712 Report on Shoa [No. 140. 



Still Oviedo was by no means reduced to silence. Treatise after trea- 

 tise was published on the controversy, to confound the minds of the 

 Ethiopians. The errors of the Alexandrian faith were fiercely attacked 

 in every form and fashion, and the superior beauties of the Catholic 

 religion fully expounded. But no advantage resulted, rejoinders and 

 confutations followed fast from the insulted clergy, and the Bishop 

 furious at the thoughts of his futile exertions to gain a footing in the 

 country, entertaining no hope of making one single convert, whether 

 among prince or people ; resolved upon a last effort in the struggle, and 

 on the fifth of February 1559, he issued his spiritual ban over the land, 

 proclaiming that the entire nation of Abyssinia, high and low, learned 

 and ignorant, having refused to obey the Church of Rome, practising 

 the unholy rite of circumcision, objecting to eat the flesh of the hog 

 and the hare, and indulging in many other flagrant enormities, were 

 delivered over to the judgment of the spiritual courts, to be punished 

 in persons and goods, in public and in private, by every means the 

 faithful could devise. 



The folly of issuing this curious rescript without any means of en- 

 forcement was fully appreciated, and the tyrannical conduct of the 

 Bishop only served to strengthen the emperor in the bands of his own 

 faith ; finding, as was observed by an historian of the times, that Popery 

 and its wiles were the more dangerous and reprehensible, as the veil was 

 withdrawn from the spirit of her tenets. 



There is every reason to believe, that the succeeding invasion of the 

 Adaiel was procured through the treacherous designs of the Jesuits, but 

 the event again proved disastrous to their cause. Although the revenge 

 of the bafiied Bishop was allayed in a torrent of blood, yet the death of 

 the mild, moderate and liberal Claudius, who perished in the field of 

 battle, shed a baneful influence on the ensuing efforts, and the sceptre 

 devolved into the hands of his brother Adam, a haughty and vindictive 

 prince, who is depicted in Portuguese records as cruel and hard of heart, 

 and utterly insensible to the beauteous mysteries of the Catholic faith. 



Swearing vengeance against the Latins, to whose treason he attributed 

 the murder of his brother and the ruin of his country, the new monarch 

 seized all the estates which had been granted to the Portuguese for 

 rendered service ; threatened the Bishop and his colleagues with in- 

 stant death if they presumed to propagate the errors of the Romish 



