ALMEIDA, MANUEL de. - Jesuit missionary, born at Viseu (Portugal) in 1581 and entered religion in 1594, he left for the missions of the East in 1601. He was rector of the novitiate of Goa and of the college of Bazsim before going to Ethiopia in 1624 as visitor and superior of the Jesuit mission. He remained there until 1634 amid great hardships and tribulations. Expelled from the country by Emperor Fasiladas, he returned to India, where he was rector of the College of S. Paolo in Goa (1633-36) and provincial of the province of Goa; he died in the same city on 10 May 1646.
By order of his Superiors, he wrote a History of Ethiopia, begun in that very land before 1628; through various revisions, it provided the substance of the Historia de Etiopia a Alta, published by Fr. Balt. Telles in 1660. Fr. A.’s original was published by Fr. C. Beccari in Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores occidentales, vols. V-VII, Rome 1907-1909. The work consists of ten books and goes back to the most ancient times; from Book VIII onward the author relates events of which he was a witness. At the beginning of the first book there is a map of Ethiopia, with the exact indication of the sources of the Blue Nile, discovered by A. together with Fr. Pietro Paes.