Manuel de Almeida

This article is about the Jesuit and missionary. For other people with this name, see Manuel de Almeida (disambiguation).

Manuel de Almeida (1580–1646) was a native of Viseu, who entered at an early age into the Society of Jesus, and went out as a missionary to India. He is noted to have travelled to Ethiopia and Eritrea and Lake Tana and built a number of churches and monasteries particularly on the small islands of the lake.

In 1622, Almeida was selected by the general of his order as ambassador to the Emperor of Ethiopia, Susenyos. By that ruler he was well received, but the next Emperor, Fasilides, first exiled him and his fellow Jesuits to Fremona then expelled them in 1632. On his return to Goa, after thirteen years' absence, he was made provincial of his order, and inquisitor. There he died.

Almeida wrote a history of Ethiopia, Historia de Etiopía a Alta ou Abassia, which drew on his own experiences as well as the writings of previous missionaries like Pedro Páez. The Historia was never published during Almeida's lifetime; but an abridgment and partial revision of Almeida's work by Baltazar Téllez was printed at Coimbra in 1660; an anonymous translation of Tellez's work into English appeared in 1710. Selections from this work were translated into English by C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford and published in Some Records of Ethiopia, 1593-1646 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1954).

References

• Rose, Hugh James (1857). A New General Biographical Dictionary, London: B. Fellowes et al.

Further reading

• E. Denison Ross, "Almeida's 'History of Ethiopia': Recovery of the Preliminary Matter", Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, 2 (1923), pp. 783-804

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Name	Almeida, Manuel
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Date of birth	1580
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Date of death	1646
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