Everything about Jer Nimo Lobo totally explained
Jerónimo Lobo (
1593 -
29 January,
1678) was a
Portuguese Jesuit missionary.
He was born in
Lisbon the third of at least five sons and six daughters to
Francisco Lobo da Gama, the
Governor of
Cape Verde, and Dona Maria Brandão de Vasconcelos. He entered the Order of Jesus at the age of 14. In
1621 he was ordered as a missionary to
India, and after surviving an attack on the fleet carrying him by
British and
Dutch ships off
Mozambique, he arrived at
Goa in December
1622.
With the intention of proceeding to
Ethiopia, whose
Nəgusä nägäst Susenyos had been converted to
Roman Catholicism by
Pedro Páez, he left India in
1624. He struggled to overcome the difficulty that Ethiopia controlled none of the northern coastline, first disembarking at
Pate and attempted to reach his destination along the
Jubba River through country controlled by the
Oromo, but was forced to return. Then in
1625 he set out again, accompanied by
Afonso Mendes, the Catholic
Patriarch of Ethiopia, and eight missionaries, landing at
Beilul, a port on the coast of the
Red Sea controlled by the king of the
Afars. vassal to the Emperor of Ethiopia. After a month spent crossing the desert into the
Ethiopian highlands, the party reached
Fremona, where Lobo assumed the responsibilities of superintendent of the missions in
Tigray.
His other activities included recovering the remains of
Cristóvão da Gama, who had been captured and executed by
Ahmed Gragn in
1542, and serving as a missionary to the southwest of
Lake Tana, where he visited the source of the
Blue Nile.
The abdication of Emperor Susenyos (
1632) deprived the Catholics of their protector; his successor,
Fasilides, first confined them once again at Fremona, then in
1634 Lobo and his companions were exiled from Ethiopia, who were exposed to robbery, assaults and other indignities by the local population before reaching the
Ottoman Naib at
Massawa. He sent them to his superior at
Suakin, where the
Pasha forced the party to pay a ransom before they could proceed to India. Despite settling for a ransom of 4300
patacas (which he borrowed from local Hindu merchants), at the last moment the Pasha insisted on keeping Patriarch Mendes and three other senior priests for further money.
Once Lobo reached
Diu, he left for Goa by canoe, arriving at the
provincial capital 8 December,
1634. There he attempted to convince
viceroy Miguel de Noronha, conde de Linhares to send an armament to the Red Sea to capture Suakin and Massawa, free the patriarch by force, and restore
Catholicism to Ethiopia. Although the Viceroy was willing to make a punitive expedition against Suakin to free the Patriarch, he didn't want to overextend Portuguese forces and garrison either port. Unwilling to settle for just freeing the patriarch, Lobo embarked for Portugal, and after he'd been shipwrecked on the coast of
Natal, then captured by pirates, he arrived at Lisbon. Neither at this city, however, nor at
Madrid and
Rome, was any approval given to Lobo's plan.
He accordingly returned to India in
1640, and was elected rector, and afterwards provincial, of the Jesuits at Goa. After some years he returned to his native city, where he died.
Writings
A number of Lobo's writings have survived. He entered into a correspondence with
Henry Oldenburg of the
Royal Society concerning the source of the Nile, which likely led to the publication in London of a little book entitled
A Short Relation of the River Nile, of its source and current; of its overflowing the campagnia of Ægypt, till it runs into the Mediterranean and of other curiosities: written by an eye-witnesse, who lived many years in the chief kingdoms of the Abyssine Empire. Translated by Sir Peter Wyche.
Gabriel Pereira reported in 1903 that he'd found three short works in manuscript by Lobo in the library of the
Duke of Palmela, and in 1966 Fr. Manuel Gonçalves da Costa discovered in the
Ajuda library at Lisbon another short work of Lobo,
Breve Notícia e Relação de Algumas Cousas Certas não vulgares, e dignas de se saberem, escritas e [sic]
instância de Curiosos, which repeated the topics of
A Short Relation.
His best known work is his memoirs of the years 1622-1640, which cover his voyage to India, his experiences in Ethiopia, and his journey back to Portugal; his
Itinerário, however, wasn't published during his lifetime.
Baltazar Téllez made large use of Lobo's writing in his
História geral da Ethiópia a Alta (Coimbra, 1660), often erroneously attributed to Lobo, but incorporated much from
Manuel de Almeida's manuscript work. Lobo's own narrative was translated from a copy owned by the
Count of Ericeira by the Abbé
Joachim le Grand into French in 1728, under the title of
Voyage historique d'Abissinie. An English abridgment of Le Grand's edition by Dr.
Samuel Johnson was published in 1735 (reprinted 1789).
Fr. da Costa discovered another manuscript of Lobo's work in the
Biblioteca Pública at
Braga in 1947. This wasn't the same manuscript that le Grand translated; both were copies, with variations, of the original autograph left at the
Casa de São Roque at the time of Lobo's death. The whole of this manuscript was translated by Donald M. Lockhart, and published with an introduction and notes by C.F. Beckingham by the
Hakluyt Society in 1984.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jer Nimo Lobo'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://jer__nimo_lobo.totallyexplained.com">Jerónimo Lobo Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
