Pedro Páez's History of Ethiopia, 1622

Book excerpt: This book, in two volumes, contains the first English translation, with introduction and annotation, of the História da Etiópia by the Spanish Jesuit missionary priest Pedro Páez, 1564-1622, who worked in the Portuguese missions, first in India and then in Ethiopia, long thought to be the kingdom of the legendary Prester John. Paez's learned but often polemical work is a major contribution to the political, social, cultural and religious history of Ethiopia in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and to the history of early Portuguese and Spanish missions in Africa and India, and West European attempts to come to terms with non-European cultures.