This etext was prepared from the 1887 Cassell and Companyedition by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
by
FATHER JEROME LOBO.
Translated from theFrench
by
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london, paris, newyork & melbourne.
1887.
Jeronimo Lobo was born in Lisbon in the year 1593. Heentered the Order of the Jesuits at the age of sixteen. After passing through the studies by which Jesuits were trainedfor missionary work, which included special attention to the artsof speaking and writing, Father Lobo was sent as a missionary toIndia at the age of twenty-eight, in the year 1621. Hereached Goa, as his book tells, in 1622, and was in 1624, at theage of thirty-one, told off as one of the missionaries to beemployed in the conversion of the Abyssinians. They were tobe converted, from a form of Christianity peculiar to themselves,to orthodox Catholicism. The Abyssinian Emperor Segued wasprotector of the enterprise, of which we have here the storytold.
Father Lobo was nine years in Abyssinia, from the age ofthirty-one to the age of forty, and this was the adventurous timeof his life. The death of the Emperor Segued put an end tothe protection that had given the devoted missionaries, in themidst of dangers, a precarious hold upon their work. Whenhe and his comrades fell into the hands of the Turks at Massowah,his vigour of body and mind, his readiness of resource, and hisfidelity, marked him out as the one to be sent to theheadquarters in India to secure the payment of a ransom for hiscompanions. He obtained the ransom, and desired also toobtain from the Portuguese Viceroy in India armed force tomaintain the missionaries in the position they had so farwon. But the Civil power was deaf to his pleading. Heremoved the appeal to Lisbon, and after narrowly escaping on theway from a shipwreck, and after having been captured by pirates,he reached Lisbon, and sought still to obtain means of overawingthe force hostile to the work of the Jesuits in Abyssinia. The Princess Margaret gave friendly hearing, but sent him on topersuade, if he could, the King of Spain; and failing at Madrid,he went to Rome and tried the Pope. He was chosen to go tothe Pope, said the Patriarch Alfonso Mendez, because, of all thebrethren at Goa, the ‘Pater Hieronymus Lupus’ (Lobotranslated into Wolf) was the most ingenious and learned in allsciences, with a mind most generous in its desire to conquerdifficulties, dexterous in management of business, and found mostable to make himself agreeable to those with whom there wasbusiness to be done. The vigour with which he held by hispurpose of endeavouring in every possible way to bring theChristianity of Abyssinia within the pale of the Catholic Churchis in accordance with the character that makes the centre of thestory of this book. Whimsical touches arise out of thisstrength of character and readiness of resource, as when he tellsof the taste of the Abyssinians for raw cow’s flesh, with asauce high in royal Abyssinian favour, made of the cow’sgall and contents of its entrails, of which, when he was pressedto partake, he could only excuse himself and his brethren bysuggesting that it was too good for such humblemissionaries. Out of distinguished respect for it, theyrefrained from putting it into their mouths.
Good Father Lobo gave up the desire of his heart, when it wasproved unattainable, and returned to India six years after thebreaking up of his work in Abyssinia, at the age