This two-volume publication provides the first English translation of História da Etiópia by the Spanish Jesuit missionary Pedro Páez (Pêro Pais in Portuguese, 1564–1622), that is considered the most important source for the history of early seventeenth-century Ethiopia and Jesuit missionary history in the country. The work was composed from 1613/1615 until 1622, during the so-called “second Jesuit mission” culminating with the conversion of the Ethiopian king Susenyos (r. 1607–32) to Catholicism. The work is based upon the first critical edition of the original Portuguese text published in 2008 by the same editors (História da Etiópia, Pedro Páez, Obras clássicas da literatura portuguesa, Século XVII Sete estrelo 22, Lisbon).

The História was first published by Camillo Beccari in his Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores Occidentales Inediti a saeculo XVI ad XIX, vols II–III (Rome, 1905–06) from MS Goa 42 in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, eventually also by Lope Teixeira, Alberto Feio, and Elaine Sanceau (Pêro Pais, História da Etiópia, 3 vols, Porto, 1945–46) from MS 778 in the Biblioteca Pública de Braga (a seventeenth-century copy with emendations and minor changes). Yet, even unpublished the História was highly influential, since it served as a source for Manuel de Almeida's Historia de Ethiopia a alta ou Abassia (published by Beccari, 1907–08), utilized in turn by Baltasar Teles for his Historia Geral de Ethiopia a Alta (Coimbra, 1660). Moreover, Páez's manuscript was read by among others Athanasius Kircher in Rome, who first credited Páez in 1665 with the discovery of the source of the Blue Nile, a Páez discovery along with the mention of coffee and Maḥram Bilqīs temple in Yemen.

Besides providing a critical text giving account of variants, corrections, etc., this book seeks to direct the reader, with a substantial “Introduction” (I, 1–55), towards a precise appreciation of Páez's work as a product of the disputes of the time, and not simply as a collection of data. The occasion for Páez to write the História were the controversies between Dominicans and Jesuits on missionary activity in Ethiopia and the nature of Ethiopian Christianity, Páez's polemical targets being Luis de Urreta's História eclesiástica… de lo grandes y remotos Reynos de la Ethiopia (Valencia, 1610–11), and Historia de la Sagrada Orden de Predicadores en los remotos Reynos de la Etiopia (Valencia, 1611). Páez's confutation appears to be the outcome of a co-ordinated Jesuit counter-attack. Paradoxically, it was precisely the nature of Páez's work as a rebuttal of Urreta's that prevented its publication for some years, confining it to the role of source-material reserve. Language and style or even nationalist factors – the Spaniard Páez wrote in a Portuguese full of Hispanisms, and attempts at separating the crown of Portugal from Spain resumed from 1640 – did not help either.

The editors deconstruct the “myth” of Páez as an architect (I, 38–9), a controversial point (cp. II, 376; for a different view, Andreu Martínez d'Alos-Moner, “Páez, Pedro”, in Siegbert Uhlig in co-operation with Alessandro Bausi (eds), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Volume 4: O–X, Wiesbaden, 2010, 89a–90b), to be probably solved only through archaeological excavations, as recently carried out by Victor M. Fernández (see Fernández et al., “Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in the Lake Ṭana Region: Review of the Work in Progress”, Aethiopica 15, 2012, 72–91).

A glossary (II, 357–90), an extensive bibliography (II, 391–408: some names and titles are misspelt or inconsistently arranged), and a detailed index (II, 409–29) complete the work. The glossary is intended to explain titles, characters, historical places, institutions, literary works, etc., and definitions and explanations are constantly referred to primary sources. The accomplishment of this task – shared by the editors with present-day scholars of the French school – deserves respect, although consistency in transcriptions is not always observed (cf. correctly “Se‘ela Krestos”, in the glossary, II, 365, alternating with “Se‘elā Krestos”, I, 8 ff.). Odd forms such as “Meṡṡewā‘” appear, with an unusual “ṡ” diacritic (cf. II, 7 and passim), and unexpected geminations abound (cf. II, 15, “Enṭṭoṭo”). Even main entries show shortcomings: under Kebra Nagaśt (II, 380) Carl Bezold's 1905 book is dated to 1909, then to 1901 in the bibliography (II, 392), yet even worse is the erroneous dating to the fifteenth century of the fourteenth-century nebura ’ed of Aksum Yesḥaq, who is credited with the redaction of the work. “Oadeçalâ/Walda Sa'ālā” (II, 384) is dated to “late 15th century–1661”, actually a bit too long a period.

Some doubts arise concerning the editors' linguistic competence in Ge‘ez and Amharic, a preliminary requirement for any serious investigation of the history of Ethiopia, as it would be expected of a scholar in Italian history to master Italian, and Latin as well. In the introduction we read (I, 48): “he [Páez] translated ambaçâ bêit, zefân bêit and farâz bêit correctly, but his transcription of the latter two items is syntactically incorrect, since the determinative should be indicated by an affix represented by the first order character of the Ethiopic syllabary (fidal) or the letter ‘a’ in Latin transcription: zefana bét and farāza bét”. Yet Páez's translation is correct (“house of the lion”, “house of the bed”, and “house of the horse” respectively), as is his transcription. The expressions are in Amharic, where no –a-status construct is needed, whereas the purportedly correct forms “zefana bét” and “farāza bét” would have a completely different meaning (“bed of the house”, “horse of the house”). Also problematic are the remarks on theological vocabulary (II, 386–7): Ge‘ez bāḥrey, “pearl”, also “essence, nature”, is curiously translated with “breath”; morevoer śegā “flesh, body” (and so bāḥreya śegā, not bāḥreya ṣegā, means “nature of the body, bodily nature” rather than “human nature”), ṣaggā “grace”, tawāḥedo “union”, are mis-spellt, thus engendering in the reader a sense of embarrassed distrust.

The editors have put at the disposal of scholars Páez's work in a universally accessible language, and some critical remarks are not intended to diminish the quality of their contribution. This translation is destined to remain for decades the standard reference edition of Páez's História.