PAEZ, Pedro. - Jesuit, missionary, b. at Olimedia (diocese of Toledo), d. at Gorgorà (Ethiopia) on 20 May 1622.
Having entered the Order in 1582 and destined to resume the mission to Ethiopia, he went to Goa in 1588; in 1589 he began to journey westward, disguised as an Armenian, but was captured and taken as a slave to Janaa (Yemen), where he remained until 1595, when he was transferred to Moca. After being ransomed, he had to return to Goa. Resuming his attempt to reach Abyssinia in 1603, he finally landed at Massaua.
His untiring work of 19 years earned him the title of “second apostle of Ethiopia.” He succeeded in winning over to the cause of union with Rome the negus Attaf Sagad (Za-Denghel); but when the latter was murdered in 1604 by a mob incited by the monks precisely because he favoured union, Paez gained the support of his successor Malak Sagad II; and when this ruler too was murdered for the same reason, the Father continued his labours so effectively with the next successor, Malak Sagad III or Seltan Sagad, that he induced him to abjure the errors of Eutyches, to be received into the Catholic Church, and to negotiate union with the Pope (1622). Under Seltan Sagad, Ethiopia became largely Catholic. The Father, who built the royal castle at Gondar, was given a tract of land at Gorgorà on which to found a missionary residence. Others were also founded elsewhere, with churches and chapels. Paez is also the first European to have discovered the sources of the Blue Nile (contrary to the assertion of J. Bruce, who in his book Travels to discover the Source of the Nile [III, Edinburgh-London 1790, pp. 615 ff.] attributes the discovery to himself; his account De origine Nili (1618) is part of his Historia Aethiopiae [Beccari, op. cit. in bibl., II, pp. 255-63] and was published in A. Kircher, Mundus subterraneus [Rome 1665, pp. 72 ff.] and Oedypus Aegyptiacus [I, 1615, pp. 57-59; cf. Beccari, op. cit. in bibl., I (1903), pp. 269-75]). He also wrote: Historia Aethiopiae, edited by C. Beccari, ibid. (II-III, Rome 1905-1906); a work of great ethnographic, historical, and religious value.