Yohannes I of Ethiopia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yohannes I (Ge'ez ዮሐንስ yōḥānnis, Amh. yōhānnis, also sometimes called John I), throne name A'ilaf Sagad (Ge'ez አእላፍ ሰገድ a'ilāf sagad, "to whom tens of thousands bow") was nəgusä nägäst (1667 - 1682)^[1] of Ethiopia, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty. He was the fourth son of Fasilides.

Yohannes was appointed nəgusä nägäst by a council of the senior dignitaries of the Empire, at the encouragement of the noble Blattengeta Malka Krestos. The council then imprisoned the other sons of Fasilides on Mount Wehni, continuing the practice Fasilides had revived.

Due to the violent religious controversy that Catholic missionaries had caused in Ethiopia under the reign of his grandfather Susenyos, he acted harshly towards Europeans. In 1669, he directed Gerazmach Mikael to expel all of the Catholics still living in Ethiopia; those who did not embrace the beliefs of the Ethiopian Church were exiled to Sennar. Six Franciscans sent by Pope Alexander VII to succeed in converting Ethiopia to Catholicism, where the Jesuits had failed 30 years before, were executed during his reign.

As a result, he favored Armenian visitors, whose beliefs also embraced Monophysitism, and were in harmony with the Ethiopian Church. These included one Murad, who undertook a number of diplomatic missions for the Emperor; and in 1679, the Emperor Yohannes received the Armenian bishop Yohannes, bearing a relic of Ewostatewos.

The growing friction between the competing doctrines of the Sost Lidet (three births) and the Wold Qib had grown severe enough that in the last year of his reign Yohannes called a synod to resolve the dispute. At the synod, the Emperor was convinced to embrace the Sost Lidet doctrine, which was supported by the monks of Debre Libanos, but opposed by both the followers of Ewostatewos and Yohannes own son Iyasus, who after the synod attempted to flee his father's kingdom. The conclusions of this synod were revisited once Iyasus became Emperor, at a synod he called in 1686.^[2]

[edit] References

^ James Bruce wrote that Yohannes ruled between 1665 - 1680, but this was proven to be in error by identifying an eclipse seen in Ethiopia during his reign with one calcuated to have occurred on 4 November 1668 (E.A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 [Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970], p. 408).
^ Budge, pp.406f, 410f.