How we were exiled to Fremona

After the Emperor's death, the heretics immediately entered into discussion among themselves as to what should be done with us, holding various councils and making various decisions. On some occasions, which were the majority, they condemned us all to death in order to satisfy once and for all their wrath and fury against the ministers of the Gospel, whom they considered, as indeed they were, sworn enemies of the Alexandrian stubbornness and perfidy they were then professing, intending to accomplish two things on this occasion: to satisfy their hatred and to bring down completely the edifice of the faith by destroying those who upheld it, depriving the Catholics of the support, advice and strength which they had in our Fathers, as in teachers from whom they had learned the Catholic faith. On other occasions they resolved to exile us either to an island they have in the Sea of Dambia, which we certainly could not leave without an order from them,. or to some one of those low-lying lands that exist in Ethiopia, where those exiled quickly die. And in their decision to exile us they had no good intention of sparing our lives but rather were dissuaded from killing us outright by their fear that, if they did so, the Portuguese would come to them from India to call them to account for the evil they had done, an eventuality which struck terror into their hearts. And for this reason, the opinion and vote of the more temperate among them was that if they were to send us back to India, they feared that we would return with Portuguese forces to restore the faith to power and put the Catholic Church in possession of all it had gained in that empire and which it had lost unjustly. Following this line of reasoning, they thought that as long as they kept us alive and in exile we would serve them as hostages so that, if the Portuguese were to come, as they feared, we would be obliged to negotiate peace and agreements with both sides concerning their past offences against us and the present intended vengeance of the Portuguese. While they vacillated without coming to any final decision on what course of action to take, they exiled us from one place to another, with a thousand vexations, sufferings and afflictions and with a slow death, so that we could

right.fully affirm that we were living a fatiguing and very afflicted life, keepmg ourselves alive by eating the bread of suffering and drinking the water of tribulation; for, in addition to suffering in our persons, houses and poor belongings, being robbed and despoiled of them, we were witnessing the destruction of the faith and the damnation of so many souls, the affiiction and abandonment of so many Catholics suffering for justice and truth; and doubtless all of us or most of us would not have escaped with our lives, considering the fury of the heretics, the power they had gained over everything, and the hatred and excesses they unleashed against the Church, if God Our Lord had not come to our aid at the opportune moment. 1

What happened was that, the king of Monba~a having rebelled at that time against the fortress we have there, killing the Captain and perpetrating so many excesses and cruel acts, as everyone knows, the Viceroy of India took care to send a large fleet and forces against him so that his rebellion would not be left unpunished.2 As the ships were setting sail for this purpose, they wrote to us from Goa informing us of the preparation and purpose of the fleet, with the number of sails which they said were eighteen, and adding that on their return from

Monba~a they were to sail up that coast as far as the gates of the strait where Zeila is located, the port of Adel, and were to destroy it in punishment for the death inflicted by its king on two Fathers, my companions, who had gone there in the year 1624, an action which the Viceroy considered very necessary. And since this port is not at a great distance overland from the kingdoms of Ethiopia, those who were inexperienced believed that they could reach those kingdoms by that route. And since I had been informed of this, the Viceroy3 asked me how many ships there were. I told him there were eighteen, having informed him a few days earlier that an India carrack sometimes carried a thousand soldiers. Being inlanders, they were unacquainted with the differences between one kind of ship and another and were under the

impression that those eighteen ships were all India carracks. Figuring the military forces aboard the ships at one thousand soldiers per ship and recalling what four hundred Portuguese had been able to do against more powerful enemies, which I have related in my account of Dom Christovao da Gama, they were appalled at the prospect of what eighteen thousand would be able to do now especially since the Abyssinian Emperor's forces were now reduced. Since they considered it a certainty that they were already coming by land, there being some who affirmed that they were already inside the empire and who reported the day's journeys and having heard shots from the artillery they were bringing with them, and because of their horror and fear of all this, this wild fantasy was enough to dampen their vehemence when their anger and hatred against us was at its highest pitch, not daring to condemn us to death according to the decision they had reached. They came to another barbarous decision, however, and that was that they made a secret agreement with the Turks that they, the Turks, would kill us, their own responsibility being limited to delivering us into their hands. And for greater assurance that their intention would be carried out, they emphasized two points to the Turks, which could serve as a strong invitation and stimulus for them to do as the Abyssinians wished: The first point was that, as they were exiling us and banishing us from their kingdoms for being hostile to their ancient religion, we were taking much gold with us. Their idea in telling them this was that the Turks would want to satisfy their greed for this gold and not finding any, as certainly would be the case, they would suspect us of hiding it and would certainly kill us. And indeed the device was almost certain to bring about the desired effect because of the insatiable greed of the Turks, who stop at nothing and commit every imaginable cruelty for their own illicit gain. The second point was even more persuasive in the minds of the Turks, who were distrustful and fearful in proportion to the greatness of their tyranny and the unjustness of their possession of those islands and the whole Red Sea and therefore were always fearful of some greater power coming and casting them out of those places they wrongfully possess; and because of this fear on the part of the Turks, the Abyssinians gave them to understand that if we were to escape alive from their hands and reach India alive, we would return with Portuguese forces to conquer the Abyssinian empire and expel them, the Turks, from that island of Ma~ua and from the port we would use to gain access to Ethiopia. It was easy for the Turks to believe all this and to promise

toputustodeath,makingarrangementstodosoandwaitingonly forthemtohandusovertothem.