Luso-Ethiopian Relations and Church Unification

Because it was co-written by Merid Wolde Aregay and frequently cited in Cohen's study of the Jesuit mission, The Question of the Union of the Churches in Luso-Ethiopian Relations, 1500-1632 was the next read on Solomonic Ethiopia. Although a short study of Luso-Ethiopian Relations and the failed unification of the respective churches under Roman authority, Aregay and Girma Beshah has written a cogent introduction to the complex topic of Portuguese-Ethiopian interactions beginning with the legend of Prester John and early contacts between the Latin West and the Horn in the late medieval period. While the authors do not seek to blame the Jesuits for the mission's failure or see in it a colonial relationship, they do acknowledge that expecting to uproot centuries-old customs and beliefs quickly was perhaps misguided. 

Ultimately, Susenyos, our Catholic negus, like Za Dengel before him, also lacked the means to effectively impose Catholicism. The dreamed for or expected Portuguese troops never arrived and resistance from the local clergy, nobility, and peasantry became too consistent and dangerous for Susenyos's rule to survive without freedom of religion. The role of peasant resistance in this process cannot be overlooked, and this essay suggests there was an aspect of class conflict expressed in the numerous revolts and rebellions. Indeed, if Za Dengel, as Crummey suggested, had hoped to win peasant support by attacking gult and building a new military base of peasant conscripts (presumably less destructive to the peasants than the older imperial military units), Susenyos alienated the peasantry with his imposition of Catholicism and the insecurity caused by frequent rebellions, Oromo raids, and banditry. 

As stated by later scholars on the Jesuits in Ethiopia, the Society of Jesus relied on the patronage of local rulers and elites. Once circumstances changed and those groups could not or would not back them, the Jesuit mission declined and often a mass support to rally it. Ethiopian Catholicism may have had that if Susenyos's brother, Sela Christos, had been able to rally forces around him and the defeated patriarch against Fasiladas. However, due to the forced conversions and general resistance to Roman Catholicism from above and below, one doubts local Catholics would have been able to stage an effective military resistance. Aregay and Beshah cite Jesuit sources suggesting over 100,000 local Catholics by 1630, but how many of these were the result of forced or coerced conversions or, perhaps like some of the conversions to Islam under Ahmad Gran, merely acts of opportunism or self-preservation in the face of a new boss or bully? One wishes Susenyos had found a way to consolidate his government and centralize the state without imposing Catholicism, perhaps a method that could have carried out some of Za Dengel's reforms with freedom of religion for Orthodox, Catholic, Muslims, Falasha, and "pagans." Ironically, his son would go on to establish a reinvigorated Solomonic dynasty that resisted the resurgence of the provincial nobility until the mid-18th century.