ABSTRACT
Martinho's involvement in Ethiopian-European relations came quickly to an end, as he was instructed to dedicate himself to the matter of establishing a Portuguese Inquisition. Alvares was traveling in the company of the Portuguese ambassador Dom Martinho, dispatched to Rome not to seek approval for an expensive and unlikely crusading adventure with Ethiopia but to find a way to replenish the crown's coffers. David Reubeni, a self-described prince of a lost Jewish kingdom in the Arabian peninsula, visited Rome and later Lisbon to seek support for a new crusade while boasting of his acquaintance with Prester John. Already with Alvares's return, the almighty Prester John, born of European imagination as an ideal Christian sovereign, had been transfigured into an African sovereign whose power and faith both were now questioned. By the late 1530s, it was clear to Europeans knowledgeable on the state of affairs in Ethiopia that Lebna Dengel was under duress, his kingdom overrun by a local sultanate.
