Canisius, who then entered the Jesuits. Favre’s next<br />
assignment was Portugal. Paul III also appointed him a papal theologian at the<br />
Council of Trent. He went to Rome where he conversed with Loyola for the first<br />
time in seven years. But his health was broken, and he died at age 40 on Aug. 1,<br />
1546, with his old roommate, Loyola, at his bedside.<br />
Xavier’s travels dwarfed those of Favre. King John III of Portugal asked for<br />
two Jesuits to serve as missionaries in India. Loyola appointed Rodrigues and<br />
Bobadilla, but Bobadilla fell ill. Loyola then asked Xavier, who had been serving<br />
in Rome as his secretary, if he would take Bobadilla’s place. Xavier volunteered<br />
enthusiastically, left Rome on March 15, 1540, and never saw Loyola or Favre<br />
again.<br />
Xavier sailed from Lisbon on a 13-month journey, six of them working in<br />
He set up confraternities to help ex-prostitutes find better lives and<br />
another confraternity to prevent poor young women from falling into prostitution.<br />
Mozambique, before arriving at Goa, the main Portuguese base in India.<br />
At Goa he preached to the Portuguese and tried, not very successfully, to<br />
learn the Tamil language. Therefore he required translators during two years of<br />
work along the south coast of India where it is believed he baptized more than<br />
10,000 converts. In September 1545 he sailed to Malaysia and spent the next<br />
year working in Indonesia. In 1549 he and several other Jesuits sailed to Japan<br />
where they converted some 700 Japanese, a people who impressed him as<br />
extremely intelligent. He returned to Malaysia and then India in 1551, almost<br />
perishing in a typhoon.<br />
Back in India, he reorganized Jesuit work there, then departed for China at<br />
a time when foreigners were forbidden to enter. He tried persuading Chinese<br />
smugglers to take him ashore, but they considered it too risky. He died on the<br />
little island of Sancian near Hong Kong on Dec. 3, 1552, at age 46.<br />
Xavier pioneered and organized Jesuit missionary work in Asia and the<br />
Pacific islands. The publication of his letters in Europe attracted many young<br />
men to missionary work. Xavier is considered the greatest missionary since St.<br />
Paul.<br />
So it was from the Archdiocese of Goa, or Goanensis, that Xavier sailed to<br />
evangelize to Asia and his conferes worked to reunited Christian Ethiopia with<br />
the West, bridging the divided caused by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire<br />
and its allies in the Maghreb. Goa was therefore the Patriarchate of the East
Indies, the chief see of the Portuguese dominions in the East; metropolitan to the<br />
province of Goa, which comprised as suffragans the sees of Cochin, Mylapore,<br />
and Damão (or Damaun) in India, Macao in China, and Mozambique in East<br />
Africa. Mozambique was the gateway to Ethiopia.<br />
The archbishop, who resided at Panjim, or New Goa, had the honorary<br />
titles of Primate of the East and (from 1886) Patriarch of the East Indies. He<br />
enjoyed the privilege of presiding over all national councils of the East Indies,<br />
which were originally be held at Goa (Concordat of 1886 between the Holy See<br />
and Portugal, art. 2). The Patronage of the see and of its suffragans belonged to<br />
the Crown of Portugal.<br />
The history of the Portuguese conquests in India dates from the arrival of<br />
Vasco da Gama in 1498, followed by the acquisition of Cranganore in 1500,<br />
Cochin in 1506, Goa in 1510, Chaul in 1512, Calicut in 1513, Damao in 1531,<br />
Bombay, Salsette, and Bassein in 1534, Diu in 1535, etc.<br />
From the year 1500, missionaries of the different orders (Franciscans,<br />
Dominicans, Jesuits, Augustinians, etc.) flocked out with the conquerors, and<br />
began at once to build churches along the coast districts wherever the<br />
Portuguese power made itself felt. In 1534 was created an episcopal see<br />
suffragan to Funchal in the Madeiras, with a jurisdiction extending potentially<br />
over all past and future conquests from the Cape of Good Hope to China. In<br />
1557 it was made an independent archbishopric, and its first suffragan sees were<br />
erected at Cochin and Malacca. In 1576 the suffragan was added; and in 1588,<br />
that of Funai in Japan. In 1600 another suffragan see was erected at Angamale<br />
(transferred to Craganore in 1605) for the sake of the newly-united Thomas<br />
Christians; while, in 1606 a sixth suffragan see was established at San Thome,<br />
Mylapore, near the modern Madras. In 1612 the prelacy of Mozambique was<br />
added, and in 1690 two other sees at Peking and Nanking in China. By the Bulls<br />
establishing these sees the right of nomination was conferred in perpetuity on the<br />
King of Portugal, under the titles of foundation and endowment.<br />
The limits between the various sees of India were defined by a papal Bull<br />
in 1616. The suffragan sees comprised roughly the south of the peninsula and<br />
the east coast, as far as Burma inclusive, the rest of India remaining potentially<br />
under the jurisdiction of the archdiocese and this potential jurisdiction was the<br />
actually exercised even outside Portuguese dominions wherever the Faith was<br />
extended by Portuguese missionaries. Missionary work progressed on a large<br />
scale and with great success along the western coasts, chiefly at Chaul,<br />
Bombay, Salsette, Bassein, Damao, and Diu; and on the eastern coasts at San<br />
Thome of Mylapore, and as far as Bengal etc. In the southern districts the Jesuit<br />
mission in Madura was the most famous. It extended to the Kistna river, with a<br />
number of outlaying stations beyond it. The mission of Cochin, on the Malabar<br />
Coast, was also one of the most fruitful. Several missions were also established<br />
in the interior northwardds, e.g., that of Agra and Lahore in 1570 and that of Tibet<br />
in 1624. Still, even with these efforts, the greater part even of the coast line was
y no means fully worked, and many vast tracts of the interior northwards were<br />
practically untouched.<br />
The decline of Portuguese power in the seventheenth century, followed as<br />
it was by a decline in the supply of missionaries, etc., soon put limits to the<br />
extension of missionary work; and it was sometimes with difficulty that the results<br />
actually achieved could be kept up. Consequently, about this time the Holy See<br />
began, through the Congregation of Propaganda to send out missionaries<br />
independently of Portugal--appointing vicars Apostolic over several districts (The<br />
Great Mogul, 1637; Verapoly, 1657; Burma, 1722; Karnatic and Madura, after the<br />
suppression of the Jesuits in 1773; Tibet, 1826; Bengal, Madras, and Ceylon,<br />
1834, and others later). In certain places where these vicars Apostolic came into<br />
contact with the Portuguese clergy, there arose a conflict of jurisdiction. This was<br />
particularly the case in Bombay, which had been ceded to the British in 1661.<br />
The city of Goa, originally a fortress in the hands first of the Hindus and<br />
then of the Mohammedans, was taken by the Duke of Albuquerque in 1510. As<br />
soon as he became master of the place he built the first church--that of St.<br />
Catherine, who thus became the patron of the new city. This was the beginning<br />
of a vast series of churches, large and small, numbering over fifty, with convents,<br />
hospices and other institutions attached, which made Goa one of the most<br />
interesting ecclesiastical cities in the world. The civil splendour was in keeping<br />
with the ecclesiastical. But the situation was an unfortunate one. Lying on a low<br />
stretch of coast-land, surrounded on two sides by shallow creeks and on the<br />
other two by miasmic marshes, the place was soon found unhealthy to such a<br />
degree that, after several ravages by epidemics, it was gradually abandoned in<br />
favour of Panjim, five miles nearer the sea. The transfer of the Government in<br />
1759 soon led to the total desertion of the old city. In consequence the civil<br />
buildings gradually fell into decay or were demolished for the sake of building<br />
materials, and, especially after the expulsion of the religious orders in 1835,<br />
many churches and monasteries followed suit. In place of houses thick<br />
palmgroves gradually grew up, which now, with the exception of a few open<br />
spaces, occupy the whole area. The original city extended almost two miles from<br />
east to west along the river, and comprised three low hills crowned with religious<br />
edifices.<br />
Most of the churches have disappeared, leaving nothing but a cross to<br />
mark their site. Others are in various stages of decay, while a few are kept in<br />
repair. The finest of those still standing are grouped about the great square: the<br />
cathedral (built 1571), in which alone the full liturgy is kept up by a body of<br />
resident canons, and adjoining which is an archiepiscopal palace, the Bom Jesus<br />
church (Jesuit, built c. 1586), containing the body of St. Francis Xavier incorrupt<br />
in a rich shrine; St. Cajetan's, built about 1655, belonging to the Theatines; the<br />
Franciscan church of St. Francis of Assisi, built on the site of a mosque 1517-21:<br />
and finally the little chapel of St. Catherine, built in 1510. Farther away, on the<br />
western hill, stand the great nunnery of St. Monica (1598), still in full repair,
formerly occupied by a large community of native nuns --the only female religious<br />
in Goa; the Augustinian church and convent built in 1572, now in ruins; convent<br />
and church of St. John of God (1685), now partly in ruins; the Rosary church of<br />
the Dominicans, built before 1543; the viceregal chapel of St. Anthony, of about<br />
the same date. The last two were still in full repair at the turn of the nineteenth<br />
century.<br />
To the south are the ruins of the Jesuit college of St. Paul, built about<br />
1541, and the Carmelite church and convent, built about 1612, occupied after<br />
1707 by Oratorians. The chapel of St. Francis Xavier, the scene of the "Domine,<br />
satis est", built before 1542, is still in repair. The following either have entirely<br />
disappeared or their sites are marked only by ruins: the chapel of St. Martin, built<br />
shortly after 1547; college and church of St. Bonaventure (about 1602); Nossa<br />
Senhora de Serra (1513); convent and church of St. Dominic, built about 1548,<br />
rebuilt 1550, Santa Luzia at Daujim (about 1544); church of St. Thomas, built to<br />
receive the relics of St. Thomas brought from Mylapore in 1560; church of St.<br />
Alexis, built before 1600; church of the Holy Trinity, built about the same time;<br />
convent and church of Cruz dos Milagres, built after 1619; Nossa Senhora da<br />
Luz built before 1543; new college and church of St. Paul (alias convent of St.<br />
Roch) used as a college in 1610, church rebuilt later. From the church of Our<br />
Lady of the Mount, on the eastern hill, which is still in repair, a magnificent<br />
panorama is obtained.<br />
As for Francis Xavier, he was born in the Castle of Xavier near Sanguesa,<br />
in Navarre, 7 April, 1506; died on the Island of Sancian near the coast of China, 2<br />
December, 1552. In 1525, having completed a preliminary course of studies in<br />
his own country, Francis Xavier went to Paris, where he entered the collège de<br />
Sainte-Barbe. Here he met the Savoyard, Pierre Favre, and a warm personal<br />
friendship sprang up between them. It was at this same college that St. Ignatius<br />
Loyola, who was already planning the foundation of the Society of Jesus, resided<br />
for a time as a guest in 1529. He soon won the confidence of the two young men;<br />
first Favre and later Xavier offered themselves with him in the formation of the<br />
Society. Four others, Lainez, Salmerón, Rodríguez, and Bobadilla, having joined<br />
them, the seven made the famous vow of Montmartre, 15 Aug., 1534.<br />
After completing his studies in Paris and filling the post of teacher there for<br />
some time, Xavier left the city with his companions 15 November, 1536, and<br />
turned his steps to Venice, where he displayed zeal and charity in attending the<br />
sick in the hospitals. On 24 June, 1537, he received Holy orders with St. Ignatius.<br />
The following year he went to Rome, and after doing apostolic work there for<br />
some months, during the spring of 1539 he took part in the conferences which St.<br />
Ignatius held with his companions to prepare for the definitive foundation of the<br />
Society of Jesus. The order was approved verbally 3 September, and before the<br />
written approbation was secured, which was not until a year later, Xavier was<br />
appointed, at the earnest solicitation of the John III, King of Portugal, to<br />
evangelize the people of the East Indies. He left Rome 16 March, 1540, and
eached Lisbon about June. Here he remained nine months, giving many<br />
admirable examples of apostolic zeal.<br />
On 7 April, 1541, he embarked in a sailing vessel for India, and after a<br />
tedious and dangerous voyage landed at Goa, 6 May, 1542. The first five months<br />
he spent in preaching and ministering to the sick in the hospitals. He would go<br />
through the streets ringing a little bell and inviting the children to hear the word of<br />
God. When he had gathered a number, he would take them to a certain church<br />
and would there explain the catechism to them. About October, 1542, he started<br />
for the pearl fisheries of the extreme southern coast of the peninsula, desirous of<br />
restoring Christanity which, although introduced years before, had almost<br />
disappeared on account of the lack of priests. He devoted almost three years to<br />
the work of preaching to the people of Western India, converting many, and<br />
reaching in his journeys even the Island of Ceylon. Many were the difficulties and<br />
hardships which Xavier had to encounter at this time, sometimes on account of<br />
the cruel persecutions which some of the petty kings of the country carried on<br />
against the neophytes, and again because the Portuguese soldiers, far from<br />
seconding the work of the saint, retarded it by their bad example and vicious<br />
habits.<br />
In the spring of 1545 Xavier started for Malacca. He laboured there for the<br />
last months of that year, and although he reaped an abundant spiritual harvest,<br />
he was not able to root out certain abuses, and was conscious that many sinners<br />
had resisted his efforts to bring them back to God. About January, 1546, Xavier<br />
left Malacca and went to Molucca Islands, where the Portuguese had some<br />
settlements, and for a year and a half he preached the Gospel to the inhabitants<br />
of Amboyna, Ternate, Baranura, and other lesser islands which it has been<br />
difficult to identify. It is claimed by some that during this expedition he landed on<br />
the island of Mindanao, and for this reason St. Francis Xavier has been called<br />
the first Apostle of the <strong>Phi</strong>lippines. But although this statement is made by some<br />
writers of the seventeenth century, and in the Bull of canonization issued in 1623,<br />
it is said that he preached the Gospel in Mindanao, up to the present time it has<br />
not been proved absolutely that St. Francis Xavier ever landed in the <strong>Phi</strong>lippines.<br />
By July, 1547, he was again in Malacca. Here he met a Japanese called<br />
Anger (Han-Sir), from whom he obtained much information about Japan. His zeal<br />
was at once aroused by the idea of introducing Christanity into Japan, but for the<br />
time being the affairs of the Society demanded his presence at goa, whither he<br />
went, taking Anger with him. During the six years that Xavier had been working<br />
among the infidels, other Jesuit missionaries had arrived at Goa, sent from<br />
Europe by St. Ignatius; moreover some who had been born in the country had<br />
been received into the Society. In 1548 Xavier sent these missionaries to the<br />
principal centres of India, where he had established missions, so that the work<br />
might be preserved and continued. He also established a novitiate and house of<br />
studies, and having received into the Society Father Cosme de Torres, a spanish<br />
priest whom he had met in the Maluccas, he started with him and Brother Juan
Fernández for Japan towards the end of June, 1549. The Japanese Anger, who<br />
had been baptized at Goa and given the name of Pablo de Santa Fe,<br />
accompanied them.<br />
They landed at the city of Kagoshima in Japan, 15 Aug., 1549. The entire<br />
first year was devoted to learning the Japanese language and translating into<br />
Japanese, with the help of Pablo de Santa Fe, the principal articles of faith and<br />
short treatises which were to be employed in preaching and catechizing. When<br />
he was able to express himself, Xavier began preaching and made some<br />
converts, but these aroused the ill will of the bonzes, who had him banished from<br />
the city. Leaving Kagoshima about August, 1550, he penetrated to the centre of<br />
Japan, and preached the Gospel in some of the cities of southern Japan.<br />
Towards the end of that year he reached Meaco, then the principal city of Japan,<br />
but he was unable to make any headway here because of the dissensions the<br />
rending the country. He retraced his steps to the centre of Japan, and during<br />
1551 preached in some important cities, forming the nucleus of several Christian<br />
communities, which in time increased with extraordinary rapidity.<br />
After working about two years and a half in Japan he left this mission in<br />
charge of Father Cosme de Torres and Brother Juan Fernández, and returned to<br />
Goa, arriving there at the beginning of 1552. Here domestic troubles awaited<br />
him. Certain disagreements between the superior who had been left in charge of<br />
the missions, and the rector of the college, had to be adjusted. This, however,<br />
being arranged, Xavier turned his thoughts to China, and began to plan an<br />
expedition there. During his stay in Japan he had heard much of the Celestial<br />
Empire, and though he probably had not formed a proper estimate of his extent<br />
and greatness, he nevertheless understood how wide a field it afforded for the<br />
spread of the light of the Gospel. With the help of friends he arranged a<br />
commission or embassy the Sovereign of China, obtained from the Viceroy of<br />
India the appointment of ambassador, and in April, 1552, he left Goa. At Malacca<br />
the party encountered difficulties because the influential Portuguese disapproved<br />
of the expedition, but Xavier knew how to overcome this opposition, and in the<br />
autumn he arrived in a Portuguese vessel at the small island of Sancian near the<br />
coast of China. While planning the best means for reaching the mainland, he was<br />
taken ill, and as the movement of the vessel seemed to aggravate his condition,<br />
he was removed to the land, where a rude hut had been built to shelter him. In<br />
these wretched surroundings he breathed his last.<br />
At the time when Ignatius founded his order Portugal was in her heroic<br />
age. Her rulers were full of enterprise, her universities were full of life, her trade<br />
routes extended over the then known world. The Jesuits were welcomed with<br />
enthusiasm, and made good use of their opportunities. St. Francis Xavier,<br />
traversing Portuguese colonies and settlements, proceeded to make his splendid<br />
missionary conquests. These were continued by his confreres in such distant<br />
lands as Abyssinia, the Congo, South Africa, China, and Japan, by Fathers<br />
Nunhes, Silveria, Acosta, Fernandes, and others. At Coimbra, and afterwards at
Evora, the Society made the most surprising progress under such professors as<br />
Pedro de Fonseca (d. 1599), Luis Molina (d. 1600), Christovão Gil, Sebastão de<br />
Abreu, etc., and from here also comes the first comprehensive series of<br />
philosophical and theological textbooks for students. With the advent of Spanish<br />
monarchy, 1581, the Portuguese Jesuits suffered no less than the rest of their<br />
country. Luis Carvalho joined the Spanish opponents of Father Acquaviva, and<br />
when the apostolic collector, Ottavio Accoramboni, launched an interdict against<br />
the government of Lisbon, the Jesuits, especially Diego de Arida, became<br />
involved in the undignified strife. One the other hand, they played an honorable<br />
part in the restoration of Portugal's liberty in 1640, and on its success, the<br />
difficulty was to restrain King João IV from giving Father Manuel Fernandes a<br />
seat in the Cortes, and employing others in diplomatic missions. Among these<br />
Fathers were Antonio Vieira, one of Portugal's most eloquent orators. Up to the<br />
Suppression, Portugal and her colonists supported the following missions, of<br />
which further notices will be found elsewhere, Goa (originally India), Malabar,<br />
Japan, China, Brazil, Maranhao.<br />
It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of ten years<br />
(6 May, 1542 - 2 December, 1552) could have visited so many countries,<br />
traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations, and<br />
converted so many infidels. The incomparable apostolic zeal which animated<br />
him, and the stupendous miracles which God wrought through him, explain this<br />
marvel, which has no equal elsewhere. The list of the principal miracles may be<br />
found in the Bull of canonization. St. Francis Xavier is considered the greatest<br />
missionary since the time of the Apostles, and the zeal he displayed, the<br />
wonderful miracles he performed, and the great number of souls he brought to<br />
the light of true Faith, entitle him to this distinction. He was canonized with St.<br />
Ignatius in 1622, although on account of the death of Gregory XV, the Bull of<br />
canonization was not published until the following year.<br />
The body of the saint is still enshrined at Goa in the church which formerly<br />
belonged to the Society. In 1614 by order of Claudius Acquaviva, General of the<br />
Society of Jesus, the right arm was severed at the elbow and conveyed to Rome,<br />
where the present altar was erected to receive it in the church of the Gesu.
Working in the Jesuit tradition, brother Paez served the royal<br />
dynasty of Ethiopia, participating in its rich<br />
theological traditions:<br />
Pedro Páez or Pêro Pais (1564 - May<br />
25, 1622) was a Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia.<br />
He was the first European who saw and<br />
described the source of the Blue Nile. He was<br />
born in Olmeda de las Cebollas (now Olmeda<br />
de las Fuentes, near Madrid) sixteen years<br />
before the union of the Spanish and the<br />
Portuguese crowns (1580-1640). He studied at<br />
Coimbra. Sent from Goa to Ethiopia as a<br />
missionary in 1589, Páez was held captive in<br />
Yemen for seven years, from 1590 to 1596,<br />
where he used his time to learn Arabic. He<br />
finally arrived at Massawa in 1603, and made<br />
his way to Fremona, which was the Jesuit base<br />
in that land. Unlike his predecessor, Andre de<br />
Oviedo, Paul Henze describes him as "gentle,<br />
learned, considerate of the feelings of others".<br />
University of Comibra<br />
When summoned to the court of the young negusä nägäst Za Dengel, his<br />
knowledge of Amharic and Ge'ez, as well as his knowledge of Ethiopian customs<br />
impressed the sovereign so much that Za Dengel decided to convert from the<br />
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church to Catholicism -- although Páez warned<br />
him not to announce his declaration too quickly. However, when Za Dengel<br />
proclaimed changes in the observance of the Sabbath, Páez retired to Fremona,<br />
and waited out the ensuing civil war that ended with the emperor's death.<br />
This caution benefited Páez when Susenyos assumed the throne in 1607.<br />
Sissinios invited him to his court, where the two became friends. Sissinios made<br />
a grant of land to Páez on the peninsula of Gorgora on the north side of Lake<br />
Tana, where he built a new center for his fellow Jesuits, starting with a stone<br />
church. Paez is believed to be the first European to have discovered the source<br />
of the Blue Nile on april 21.st 1618. (Sir Wallis Budge , A history of Ethiopia, p.<br />
397.) Eventually Páez also converted Sissinios to Catholicism shortly before his<br />
own death in 1622.<br />
Some of the Catholic churches he designed are still standing, most<br />
importantly at Bahir Dar and Gorgora, and were an influence on Ethiopian<br />
architecture.<br />
Páez was the first European to visit Lake Tana, one of the sources of the<br />
Blue Nile, and to write about tasting coffee. His account of Ethiopia, História da<br />
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<br />
published in 1945 at Porto in a new edition by Sanceau, Feio and Teixeira, Pêro<br />
Pais: História da Etiópia.<br />
In addition to translating the Roman Catechism into Ge'ez, Paez is<br />
believed to be the author of the treatise De Abyssinorum erroribus. Páez's<br />
writings are one of the few works in Portuguese about Ethiopia that have not<br />
been translated into English.
New York Alpha’s intellectual and brother Paez’s<br />
predecessor, brother Oviedo served God<br />
and Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia . . .<br />
Andrés de Oviedo was born in<br />
Illescas, Spain, about 1517, he entered the<br />
Society in Rome in 1541. After his studies he<br />
was appointed (1545) rector of the Jesuit<br />
college at Gandía, and it was he who led<br />
Francisco de Borja through his novitiate and<br />
received his vows on February 1, 1548. In<br />
1550 Oviedo travelled to Rome with the duke<br />
and participated in the discussions on the<br />
Constitutions. He became (1551) rector of the<br />
new college in Naples and was later assigned<br />
to the mission in Ethiopia. He was ordained<br />
bishop on May 5, 1555, and became Patriarch<br />
of Ethiopia on December 20, 1562. In Ethiopia<br />
he lived amid extreme poverty; he died in<br />
1577. The background to brother Oviedo’s<br />
mission to Ethiopia lay in the divide occurring<br />
as Islam moved west, absorbing early<br />
Christian communities along the north coast<br />
of Africa into the Caliphate. Ethiopia was cut<br />
off from its Christian community.<br />
The Arms of Gandia,<br />
Kingdom of Spain<br />
Communication between Rome and Abyssinia became more difficult, and<br />
from the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century one could<br />
see no bond existing between Abyssinia and the centre of Catholicism. The<br />
Sovereign Pontiffs, nevertheless, have bestowed a constant solicitude on the<br />
Christians of Ethiopia.<br />
The first missionaries sent to their aid were the Dominicans, whose<br />
success, however, roused the fanaticism of the Monophysites against them, and<br />
caused their martyrdom. For more than a hundred years silence enfolded the<br />
ruins of this Church. At a later period, the fame of the Crusades having spread,<br />
pilgrim monks, on their return from Jerusalem, wakened once more, by what they<br />
told in the Ethiopian court, the wish to be reunited to the Church.<br />
The Acts of the Council of Florence tell of the embassy sent by the<br />
Emperor Zéra-Jacob with the object of obtaining this result (1452). The union<br />
was brought about; but on their home journey, the messengers, while passing<br />
through Egypt, were given up to the schismatic Copts, and to the Caliph, and put<br />
to death before they could bring the good news to their native land.
In the rural plateaux of northern Ethiopia, one can still find scattered ruins<br />
of monumental buildings alien to the country's ancient architectural tradition. This<br />
little-known and rarely studied architectural heritage bears silent witness to a<br />
fascinating if equivocal cultural encounter that took place in the 16th-17th<br />
centuries between Orthodox Ethiopians and Catholic Europeans. The Indigenous<br />
and the Foreign explores the enduring impact of the encounter on the religious,<br />
political and artistic life of Christian Ethiopia, one not readily acknowledged, not<br />
least because the public conversion of the early 17th-century King Susenyos to<br />
Catholicism resulted in a bloody civil war enveloped in religious intolerance.<br />
Included in this tradition are the surviving architecture of a number of religious<br />
and stately buildings of early 17th-century Ethiopia, a period when a mission of<br />
Jesuits from Goa, in Western India, was most active at the Ethiopian Christian<br />
king's Court. This important heritage, known as pre-<strong>Gondar</strong>ine, is scarcely known<br />
outside of Ethiopia.<br />
The Christian kingdom that controlled the Ethiopian high plateaux suffered<br />
a series of very deep political, economic, military and religious crises in the<br />
period between the late 15th century and the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries<br />
in 1633. The Somali and Afari armies led by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, called the Gragñ<br />
(or “left-handed”) seriously threatened the very existence of the Christian state<br />
from 1529 to 1543, when they were finally defeated by the Abyssinians with the<br />
help of a small Portuguese expeditionary force sent from Goa, India.<br />
Subsequently, parties of Borana and Barentuma Oromo pastoralists began<br />
raiding deeper and deeper into Abyssinian territory and, by the end of the 16th<br />
century, many had settled in Gojam and Shoa and had become the main<br />
adversaries of royal power in Abyssinia.<br />
The Portuguese military collaboration with the Christian Ethiopians served<br />
their own strategic interests in their regional rivalry with the Ottoman Turks for<br />
control of the trade routes in the Red Sea and the north-western sector of the<br />
Indian Ocean. But the Portuguese rulers, together with the Pope in Rome and<br />
the head of the Company of Jesus, had the additional intention of establishing a<br />
mission in Ethiopia to encourage the population to switch from their Orthodox<br />
faith to Catholicism – an intention that made sense in the light of the Counter-<br />
Reformation concerns in Southern Europe.<br />
More than a hundred years later, in 1557, the Jesuit Father Oviedo<br />
penetrated into Ethiopia. Father Andrés de Oviedo and his mission first entered<br />
Ethiopia in 1557, only to find that the conversion project was too utopian. They<br />
began visiting the royal court, where they participated in a number of theological<br />
discussions with the Orthodox clergy.<br />
They were eventually persecuted and expelled to Tigray where, in May<br />
Gwagwa, they preached and gave support to the Portuguese community that had<br />
stayed in Ethiopia in the wake of the Gragñ wars. As the years passed and the
Portuguese either dwindled in numbers or converted to Orthodoxy, the mission<br />
became almost extinct.<br />
By the end of the century, when <strong>Phi</strong>lip II, King of Spain, inherited the<br />
Portuguese royal crown and the Ethiopian jurisdiction, so he decided to revive<br />
the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia. A new priest, Father Pedro Páez, was sent from<br />
Goa. Once in Ethiopia, he forced his way into the royal court. Other priests joined<br />
him and together they gradually gained the favour of the new Ethiopian King<br />
Susneyos and, very importantly, converted his brother the Ras Sela Krestos to<br />
Catholicism. Father Paëz, succeeded in converting the Emperor Socinios<br />
himself.<br />
On December 11, 1624, the Church of Abyssinia, abjuring the heresy of<br />
Eutyches and the schism of Dioscorus, was reunited to the true Church, a union<br />
which, unfortunately, proved to be only temporary.<br />
In 1632, the Negus Basilides mounted the throne. Committed as he was to<br />
polygamy and other practices, he rejected Catholicism and its law. The Jesuits<br />
were handed over to the axe of the executioner, and Abyssinia remained closed<br />
to the missionaries until 1702. In that year, three Franciscans got as far as<br />
<strong>Gondar</strong>, the capital, where they converted several princes. The Negus wrote with<br />
his own hand to Clement XI, professing his submission to His Holiness. Once<br />
more the hope proved futile. A palace revolution overthrew the Negus, and<br />
heresy again assumed the reigns of power. From then until the middle of the<br />
nineteenth century, a silence as of death lay on the Church of Abyssinia.
. . . New York Alpha’s intellectual Brother Oviedo served God<br />
and Susenyos of Ethiopia, below . . .<br />
Susenyos (also Sissinios, as in<br />
Greek, Ge'ez sūsinyōs; throne name Malak<br />
Sagad III, Ge'ez, mal'ak sagad, Amh.<br />
mel'āk seged, "to whom the angel bows";<br />
1572 - September 7, 1632) was nəgusä<br />
nägäst (1606 - 1632) of Ethiopia. His father<br />
was Abeto (Prince) Fasilides, a grandson<br />
of Dawit II; as a result, while some<br />
authorities list him as a member of the<br />
Solomonic dynasty, others consider him,<br />
instead of his son, as the founder of the<br />
<strong>Gondar</strong> line of the dynasty (ultimately a<br />
subset, however, of the Solomonic<br />
dynasty). Manoel de Almeida, a Jesuit who<br />
lived in Ethiopia during Susenyos' reign,<br />
described him as "tall, with the features of<br />
a man of quality, large handsome eyes,<br />
pointed nose and an ample and well<br />
groomed beard.<br />
The Lion of Judah<br />
“ . . . He was wearing a tunic of crimson velvet down to the knee, breeches<br />
of the Moorish style, a sash or girdle of many large pieces of fine gold, and an<br />
outer coat of damask of the same colour, like a capelhar"<br />
As a boy, a group of marauding Oromo captured him and his father,<br />
holding them captive for over a year until they were rescued by the Dejazmach<br />
Assebo. Upon his rescue, he went to live with Queen Admas Mogasa, the mother<br />
of Sarsa Dengel and widow of Emperor Menas.<br />
In 1590s, Susenyos was perceived as one of potential successors, as<br />
Emperor Sarsa Dengel's sons were very young. At the death of his one-time ally,<br />
Emperor Za Dengel, he was proclaimed his successor, although the fight against<br />
Emperor Yaqob continued.<br />
Susenyos became ruler following the defeat of first Za Sellase, then<br />
Yaqob at the Battle of Gol, located in southern Gojjam, in 1607. However, he<br />
delayed being crowned until March 18, 1608, in a ceremony at Axum described<br />
by Joao Gabriel, the captain of the Portuguese in Ethiopia. Because the body of<br />
Yaqob had never been found after the Battle of Gol, for the first few years of his<br />
reign Susenyos was troubled by revolts from a number of men claiming to be the<br />
dead king.
Susenyos campaigned against the Agaw in the north, the encroaching<br />
Oromo in the south, and is said in his Royal Chronicle to have made his power<br />
felt along his western frontier from Fazogli north to Suakin.<br />
He was interested in Catholicism, in part due to Pedro Páez' persuasion,<br />
but also hoping for military help from Portugal and Spain (in union at the time of<br />
Susenyo's reign). Some decades earlier, in 1541, Christopher da Gama (son of<br />
the legendary Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama) had been in charge of a<br />
military expedition to save the Ethiopian emperor Gelawdewos from the<br />
onslaught of Ahmed Gragn, a Muslim Imam who almost destroyed the existence<br />
of the Ethiopian state. Susenyos hoped to receive a new contingent of wellarmed<br />
European soldiers, this time against another enemy, the Oromo who were<br />
invading from the south, and to put down constant internal rebellion. He showed<br />
the Jesuit missionaries his favor by a number of land grants, most importantly<br />
those at Gorgora, located on a peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Tana.<br />
In 1613, Susenyos sent a mission heading for Madrid and Vatican City,<br />
led by Fr. Antonio Fernandes. The plan was to head south, in an attempt to reach<br />
Malindi, a port on the Indian Ocean in what is Kenya today, hoping to break<br />
through the effective blockade that the Ottoman conquests had created around<br />
the Ethiopian empire by sailing all the way around the southern tip of Africa.<br />
However, they failed to reach Malindi, due to delays caused by local Christians<br />
hostile to the mission.<br />
Despite several letters from Susenyos to the King of Spain (and Portugal),<br />
<strong>Phi</strong>lip III, asking for military help, no Spanish or Portuguese soldiers ever arrived.<br />
Even so, Susenyos at last converted to Catholicism in 1622 in a public<br />
ceremony, and separated himself from all of his wives and concubines except for<br />
his first wife. However, the tolerant and sensitive Pedro Paez died soon<br />
afterwards, and his replacement Alfonso Mendez, who arrived at Massawa on<br />
January 24, 1624, proved to be haughty and less tolerant of traditional practices.<br />
Strife and rebellions over the enforced changes began within days of Mendez'<br />
public ceremony in 1626, where he proclaimed the primacy of Rome and<br />
condemned local practices, suppressing even the use of the Ethiopian calendar.<br />
In 1630, the Viceroy of Begemder, Sarsa Krestos, proclaimed Susenyos's<br />
son Fasilides emperor; Sarsa Krestos was promptly captured and hanged. Two<br />
years later, Susenyos's brother Malta Krestos revolted in Lasta, which was put<br />
down at the cost of 8,000 lives. This purposeless loss of life depressed<br />
Susenyos, and on returning to his palace at Dankaz, he granted his subjects<br />
freedom of worship, in effect restoring the traditional Ethiopian Church.<br />
In 1621, Susneyos publicly announced his adherence to the Latin faith, a<br />
strategy to reinforce his political power and his independence from the influential<br />
Orthodox clergy. A consequence of the public conversion of the king was the<br />
arrival of a growing number of Jesuit priests intent on rapidly introducing Catholic
eforms into Ethiopia. In 1626, the Catholic Patriarch Afonso Mendes imposed a<br />
number of changes on the ancestral religious practices of the Ethiopians. Social<br />
unrest and civil war followed and Susneyos was forced to resign. His son<br />
Fasiladas, who succeeded him, rejected Catholicism upon his accession to the<br />
throne and, in 1633, expelled or killed all Jesuit missionaries. He ended his reign<br />
by abdicating in favor of his son, Fasilides. He was buried at the church of<br />
Genneta Iyasus.<br />
The Emperor ran afoul of Zara Yacob, a seventeenth century Ethiopian<br />
philosopher and religious thinker, whose treatise, in the original Ge'ez language<br />
known as the Hatata (1667), has often been compared to Descartes' Discours de<br />
la methode (1637). In the period, when African philosophical literature was<br />
significantly oral in character, Yacob's inquiry, transmitted by writing, was one of<br />
the few exceptions.<br />
"Behold, I have begun an inquiry such as has not been attempted<br />
before. You can complete what I have begun so that the people of<br />
our country will become wise with the help of God and arrive at the<br />
science of truth, lest they believe in falsehood, trust in depravity, go<br />
from vanity to vanity, that they know the truth and love their brother,<br />
lest they quarrel about their empty faith as they have been doing till<br />
now."<br />
From The Treatise of Zara Yacob.<br />
Zara Yacob (spelled also Zar'a Ya'aqob or Zar'a Ya'eqob) was born into a<br />
farmer's family near Aksum, the capital of the ancient Greek-influenced kingdom<br />
in northern Ethiopia. Yacob's name means "The Seed of Jacob"; "Zara" is the<br />
Aramaic word for "seed." "By Christian baptism I was named Zara Yacob, but<br />
people called me Warqye," he wrote later in the Treatise. Although his father was<br />
poor, he supported Yacob's education. Yacob attended the traditional schools<br />
and became acquainted with the Psalms of David, which deeply influence his<br />
thought. After having returned to his native Aksum, Yacob taught there for four<br />
years.<br />
Yacob was educated in the Coptic Christian faith, but he was also familiar<br />
with other Christian sects, Islam, Judaism, and Indian religion. A truth seeker,<br />
who decided to rely on his own inner voice, Yacob was denounced before King<br />
Negus Susenoys (r. 1607-1632), who had turned to the Roman Catholic faith and<br />
ordered his subjects to follow his own example. Attempts to change the age-old<br />
rituals were met with resistance and tens of thousands were martyred.<br />
Yacob fled into exile with some gold and the Book of Psalms. On his way<br />
to Shoa in the south he found at the foot of the Takkaze River a cave. Yacob<br />
lived there alone for two years, praying and developing his philosophy, which he<br />
presented in the Hatata. In this book Yacob later said, that "I have learnt more
while living alone in a cave than when I was living with scholars. What I wrote in<br />
this book is very little; but in my cave I have meditated on many other such<br />
things."<br />
After the death of the king, his son Negus Fasiladas (r. 1632-1667), a firm<br />
adherent of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, took power. He expelled the Jesuits,<br />
and extirpated the Catholic faith in his kingdom in 1633. In this new situation,<br />
Yacob left his cave and settled in Enfraz. He found a patron, a rich merchant<br />
named Habtu, and married a maidservant of the family, whose name was Hirut.<br />
"... she was not beautiful," confessed Yacob, "but she was good natured,<br />
intelligent and patient." The monastic life did not appeal to Yacob, who stated<br />
that, "the law of Christians which propounds the superiority of monastic lifeover<br />
marriage is false and can’t come from God." He also rejected polygamy because<br />
"the law of creation orders one man to marry one woman."<br />
Returning to his former profession, Yacob became the teacher of Habtu's<br />
two sons. At the request of his patron's son Walda Heywat, Yacob wrote his<br />
famous Treatise, in which he recorded his life and thoughts. The self-portrait was<br />
completed in 1667. Yacob's basic method, which he applied to his investigation,<br />
was the light of the reason.<br />
Although Yacob is essentially a religious thinker, he defends his belief on<br />
rational grounds and rejects subjectivism. "God created us intelligent so that we<br />
can meditate on his greatness," Yacob wrote. Truth can be discovered by the<br />
power of analytical thinking: "... truth is one." But Yacob also believes that truth is<br />
immediately "revealed" to the person who seeks it. "Indeed he who investigates<br />
with the pure intelligence set by the creator in the heart of each man and<br />
scrutinizes the order and laws of creation, will discover the truth."<br />
Following in the footsteps of great church fathers, Yacob applied the idea<br />
of the first cause to his proof for the existence of God. "If I say that my father and<br />
my mother created me, then I must search for the creator of my parents and of<br />
the parents of my parents until they arrive at the first who were not created as we<br />
[are] but who came into this world in some other way without being generated."<br />
However, the knowability of God do not depend on human intellect, but "Our soul<br />
has the power of having the concept of God and of seeing him mentally. God did<br />
not give this power purposelessly; as he gave the power, so did he give the<br />
reality."<br />
Little is know of Yacob's later life but Enfraz, where he lived harmonious<br />
and happy family life, remained his home town for the next twenty-five years. He<br />
also saw that husband and wife are equal in marriage, "for they are one flesh and<br />
one life." Yacob died in 1692. Walda Heywat, his successor, published later an<br />
treatise, in which he followed Yacob's lines of thought. The first scholar, who<br />
introduced Yacob's thought to the English-speaking world, was Professor Claude<br />
Sumner, who moved from Canada to Ethiopia in the 1950s. Summer proved that
the author of the Treatise was not an Italian Capuchin Giusto d'Urbino, who lived<br />
in Ethiopia in the 19th century; Giusto d'Urbino himself never said the work was<br />
his own but told that he had bought the manuscript.<br />
After the rule of Emperor Susenos, Ethiopia returned to civil war between<br />
its oligarchs. Under Minas (1159-63), Sarsa Dengel (1563-97), and Ya'eqob Za<br />
Dengel (1597-1607), civil war was incessant. There was a brief respite under<br />
Susneos (1607-32), but war broke out afresh under Fasiladas (1632-67), and the<br />
Ethiopian clergy, moreover, increased the trouble by their theological disputes as<br />
to the two natures of Christ.<br />
These disputes, often, indeed, but a cloak for ambitious intrigues, were<br />
always occasions of revolution. Under the successors of Fasiladas the general<br />
disorder passed beyond all bounds. Of the seven kings that followed him but two<br />
died a natural death. There was a short period of peace under Bakafa (1721-30),<br />
and Yasu II (1730-55), Yoas (1755) and Yohannes were again victims of an everspreading<br />
revolution.<br />
The end of the eighteenth century left Ethiopia a feudal kingdom. The land<br />
and its government belonged to its Ras, or feudal chieftains. The unity of the<br />
nation had disappeared, and its kings reigned, but did not govern. The Ras<br />
became veritable Mayors of the Palace, and the monarchs were content to be<br />
rois fainéants. Side by side with these kings who have left in history only their<br />
names, the real masters of events, as the popular whim happened to favour<br />
them, were Ras Mikael, Ras Abeto of the Godjam, Ras Gabriel of the Samen,<br />
Ras Ali of Begameder, Ras Gabra of Masqal of Tigré, Ras Walda-Sellase of the<br />
Shoa, Ras Ali of Amhara, Ras Oubié of Tigré, and the like. But war among these<br />
chiefs was incessant; ever dissatisfied, jealous of each other's power, each one<br />
sought to be supreme, and it was only after a century of strife that peace was at<br />
length established. A son of the governor of Kowara, named Kasa, succeeded in<br />
bringing it about, to his own profit; and he made it permanent by causing himself<br />
to be named king under the name of Theodore (1855). With him the ancient<br />
Ethiopia took its place as one of the nations to be reckoned with in the<br />
international affairs of the West, and Abyssinia may be said to date its origin from<br />
his reign.
. . . Susenyos of Ethiopia ruled in succession from Emperor<br />
Yekuno Amlak, below, of the Solomid dynasty . . .<br />
Emperor Yekuno Amlak (throne<br />
name Tasfa Iyasus) was nəgusä nägäst<br />
(10 August 1270 - 19 June 1285) of<br />
Ethiopia and restorer of the Solomonic<br />
dynasty. He traced his ancestry through his<br />
father, Tasfa Iyasus, to Dil Na'od, the last<br />
king of Axum. Much of what we know<br />
about Yekuno Amlak is based on oral<br />
traditions and medieval hagiographies.<br />
Most sources state that his mother was the<br />
slave of an Amhara chieftain in Sagarat<br />
(located in the modern Dessie Zuria district<br />
of the Amhara Region). Yekuno Amlak<br />
was educated at Lake Hayq's Istifanos<br />
Monastery near Amba Sel, where later<br />
medieval hagiographies state Saint Tekle<br />
Haymanot raised and educated him, and<br />
helped him to depose the last Zagwe king.<br />
The Lion of Judah<br />
Earlier hagiographies, however, state that it was Iyasus Mo'a, the abbot of<br />
Istifanos Monastery in Lake Hayq, who helped him achieve power (Istifanos was<br />
the premier monastery at that time, while Tekle Haymanot's Debre Libanos<br />
become more prominent in the later medieval period; it is from this period the<br />
traditions that ascribe the deed to Tekle Haymanot date), although neither of<br />
these traditions is contemporary.<br />
Traditional history further reports that Yekuno Amlak was imprisoned by<br />
the Zagwe king Za-Ilmaknun ("the unknown, the hidden one") in Malot, but<br />
managed to escape. He gathered support in the Amhara provinces and in<br />
Shewa, and with an army of followers, defeated the Zagwe king. Taddese Tamrat<br />
argued that this king was Yetbarak, but due to a local form of damnatio<br />
memoriae, his name was removed from the official records. A more recent<br />
chronicler of Wollo history, Getatchew Mekonnen Hasen, flatly states that the last<br />
Zagwe king deposed by Yekuno Amlak was none other than Na'akueto La'ab<br />
himself. [4]<br />
Yekuno Amlak is also said to have campaigned against the Kingdom of<br />
Damot, which lay south of the Abbay River.
Recorded history affords more certainty as to his relations with other<br />
countries. For example, E.A. Wallis Budge states that Yekuno Amlak not only<br />
exchanged letters with the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII, but sent to him<br />
several giraffes as a gift. At first, his interactions with his Muslim neighbors were<br />
friendly; however his attempts to be granted an Abuna for the Ethiopian Orthodox<br />
Church strained these relations. A letter survives that he wrote to the Mamluk<br />
Sultan Baibars, who was suzerain over the Patriarch of Alexandria (the ultimate<br />
head of the Ethiopian church), for his help for a new Abuna in 1273; the letter<br />
suggests this was not his first request. When one did not arrive, he blamed the<br />
intervention of the Sultan of Yemen, who had hindered the progress of his<br />
messenger to Cairo.<br />
Taddesse Tamrat interprets Yekuno Amlak's son's allusion to Syrian<br />
priests at the royal court as a result of this lack of attention from the Patriarch.<br />
Taddesse also notes that around this time, the Patriarchs of Alexandria and<br />
Antioch were struggling for control of the appointment of the bishop of Jerusalem,<br />
until then the prerogative of the Patriarch of Antioch. One of the moves in this<br />
dispute was Patriarch Ignatius III David's appointment of an Ethiopian pilgrim as<br />
Abuna. This pilgrim never attempted to assume this post in Ethiopia, but --<br />
Taddesse Tamrat argues -- the lack of Coptic bishops forced Yekuno Amlak to<br />
rely on the Syrian partisans who arrived in his kingdom.<br />
Yekuno Amlak ordered the construction of the Church of Gennete Maryam<br />
near Lalibela, which contains the earliest surviving dateable wall paintings in<br />
Ethiopia.
. . . Emperor Yekuno Amlak of the Solomid dynasty was<br />
supported by a line of Ethiopian theologians: Tekle Haymanot,<br />
Iyasus Mo'a and the Abbot Yohannes . . .<br />
Tekle Haymanot or Takla<br />
Haymanot (Ge'ez takla hāymānōt, modern<br />
tekle hāymānōt, "Plant of Faith"; known in<br />
the Coptic Church as Saint Takla<br />
Haymanot of Ethiopia) (c. 1215 – c. 1313)<br />
was an Ethiopian monk who founded a<br />
major monastery in his native province of<br />
Shewa. He is considered a saint by both<br />
the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches. His<br />
feast day is August 17, and the 24th day of<br />
every month in the Ethiopian calendar is<br />
dedicated to Tekle Haymanot. Tekle<br />
Haymanot was born in the district of Bulga<br />
on the eastern edge of Shewa, the son of<br />
the priest Sagaz Ab ("Gift of Faith") and his<br />
wife Egzi'e Haraya ("Choice of God"), who<br />
is also known as Sarah. According to<br />
tradition, his ancestors had been Christian<br />
who had settled in Shewa ten generations<br />
before.<br />
The Lion of Judah<br />
His father gave Tekle Haymanot his earliest religious instruction; later he<br />
was ordained a priest by the Egyptian bishop Qerilos. During his youth, Shewa<br />
was subject to a number of devastating raids by Motalami, the pagan king of<br />
Damot. As a result, the morale of Christians in Shewa had weakened, and the<br />
practice of paganism increased. There are a number of traditions, some of less<br />
historical value than others, that describe Tekle Haymanot's interactions with<br />
Motalami.<br />
The first significant point in his life was when Tekle Haymanot, at the age<br />
of 30, travelled north to settle at the monastery of Iyasus Mo'a, who had only a<br />
few years before founded a monastery on an island in the middle of Lake Hayq in<br />
the district of Amba Sel (the present-day Amhara Region). There he studied<br />
under the abbot for nine years before travelling to Tigray, where he visited Axum,<br />
then stayed for a while at the monastery of Debre Damo, where he studied under<br />
Abbot Yohannes, Iyasus Mo'a's spiritual teacher. By this point, a small group of<br />
followers began to attach themselves around him.
Eventually Tekle Haymanot left Debre Damo with his followers to return to<br />
Shewa. On his return route, he stopped at Iyasus Mo'a's monastery in Lake<br />
Hayq, where tradition states he received the full investiture of an Ethiopian<br />
monk's habit. The historian Taddesse Tamrat sees in the existing accounts of<br />
this act an attempt by later writers to justify the seniority of the monastery in Lake<br />
Hayq over the followers of Tekle Haymanot.<br />
Once in Shewa, he introduced the spirit of renewal that Christianity was<br />
experiencing in the northern provinces. He settled in the central area between<br />
Shilalish and Grarya, where he founded in 1284 the monastery of Debre Atsbo<br />
(renamed in the 15th century Debre Libanos). This monastery became one of the<br />
most important religious institutions of Ethiopia, not only founding a number of<br />
daughter houses, but its abbot became one of the principal leaders of the<br />
Ethiopian Church called the Echege, second only to the Abuna.<br />
Tekle Haymanot lived for 29 years after the foundation of this monastery,<br />
dying in the year before Emperor Wedem Arad did; this would date Tekle<br />
Haymanot's death to 1313. He was first buried in the cave where he had<br />
originally lived as a hermit; almost 60 years later he was reinterred at Debre<br />
Libanos. In the 1950s, Emperor Haile Selassie constructed a new church at<br />
Debre Libanos Monastery over the site of the Saint's tomb. It remains a place of<br />
pilgrimage and a favored site for burial for many people across Ethiopia.<br />
Tekle Haymanot is frequently represented as an old man with wings on his<br />
back and only one leg visible. There are a number of explanations for this<br />
popular image. C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford recount one story, that<br />
the saint "having stood too long, one of his legs broke, whereupon he stood on<br />
one foot for seven years." Paul B. Henze describes his missing leg as appearing<br />
as a "severed leg ... in the lower left corner discreetly wrapped in a cloth." The<br />
traveller Thomas Pakenham learned from the Prior of Debre Damo how Tekle<br />
Haymanot received his wings:<br />
One day he said he would go to Jerusalem to see the Garden of<br />
Gethsemane and the hill of blood that is called Golgotha. But<br />
Shaitan (Satan) planned to stop Teklahaimanot going on his<br />
journey to the Holy Land, and he cut the rope which led from the<br />
rock to the ground just as Teklahaimanot started to climb down.<br />
Then God gave Teklahaimanot six wings and he flew down to the<br />
valley below ... and from that day onwards Teklahaimanot would fly<br />
back and forth to Jerusalem above the clouds like an airplane.<br />
Many traditions hold that Tekle Haymanot played a significant role in<br />
Yekuno Amlak's ascension as the restored monarch of the Solomonic dynasty,<br />
following two centuries of rule by the Zagwe dynasty, although historians like<br />
Taddesse Tamrat believe these are later inventions. (A few older traditions credit
Iyasus Mo'a with this honor) Another tradition credits Tekle Haymanot as the only<br />
Abuna born in Ethiopia until the church was granted autocephaly in the 1950s.<br />
Tekle Maymanot studied under Iyasus Mo'a (Iyäsus Mo'a, "Jesus has<br />
Conquered" c. 1214 – c. 1294). Iyasus Mo'a is a saint of the Ethiopian Orthodox<br />
Tewahedo Church; his feast day is 26 Hedar (or 5 December). In life he was an<br />
Ethiopian monk and abbot of Istifanos Monastery in Lake Hayq of Amba Sel.<br />
At the age of 30, he travelled to the monastery of Debre Damo during the<br />
abbacy of Abba Yohannis where he was made a monk, and was given arduous<br />
tasks by the abbot. After seven years, he left Debra Damo and came to live with<br />
a hermetic community living around the 8th century church of Istanafanos at<br />
Lake Hayq, and organized this group into a monastery with rules and a school.<br />
One of the students of this school was Saint Tekle Haymanot, who stayed at the<br />
monastery for 10 years.<br />
His biography, the Gadla Iyasus Mo`a ("Acts of Iyasus Mo`a"), records<br />
that Yekuno Amlak had fled from the authorities in Amba Sel and hid in the<br />
church because of a prophecy (tinbit) that he would become a king. His mother,<br />
upon hearing such prediction, brought him to Istifanos Monastery in Lake Hayq<br />
and begged the priests there to hide her son and save him from being killed.<br />
Iyasus Mo'a protected and educated the boy, and in return, Emperor Yekuno<br />
Amlak built the structure to house his community. Later hagiographies state that<br />
Yekuno Amlak was helped by Tekle Haymanot, but the critical researches of<br />
Carlo Conti Rossini suggest that the Gadla Iyasus Mo`a is closer to the correct<br />
version of events.<br />
Abbot Johannes ministered in a long religious tradition. The Ethiopian<br />
Orthodox Church, or Tewhado, dates the coming of Christianity to Ethiopia to the<br />
fourth century AD, when a Christian philosopher from Tyre named Meropius was<br />
shipwrecked on his way to India. Meropius died but his two wards, Frumentius<br />
and Aedesius were washed ashore and taken to the royal palace. Eventually<br />
they became king Ella Amida’s private secretary and royal cupbearer<br />
respectively. They served the king well, and Frumentius became regent for the<br />
infant prince Ezana when Ella Amida died. Frumentius and Aedesius were also<br />
permitted to prosyletize the new religion in Aksum (as modern Ethiopia was then<br />
known). After some time, Frumentius and Aedesius returned to the<br />
Mediterranean, travelling down the Nile through Egypt to do so. When they<br />
reached Egypt, Frumentius contacted bishop Athanasius of Alexandria and<br />
begged him to send missionaries back to Aksum, since the people there had<br />
proved so ready to receive the gospel.<br />
Athanasius agreed that the need was urgent, and immediately appointed<br />
Frumentius to the task, which needed someone fluent in the language and<br />
sensitive to the customs of Aksum. He ordained Frumentius the first abuna or<br />
bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Frumentius has since come to be
known as the Abuna Salama or bishop of peace. His mission was successful<br />
and, with the support of king Ezana, Ethiopia became a Christian nation.<br />
The link between the Ethiopian church and the Patriarch of Alexandria<br />
was not broken until the 20th century, since the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria<br />
has sent Ethiopia each of its suceeding Abunas. This has meant that the<br />
Ethiopian church has been ruled by Egyptians for sixteen centuries.<br />
Towards the end of the 5th century nine monks arrived, probably from<br />
Syria, though perhaps from Egypt, and introduced monasticism into Ethiopia.<br />
Monasticism has remained a dominant feature of the Ethiopian church to this<br />
day.<br />
These monks may have been driven out of Syria after the Council of<br />
Chalcedon for being Monophysite (my page) Christians. Monophysites<br />
(mono=one, phusis = nature) believe that the divine and human natures of Christ<br />
were fused into a single nature at his birth. The Ecumentical Council of<br />
Chalcedon, on the other hand distinguished between the divine nature of Christ<br />
and his human nature, declaring that Jesus had two distinct natures, and in the<br />
process declaring the the Monophysites heretical. At any rate, whether or not it<br />
was due to the Nine Saints, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, along with the<br />
Coptic Church of Egypt, and smaller churches in Syria,Turkey and Arminia, have<br />
remained non-Chalcedonian.. These non-Chalcedonian churches have formed a<br />
distinctively Southern branch of the worldwide church.<br />
The nine monks also encouraged the translation of the Bible into Ge’ez,<br />
which was the language of the people at the time. The Ethiopian church<br />
continues to use Ge’ez as its liturgical language, though it is no longer a living<br />
language.<br />
During the seventh century, the Muslim conquests cut the Ethiopians off<br />
from the rest of the Christian world, except for the Ethiopian monastary in<br />
Jerusalem, which continued to be a pilgrimage site for pious Ethiopian monks,<br />
and the continuing thread of contact with Egypt maintained because the Coptic<br />
Patriarch of Alexandria supplied the Ethiopian Church with its Abuna. Initially<br />
relations between the Ethiopians and the Muslims were cordial, with mutual trade<br />
and mutual religious toleration, some of which grew out of real religious<br />
similarities. The prophet Mohammed also instructed his followers to be kind to<br />
the Ethiopians, since they had been kind to several of Mohammed’s companions<br />
who had fled there<br />
Eventually, however, relations deteriorated and Ethiopia slid into its dark<br />
ages, retreating into the securitity of the mountains to defend themselves against<br />
the Muslims. They did, however, maintain their independence, their culture, their<br />
identity and their faith.
In the 12th century Ethiopia emerged from the dark ages under the<br />
leadership of a new Zagwe (Zague) dynasty. The Zagwes were from central<br />
Ethiopia and of dubious background. Later ecclesiastical texts accuse them of<br />
not being of the pure Solomonid lineage -- that is not being descended from<br />
Menelik, the son of the biblical king Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who<br />
supposedly founded the royal house of Ethiopia. In part to establish their<br />
religious credentials, in part to stake a claim to God’s favor, in part to create a<br />
focus for religious devotion inside Ethiopia and particularly at the Zagwe capital,<br />
in part to re-direct the energies of pilgrims from Jerusalem, and in part out of<br />
genuine religous devotion. King Lalibela had a set of ten churches built in his<br />
capital of Roha, which has since be renamed Lalibela. These churches, carved<br />
out of the living rock, deserve to be one of the wonders of the world and are a<br />
remarkable monument to the skill and craftsmanship of the 13th century<br />
Ethiopians.<br />
In the sixteenth century Ethiopia was nearly overrun by the armies of the<br />
Muslim general Ahmed Gran who waged jihad on Ethiopia with great success.<br />
He took control of the country, but when he was killed by a Portuguese musket in<br />
an Ethiopian counter-attack in 1543 the incipient Muslim state in Ethiopia simply<br />
fell apart for lack of leadership. Portguese military support was critical to the<br />
success of the counter-attack, though it had not been enough to prevent Ahmed<br />
Gran from overrunning Ethiopia in the first place.<br />
John Bermudez, a Portuguese who had been visiting Ethiopia during<br />
Ahmed Gran’s conquest, and who had slipped through to appeal for Portuguese<br />
aid, took advantage of the death of the abuna to claim that the dying patriarch<br />
had appointed him successor, and that the pope has appointed him Archbishop<br />
of Ethiopia when John Bermudez had been in Europe. There is no evidence that<br />
either claim was true, but the Portuguese in Ethiopia believed him and pressured<br />
king Galawdewos to adopt the Latin Roman Catholic Liturgy. A mission of Jesuits<br />
was sent out to further pressure the Ethiopian court, which resisted any thought<br />
of joining the Roman Catholic Church<br />
The following century, king Suseynos (1607-32) became Catholic in the<br />
hope of an advantgeous militry alliance with the west, but his successor drove<br />
the Catholic missionaires out of Ethiopia again when they tried to assert fullblown<br />
Catholicism. Alphonsus Mendes, who was sent out as patriarch of<br />
Ethiopia, demanded that all Ethiopian Christians be re-baptized, and the priests<br />
re-ordained, though he permitted the married priests to remain married. He<br />
prohibited the Ethiopian custom of circumcision, and insisted that Saturday be<br />
turned from the Sabbath as observed by the Ethiopians to a fast day as observed<br />
by Ethiopian Christians.<br />
Orthodox Christianity lost considerable ground in ninetheenth century<br />
Ethiopia, in part due to the expansion of the pagan or Muslim Galla, especially in<br />
the southern regions of Ethiopia, which had been a Christian stronghold. Many of
the monastaries survived, because they were so inaccessable, but as pockets<br />
within a greater Muslim or pagan whole. Ethiopian Orthodoxy, which had very<br />
little by way of evangelistic impetus, had little appeal to the newcomers, who<br />
found Orthodox fasts odd an onerous and who no more understood the Ge’ez of<br />
the liturgy than their Christian neighbours did. The Church also suffered from the<br />
lack of leadership and ordiantions for much of the nineteenth century, since the<br />
Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, himself in deep difficulties, did not provide the<br />
Ethiopian church with its abuna, and when he did the abuna found himself<br />
powerless in the face of the distintegration of the Ethiopian state. Without a<br />
strong king to hold it together and direct the abuna, the church was essentially<br />
rudderless.<br />
The fortunes of the church turned in the latter half of the century, when<br />
Egypt provided a new abuna, and when Ethiopia was once again centralized by a<br />
succession of kings who were genuinely devout and looked after the interests of<br />
the church. The most important of these kings was Menelik II, who succeeded in<br />
holding off and defeating the Italian attempts to colonize Ethiopia. His efforts and<br />
skills meant that Ethiopia was the only African state whose full sovereignty<br />
continued to be recognized by the European powers throughout the Scramble for<br />
Africa.<br />
In the 20th century Ethiopia has seen the influx of Roman Catholic and<br />
Protestant missionaries and the foundation of a number of Protestant churches.<br />
Internally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church won the right to appoint their own<br />
Abuna, rather than have the Abuna always be an Egyptian Copt appointed by the<br />
Patriarch of Alexandria.<br />
Ethiopia is a land of churches. Most village churches are round or<br />
octagonal, with a conical grass roof. Monastic churches and older churches are<br />
larger and typically rectangular. This reflects the fact that Ethiopian local church<br />
architecture adapted itself to the African hut form, though at the same time, it<br />
also reflects the fact that the Ethiopian church liturgy, with its emphasis on the<br />
holy mysteries in the center of the church, the Tabot (or the ark) also in the<br />
center, and with the participation of multiple priests and lay clerks chanting and<br />
drumming, simply works better in a round church.<br />
Ethiopian Orthodox Churches typically consist of three concentric rings:<br />
the innermost ring, called the sanctuary, holds the ark, typically a small wooden<br />
coffer. Priests and the emperor take the Eucharist, which is a part of every<br />
service [check] in the sanctuary. The second ring is the "holy place" where the<br />
congregation receives the sacrament, while the outer ring is called the "choir, "<br />
where the priests chant the scriptures in Ge’ez.<br />
The Ethiopian Church has maintained many more Jewish practices than<br />
most other Christian Churches, every Ethiopian Christian male is circumcised,<br />
devout Ethiopian Christians keep Sabbath (as well as Sunday), an ark is an
essential part of every church, and is carried out of the church for festivals , and<br />
priests will sacrifice a goat or a lamb for the sick. Ethiopian Christians claim a<br />
long Jewish heritage before the coming of Christianity. They trace the royal line<br />
back to Menelik (my page)the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon,<br />
though that claim cannot be independently verified. They also claim that the true<br />
Ark of the Covenant still exists and is kept safe in an Ethiopian monastary.<br />
Conclusion of the <strong>Gondar</strong> intellectual line<br />
So what is the lesson of the <strong>Gondar</strong> line’s intellectual legacy within New York<br />
Alpha?<br />
The <strong>Gondar</strong> line proves that our reach with the Sankore line was not a<br />
token embrace of diversity after 1969. New York Alpha’s intellectual tradition<br />
touches down in both west and east Africa, in both the Muslim and Christian<br />
traditions of the continent.<br />
The <strong>Gondar</strong> intellectual line is part of New York Alpha’s local Chapter lore, first recorded by<br />
brother Cadwalader E. Linthicum (1885)(1889) and preserved by<br />
Walter Sheppard (’29)(’32) and Fred E. Hartzch (’28)(’31).<br />
“To know the lore, is to tend the Tree.”