Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi

while living alone in a cave than when I was living with scholars. What I wrote in
this book is very little; but in my cave I have meditated on many other such
things."
After the death of the king, his son Negus Fasiladas (r. 1632-1667), a firm
adherent of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, took power. He expelled the Jesuits,
and extirpated the Catholic faith in his kingdom in 1633. In this new situation,
Yacob left his cave and settled in Enfraz. He found a patron, a rich merchant
named Habtu, and married a maidservant of the family, whose name was Hirut.
"... she was not beautiful," confessed Yacob, "but she was good natured,
intelligent and patient." The monastic life did not appeal to Yacob, who stated
that, "the law of Christians which propounds the superiority of monastic lifeover
marriage is false and can’t come from God." He also rejected polygamy because
"the law of creation orders one man to marry one woman."
Returning to his former profession, Yacob became the teacher of Habtu's
two sons. At the request of his patron's son Walda Heywat, Yacob wrote his
famous Treatise, in which he recorded his life and thoughts. The self-portrait was
completed in 1667. Yacob's basic method, which he applied to his investigation,
was the light of the reason.
Although Yacob is essentially a religious thinker, he defends his belief on
rational grounds and rejects subjectivism. "God created us intelligent so that we
can meditate on his greatness," Yacob wrote. Truth can be discovered by the
power of analytical thinking: "... truth is one." But Yacob also believes that truth is
immediately "revealed" to the person who seeks it. "Indeed he who investigates
with the pure intelligence set by the creator in the heart of each man and
scrutinizes the order and laws of creation, will discover the truth."
Following in the footsteps of great church fathers, Yacob applied the idea
of the first cause to his proof for the existence of God. "If I say that my father and
my mother created me, then I must search for the creator of my parents and of
the parents of my parents until they arrive at the first who were not created as we
[are] but who came into this world in some other way without being generated."
However, the knowability of God do not depend on human intellect, but "Our soul
has the power of having the concept of God and of seeing him mentally. God did
not give this power purposelessly; as he gave the power, so did he give the
reality."
Little is know of Yacob's later life but Enfraz, where he lived harmonious
and happy family life, remained his home town for the next twenty-five years. He
also saw that husband and wife are equal in marriage, "for they are one flesh and
one life." Yacob died in 1692. Walda Heywat, his successor, published later an
treatise, in which he followed Yacob's lines of thought. The first scholar, who
introduced Yacob's thought to the English-speaking world, was Professor Claude
Sumner, who moved from Canada to Ethiopia in the 1950s. Summer proved that