Fernandez, Antonio

FERNANDEZ, ANTONIO. - Jesuit, missionary, b. in Lisbon in 1569, d. in Goa on 12 Nov. 1642. In 1601 he set out for India; from there, in 1604, he went to the mission in Ethiopia, and remained there for thirty years amid labors and dangers, but also consolations. He succeeded in fact in converting to the faith the viceroy of Goggiam, Sella Christòs, and in seeing the conversion of the emperor himself, Seltan Seghed I (Susennyos), who in 1622 published the edict of full freedom for Catholicism and sent to ask Rome for a patriarch.

Already since 1613 F. had been sent by the Emperor, as his legate, with the ambassador Fecur Egzi, to the Pope and to King Philip III; but he had been taken prisoner and, after much suffering, having been freed, had had to retrace his steps. He was also superior of the whole mission and vicar general of the patriarch Alfonso Mendez. Under the successor of Susennyos, Seltan Seghed II (Fasiladas), when persecution broke out, he had to take the road of exile with the patriarch and withdrew to Goa.

He translated into the Ethiopian language the liturgical books of the Roman Church, and composed other books in refutation of the errors of the schismatic clergy and on the Madonna. His only work printed with Ethiopian characters, sent expressly by Urban VIII to the patriarch Mendez, is Magnef Assetat, Flagellum mandaziorum, sive Tractatus de erroribus Aethiopiae sermone chaldoso (Goa 1642).

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