Pedro Páez
The Reverend Pedro Páez Jaramillo | |
|---|---|
Undated portrait of Páez | |
| Born | 1564 |
| Died | 20 May 1622 (aged 57) |
| Other names | Pêro Pais (Portuguese) |
| Citizenship | Spanish |
| Education | University of Alcalá |
| Occupation | Jesuit missionary & historian |
| Known for | Exploring the Blue Nile and spreading Roman Catholicism in Ethiopia |
| Church | Catholic Church |
| Ordained | c. 1588 |
Pedro Páez Jaramillo, S.J. (Portuguese: Pero Pais; 1564 – 20 May 1622) was a Spanish Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia. Páez is considered by many experts on Ethiopia to be the most effective Catholic missionary in Ethiopia. He is believed to be the first European to see and describe the source of the Blue Nile, which he reached on 21 April 1618.
Páez' two-volume História da Etiópia (History of Ethiopia) is regarded by scholars of Ethiopian history as one of the most valuable and accurate works on the contemporary Solomonic Empire and its history (as understood by local sources) up to his own time, particularly as the works of local writers, despite the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's long tradition of literate monastic scholarship and the regular compilation of imperial chronicles, have in large part been lost in the centuries of intermittent conflict that followed or otherwise remained unknown to contemporary scholarship.