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Yohannes I (Ge'ez ዮሐንስ yōḥānnis, Amh. yōhānnis, also sometimes called John I), throne name A'ilaf Sagad (Ge'ez አእላፍ ሰገድ a'ilāf sagad, "to whom tens of thousands bow") was nəgusä nägäst (1667 - 1682)¹ of Ethiopia, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty. He was the fourth son of Fasilides.

Yohannes was appointed nəgusä nägäst by a council of the senior dignitaries of the Empire, at the encouragement of the noble Blattengeta Malka Krestos. The council then imprisoned the other sons of Fasilides on Mount Wehni, continuing the practice Fasilides had revived.

Due to the violent religious controversy that Catholic missionaries had caused in Ethiopia under the reign of his grandfather Susenyos, he acted harshly towards Europeans. In 1669, he directed Gerazmach Mikael to expel all of the Catholics still living in Ethiopia; those who did not embrace the beliefs of the Ethiopian Church were exiled to Sennar. Six Franciscans sent by Pope Alexander VII to succeed in converting Ethiopia to Catholicism where the Jesuits had failed 30 years before, were executed during his reign.

As a result, he favored Armenian visitors, whose beliefs also embraced Miaphysitism, and were in harmony with the Ethiopian Church. These included one Murad, who undertook a number of diplomatic missions for the Emperor; and in 1679, the Emperor Yohannes received the Armenian bishop Yohannes, bearing a relic of Ewostatewos.

The growing controversy over the nature of Christ had grown severe enough that in the last year of his reign Yohannes called a synod to resolve the dispute. The Ewostathian monks of Gojjam advocated the formula "Through Unction Christ the Son was consubstantial with the Father", by which they came to be known as the Qebat ("Unction") faction, who were supported by the Emperor's own son Iyasu; they were opposed by the monks of Debre Libanos, who at that time still advocated traditional Miaphysitism. The outcome of the synod is in dispute: according to E.A. Wallis-Budge and Blund Wendell, Emperor Yohannes was convinced to condemn the Qebat doctrine, which led to Iyasu attempting to flee his father's realm; but according to Crummey, Yohannes favored the Gojjame delegation for political reasons: at the time Gojjam was an important province. These decisions were revisited once Iyasu became Emperor, at a synod he called in 1686.²

References

1. ^ James Bruce wrote that Yohannes ruled between 1665 - 1680, but this was proven to be in error by identifying an eclipse seen in Ethiopia during his reign with one calcuated to have occurred on 4 November 1668 (E.A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 [Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970], p. 408).
2. ^ Budge, pp.406f, 410f; H. Weld Blundell, The Royal chronicle of Abyssinia, 1769-1840 (Cambridge: University Press, 1922, p. 525; Donald Crummey, Priests and Politicians, 1972 (Hollywood: Tsehai, 2007), p. 22.

Further reading

• Richard K. P. Pankhurst. The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles. Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1967.

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• This page was last modified on 9 November 2008, at 09:26.

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