BERMUDES, JOÃO. – Portuguese, pseudo-patriarch of Ethiopia. A strange figure of a sixteenth-century adventurer who, upon returning from Ethiopia, passed himself off as patriarch after having been a barber-surgeon, and deceived many. Contemporary documents, partly published only recently, have demonstrated the falsity of B.’s claims; he died in Portugal in 1570.
BIBL.: S. Euringer, Der Pseudopatriarch J. B. (1539-55), in Theologie u. Glaube, 17 (1925), pp. 226-56.
Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina