Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi

Susenyos campaigned against the Agaw in the north, the encroaching
Oromo in the south, and is said in his Royal Chronicle to have made his power
felt along his western frontier from Fazogli north to Suakin.
He was interested in Catholicism, in part due to Pedro Páez' persuasion,
but also hoping for military help from Portugal and Spain (in union at the time of
Susenyo's reign). Some decades earlier, in 1541, Christopher da Gama (son of
the legendary Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama) had been in charge of a
military expedition to save the Ethiopian emperor Gelawdewos from the
onslaught of Ahmed Gragn, a Muslim Imam who almost destroyed the existence
of the Ethiopian state. Susenyos hoped to receive a new contingent of wellarmed
European soldiers, this time against another enemy, the Oromo who were
invading from the south, and to put down constant internal rebellion. He showed
the Jesuit missionaries his favor by a number of land grants, most importantly
those at Gorgora, located on a peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Tana.
In 1613, Susenyos sent a mission heading for Madrid and Vatican City,
led by Fr. Antonio Fernandes. The plan was to head south, in an attempt to reach
Malindi, a port on the Indian Ocean in what is Kenya today, hoping to break
through the effective blockade that the Ottoman conquests had created around
the Ethiopian empire by sailing all the way around the southern tip of Africa.
However, they failed to reach Malindi, due to delays caused by local Christians
hostile to the mission.
Despite several letters from Susenyos to the King of Spain (and Portugal),
Philip III, asking for military help, no Spanish or Portuguese soldiers ever arrived.
Even so, Susenyos at last converted to Catholicism in 1622 in a public
ceremony, and separated himself from all of his wives and concubines except for
his first wife. However, the tolerant and sensitive Pedro Paez died soon
afterwards, and his replacement Alfonso Mendez, who arrived at Massawa on
January 24, 1624, proved to be haughty and less tolerant of traditional practices.
Strife and rebellions over the enforced changes began within days of Mendez'
public ceremony in 1626, where he proclaimed the primacy of Rome and
condemned local practices, suppressing even the use of the Ethiopian calendar.
In 1630, the Viceroy of Begemder, Sarsa Krestos, proclaimed Susenyos's
son Fasilides emperor; Sarsa Krestos was promptly captured and hanged. Two
years later, Susenyos's brother Malta Krestos revolted in Lasta, which was put
down at the cost of 8,000 lives. This purposeless loss of life depressed
Susenyos, and on returning to his palace at Dankaz, he granted his subjects
freedom of worship, in effect restoring the traditional Ethiopian Church.
In 1621, Susneyos publicly announced his adherence to the Latin faith, a
strategy to reinforce his political power and his independence from the influential
Orthodox clergy. A consequence of the public conversion of the king was the
arrival of a growing number of Jesuit priests intent on rapidly introducing Catholic