The Many Lives of Tasfa Seyon : An Ethiopian Intellectual in Early Modern Rome

This Element examines the life and legacy of the sixteenth century Ethiopian intellectual Täsfa S?eyon. It reconstructs his formative years, scrutinizes his editio princeps of the Ge'ez Gospels, and traces his modern influence, erasure, and rediscovery by later generations of Western orientalists, Ethiopian writers, and Catholic thinkers.

This Element examines the life and legacy of the sixteenth-century Ethiopian intellectual Täsfa ?eyon. It reconstructs his formative years in the Horn of Africa and his diasporic life in the Holy Land and Italian peninsula, where he emerged as a prominent intermediary figure at Santo Stefano degli Abissini, an Ethiopianmonastery within the Vatican. He became a librarian, copyist, teacher, translator, author, and community leader, as well as a prominent advisor to European humanist scholars and Tridentine Church authorities concerned with the emerging field of philologia sacra as it pertained to Ethiopian Orthodox (täwa?edo) Christianity. The Element reconstructs his wide-ranging contacts with the Roman Curia and emerging orientalist academy, and then scrutinizes his editio princeps of the Ge''ez Gospels. A final section traces his modern influence, erasure, and rediscovery by later generations of European, Ethiopian, and Eritrean intellectuals.