BCCCAP00000000000000000000862

418 THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OFTHE MI.fSIOANTIQUA Evidently Girolamo had a fanciful imaginat:ion, but in 1609 he enlisted the support of none other than Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, the future Urban VIII, who, Girolamo later claimed, became "thoroughly apprised of the question and with a lively spirit wanted to push it forward", presenting the memorandum to Paul V. One of the strangest aspects of Girolamo's memorandum wàs its total absence of any reference to the activities of the Jesuits in Ethiopia. When pro– posing a formal papal mission there, one might bave expected that the author would have considered the possibility of building on this Catholic foundation. Although for several decades the results of the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia had been relatively meagre, it was precisely at this moment tha_t Pedro Paez and other J esuits were strongly influencing Susenyos, formally crowned emperor in 1608. One can only speculate that in ignoring the Jesuit role in Ethiopia, Giro– lamo may have been reflecting an antagonism in at least some quarters in Rome towards the overseas activities of the Portuguese J esuits, closely linked as they were with the maintenance of Portugal's patrona! rights. Certainly the decisions by Clement VIII and Paul V to encourage the Carmelite missions to Persia and to Kongo were direct challenges to what were increasingly seen by some in Rome as pernicious Portuguese patrona! pretensions, and it may be that in by– passing the Jesuits, Girolamo was indicating the initial steps of a strategy which was later to be actively pursued by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide and its founding secretary, Francesco Ingoli. In 1609, however, Cardinal Maffeo, hav– ing presented the memorandum to the pope, became more cautious and dis– cussed the proposal with the Jesuits in Rome who, Girolamo reported severa! years later, maintained that there was no need to take further action 35 • Girolamo's proposal was therefore laid aside in 1609, but eight years later the idea of opening up a transcontinental r0ute between Kongo and Ethiopia was formally proposed to the ruler of Ethiopia by a remarkable Spaniarci, Juan Bautista Vives, who had become the resident ambassador in Rome of the king ofKongo. Vives carne from a family well established in Valencia since the early fifteenth century, a member of whom had been a leading Renaissance human– ist, Juan Luis Vives. Juan Bautista was boro in 1545, five years after the death in Louvain of his famous relative. Accounts differ as to the date of his arrivai in Rome, but by 1584 he was a doctor in both civil and canon law and was already 35 B.A.V.. cod. Vat. Lat. 6723, f. 6v. The details concemiog the fortunes of his 1609 memorandwn are reported in this docwnent written by Girolamo and now bound in a vol– ume of memoranda almost certainly collected by Ingoli sooo after the foundation of the new Congregation.