Emperor Susenyos I
1572 — 1632 · Solomonic Emperor of Ethiopia from 1607 to 1632; the only Ethiopian emperor to convert formally to Roman Catholicism; abdicator and restorer of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
Susenyos was born in 1572 at the Gojjam province of the Ethiopian Empire, the son of Abeto Fasilides of the Gojjam line of the Solomonic dynasty and Woizero Hamelmal Werq. He was captured at seven by the invading Oromo in the eastern Gojjam raids of 1579 and held for ten years before his return to the imperial court.
He received the classical Ge'ez and Amharic literary education of the Solomonic princes under the imperial monastic clergy at the camp of Emperor Sarsa Dengel — and was instructed in the military arts in the long campaigns against the Oromo of the period.
He was acclaimed Negusa Nagast on the eighteenth of March 1607 at the camp of Aibo on the death of his cousin Emperor Yaqob — and was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia on the eighteenth of March 1608 at the Cathedral of Aksum by Abuna Petros II of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
He converted formally to Roman Catholicism in 1622 under the influence of the Jesuit missionary Pedro Páez, who had arrived at the imperial court in 1603 — and declared Catholicism the religion of state on the eleventh of February 1626. The conversion of the imperial state precipitated a civil war between the Catholic faction at court and the Orthodox monastic clergy and noble houses.
He fought the principal Orthodox restoration campaigns of 1628, 1629, 1630, and 1631 — and won the principal Battle of Lake Tana of the seventeenth of June 1632 against the Orthodox forces of his son Fasilides. The principal civil losses of the Lake Tana battle were estimated at eight thousand of the imperial Catholic forces.
He abdicated the imperial throne and reinstated the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church as the religion of state on the fourteenth of June 1632 — and transferred the imperial authority to his son Fasilides (placed in this archive).
He withdrew to the imperial residence at Dankaz.
He died at Dankaz on the seventeenth of September 1632 of complications of a long illness, at sixty.
He is honored here as the abdicator and restorer of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Curated with honor.
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Placed in the archive by the Honored Ancestors editorial team.