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Pedro Páez (1564 - May 3, 1622) was a Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia. He was born in modern-day Madrid during the union of the Spanish and the Portuguese Empires. He studied at Coimbra.
Sent from Goa to Ethiopia as a missionary, Páez was held captive in Yemen for three years, where he used his time to learn Arabic. He finally arrived at Massawa in 1603, and made his way to Fremona, which was the Jesuit base in that land. Unlike his predecessor, Andre da Oviedo, Paul B. Henze describes him as "gentle, learned, considerate of the feelings of others". When summoned to the court of the young negus negust Za Dengel, his knowledge of Amharic and Geez, as well as his knowledge of Ethiopian customs impressed the sovereign so much that Za Dengel decided to convert to Catholicism -- although Paez warned him not to announce his declaration too quickly. However, when Za Dengel proclaimed changes in the observance of the Sabbath, Paez retired to Fremona, and waited out the ensuing civil war that ended with the emperor's death.
This caution benefitted Páez when Sissinios assumed the throne in 1607. Sissinios invited him to his court, where the two became friends. Sissinios made a grant of land to Paez on the penninsula of Gorgora on the north side of Lake Tana, where Paez built a new center for the Jesuits, starting with a stone church. Eventually he also converted Sissinios to Catholicism shortly before his death in 1622.
Some of the Catholic churches he designed are still standing and were an influence on Ethiopian architecture.
He was the first European to visit Lake Tana, one of the sources of the Blue Nile, and to taste coffee.
Páez wrote an account of Ethiopia, Historia da Ethiopia in 1620, which has been printed in Beccari's Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores occidentales Inedtii (Rome, 1905-17). Páez's work is one of the few works in Portuguese about Ethiopia that has not been translated into English.