ABSTRACT
The council's importance to contemporary Europeans and the significant dossier regarding Ethiopia that it produced make it arguably the most important event in Ethiopian–European relations before the sixteenth century. Ethiopianists have carefully reconstructed the series of events leading up to and including the delegation's visit, reflected on its role in the pope's political and religious strategies, and translated and analyzed many of the relevant documents resulting from it. One way to approach Biondo Flavio's account is as a witness to the much more accurate knowledge of Ethiopia Europeans gained from this encounter, as Salvatore Tedeschi has done for the description penned by Poggio Bracciolini. Biondo's text certainly reflects an increasingly accurate apprehension of Ethiopian realities capable of supplanting largely legendary medieval descriptions of the country. It also bears the stamp of Biondo's own opinions and perspective. In a fuller sense, however, it is an artifact shaped by all the factors conditioning the Ethiopians' report and its reception.
