scarcely presumed to navigate the rivers of Africa; the ruins of Axume were deserted, the nation was scattered in villages, and the emperor (a pompous name) was content, both in peace and war, with the moveable residence of a camp. Conscious of their own indigence, the Abyssinians had formed the rational project of importing the arts and ingenuity of Europe,* and their ambassadors at Rome and Lisbon were instructed to solicit a colony of smiths, carpenters, tilers, masons, printers, surgeons, and physicians, for the use of their country. But the public danger soon called for the instant and effectual aid of arms and soldiers to defend an unwarlike people from the barbarians who ravaged the inland country, and the Turks and Arabs who advanced from the sea-coast in more formidable array. Ethiopia was saved by four hundred and fifty Portuguese, who displayed in the field the native valour of Europeans, and the artificial powers of the musket and cannon. In a moment of terror, the emperor had promised to reconcile himself and his subjects to the Catholic faith; a Latin patriarch represented the supremacy of the pope ;† the empire, enlarged in a tenfold proportion, was supposed to contain more gold than the mines of America; and the wildest hopes of avarice and zeal were built on the willing submission of the Christians of Africa.

But the vows which pain had extorted, were forsworn on the return of health. The Abyssinians still adhered with unshaken constancy to the Monophysite faith; their languid

*

Ludolph. Hist. Æthiop. 1. 4, c. 5. The most necessary arts are now exercised by the Jews, and the foreign trade is in the hands of the Armenians. What Gregory principally admired and envied was the industry of Europe-artes et opificia.

John Bermudez, whose relation, printed at Lisbon, 1569, was translated into English by Purchas (Pilgrims, 1. 7. c. 7, p. 1149, &c.), and from thence into French by La Croze (Christianisme d'Ethiopie, p. 92-265). The piece is curious; but the author may be suspected of deceiving Abyssinia, Rome, and Portugal. His title to the rank of patriarch is dark and doubtful. (Ludolph. Comment. No. 101, p. 473.) [Bermudez was a medical attendant on Roderigo de Lima, and one of those who were detained in Abyssinia. He accepted the vacant office of abuna, on condition of being allowed to visit Rome, and receive ordination from the pope. This was granted; and Paul III. appointed him patriarch of Abyssinia, Alexandria, and of the sea. When he returned, he attempted to rule the youthful prince, Claudius, whose moderation contrasted strikingly with "the fiery, brutal zeal of the

*

*

belief was inflamed by the exercise of dispute; they branded the Latins with the names of Arians and Nestorians, and imputed the adoration of four gods to those who separated the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a place of worship, or rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit missionaries. Their skill in the liberal and mechanic arts, their theological learning, and the decency of their manners, inspired a barren esteem; but they were not endowed with the gift_of miracles, and they vainly solicited a reinforcement of European troops. The patience and dexterity of forty years at length obtained a more favourable audience, and two emperors of Abyssinia were persuaded that Rome could ensure the temporal and everlasting happiness of her votaries. The first of these royal converts lost his crown and his life; and the rebel army was sanctified by the abuna, who hurled ignorant, bigoted, and ill-mannered priest." (Bruce's Travels, ii. 195.) -ED.] Religio Romana . . . . nec precibus patrum nec miraculis ab ipsis editis suffulciebatur, is the uncontradicted assurance of the devout emperor Susneus to his patriarch Mendez (Ludolph. Comment. No. 126, p. 529); and such assurances should be preciously kept, as an antidote against any marvellous legends. [Gibbon followed his best authorities on this subject; but they misrepresented all the proceedings. In the second volume of Bruce's Travels (p. 173-400), these have since been detailed at great length from the records of the country where they occurred. To that narrative the reader must refer. When Claudius was hard pressed by the Mahometans, Bermudez obtained from Goa an auxiliary force of four hundred Portuguese, under Christopher de Gama. But so far from saving Abyssinia, they were defeated with great loss, and their leader slain. At the first discharge of the Moorish artillery, the native troops fled in terror, and left the Europeans to their fate. The survivors of these settled in the country, married, and formed a kind of permanent military mission for propagating their creed. In another unsuccessful battle, Claudius was killed, and his kingdom almost subdued. Za Denghel reigned from 1595 to 1604. On his conversion to the Roman Catholic church, his subjects rebelled, and though assisted by the Portuguese band, he was defeated and fell in the battle. Socinios, the rightful heir, taking the name of Malec Segued, reigned from 1605 to 1632. Segued was a surname, meaning the feared or reverenced, often adopted by the kings of Abyssinia. Wishing to conciliate the Portuguese and promote tranquillity, he joined the Roman Catholic church. This involved him in protracted troubles; and the history of a reign of twenty-seven years is briefly summed up in a characteristic proclamation, which he issued, resigning the crown to his scn. "Thus," adds the traveller, "in one day fell the whole fabric of the Romish faith and hierarchy of the Church of Rome in Abyssinia-thrown down by an exertion of the civil power, in its own

an anathema at the apostate, and absolved his subjects from their oath of fidelity. The fate of Zadenghel was revenged by the courage and fortune of Susneus, who ascended the throne under the name of Segued, and more vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his kinsman. After the amusement of some unequal combats between the Jesuits and his illiterate priests, the emperor declared himself a proselyte to the synod of Chalcedon, presuming that his clergy and people would embrace without delay the religion of their prince. The liberty of choice was succeeded by a law which imposed, under pain of death, the belief of the two natures of Christ: the Abyssinians were enjoined to work and to play on the sabbath; and Segued, in the face of Europe and Africa, renounced his connection with the Alexandrian church. A Jesuit, Alphonso Mendez, the Catholic patriarch of Æthiopia, accepted, in the name of Urban VIII., the homage and abjuration of his penitent. "I confess," said the emperor on his knees, "I confess that the pope is the vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and the sovereign of the world. To him I swear true obedience, and at his feet I offer my person and kingdom." A similar oath was repeated by his son, his brother, the clergy, the nobles, and even the ladies of the court: the Latin patriarch was invested with honours and wealth; and his missionaries erected their churches or citadels in the most convenient stations of the empire. The Jesuits themselves deplore the fatal indiscretion of their chief, who forgot the mildness of the gospel and the policy of his order, to introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and the Inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of circumcision, which health rather than superstition had first invented in the climate of Ethiopia.* A new baptism, a

defence, against the encroachments of priesthood and ecclesiastica tyranny."-ED.] *I am aware how tender is the question of circumcision. Yet I will affirm, 1. That the Ethiopians have a physical reason for the circumcision of males, and even of females. (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains, tom. ii.) 2. That it was practised in Ethiopia long before the introduction of Judaism, or Christianity. (Herodot. 1. 2, c. 104; Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 72, 73.) "Infantes circumcidunt ob consuetudinem non ob Judaismum," says Gregory the Abyssinian priest (apud Fabric. Lux Christiana p. 720). Yet, in the heat of dispute, the Portuguese were sometimes branded with the name of uncircumcised. (La Croze, p. 80 Ludolph

new ordination, was inflicted on the natives; and they trembled with horror when the most holy of the dead were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious of the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defence of their religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished in the blood of the insurgents; two abunas were slain in battle, whole legions were slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns; and neither merit, nor rank, nor sex, could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome. But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the constancy of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of reason, perhaps of fear; and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly revealed the tyranny_and weakness of the Jesuits. On the death of his father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch, and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the discipline of Egypt. The Monophysite churches resounded with a song of triumph, "that the sheep of Æthiopia were now delivered from the hyænas of the West; " and the gates of that solitary realm were for ever shut against the arts, the science, and the fanaticism of Europe.*

Hist. and Comment. 1. 3, c. 1.)

*The three Protestant

historians, Ludolphus (Hist. Æthiopica, Francofurt. 1681; Commentarius, 1691; Relatio Nova, &c. 1693, in folio); Geddes (Church History of Ethiopia, London, 1696, in octavo), and La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Armenie, La Haye, 1739, in duodecimo), have drawn their principal materials from the Jesuits, especially from the General History of Tellez, published in Portuguese at Conimbra, 1660. We might be surprised at their frankness; but their most flagitious vice, the spirit of persecution, was, in their eyes, the most meritorious virtue. Ludolphus possessed some, though a slight, advantage from the Ethiopic language, and the personal conversation of Gregory, a free-spirited Abyssinian priest, whom he invited from Rome to the court of Saxe-Gotha. See the Theologia Ethiopica of Gregory, in Fabricius, Lux Evangelii, p. 716-734. [Facilidas, on succeeding to the throne, vacated by his father, took the surname of Sultan Segued. He banished the patriarch and missionaries to Fremona; but finding that they were engaged there in hatching rebellion against him, and had invoked the aid of their countrymen in India, he sent all the Portuguese to the island of Masuah, and entered into treaties with the petty princes along the coast, to close their harbours for ever against that nation. (Bruce, ii. 109.) Yet from time to time, emissaries made their way into the

CHAPTER XLVIII.-PLAN OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK.SUCCESSION AND CHARACTERS OF THE GREEK EMPERORS OF CONSTAN TINOPLE, FROM THE TIME OF HERACLIUS TC THE LATIN CONQUEST.

I HAVE now deduced from Trajan to Constantine, from Constantine to Heraclius, the regular series of the Roman emperors; and faithfully exposed the prosperous and adverse fortunes of their reigns. Five centuries of the decline and fall of the empire have already elapsed; but a period of more than eight hundred years still separates me from the term of my labours, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. Should I persevere in the same course, should I observe the same measure, a prolix and slender thread would be spun through many a volume, nor would the patient reader find an adequate reward of instruction or amusement. At every step as we sink deeper in the decline and fall of the Eastern empire, the annals of each succeeding reign would impose a more ungrateful and melancholy task. These annals must continue to repeat a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery; the natural connection of causes and events would be broken by frequent and hasty transitions, and a minute accumulation of circumstances must destroy the light and effect of those general pictures which compose the use and ornament of a remote history. From the time of Heraclius, the Byzantine theatre is contracted and darkened: the line of empire, which had been defined by the laws of Justinian and the arms of Belisarius, recedes on all sides from our view; the Roman name, the proper subject of our inquiries, is reduced. to a narrow corner of Europe, to the lonely suburbs of Constantinople; and the fate of the Greek empire has been compared to that of the Rhine, which loses itself in the sands before its waters mingle with the ocean.

The scale

of dominion is diminished to our view by the distance of time and place; nor is the loss of external splendour com. pensated by the nobler gifts of virtue and genius. In the last moments of her decay, Constantinople was doubtless more opulent and populous than Athens at her most flourishing era, when a scanty sum of six thousand talents,

country, to renew abortive attempts; and so late as the year 1715, some of them were executed for disturbing the peace of the land.—EL.