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RICHARD GRAY 415 convinced that he should accept, and immediately he began to collect informa– tion concerning "the lands and languages of Congo and the Abyssinians" 28 • The belief in Rome that it might be feasible to open up a route between Kongo and Ethiopia was not a new idea. Some thirty years earlier, a young Ve– netian, Pietro Duodo, had held long discussions with Don John "a pure Ethio– pian, a monk of the order of St. Antony, about forty-two years old and an ex– pert in the affairs of those states, who already, twice in the space of eight years, claims to have been in our lands" 29 • We know nothing more about this Ethio– pian, but Pietro Duodo came from a distinguished Venetian family renowned for their services to the republic's navy. His father, Francesco, had been cap– tain-general of the Venetian galleys and had played a notable part in the victory at Lepanto. He had therefore grown up in an environment keenly conscious of the Ottoman threat, and when in 1578 he wrote a report on Africa his interest was largely focussed on Ethiopia as an apparently powerful potential ally. In his discussion on the possible ways of reaching Ethiopia, Duodo reported that some twenty-five years earlier "two Genoese Negroni and Grimaldi" had sailed from Lisbon to the kingdom of Kongo and from there "one month by river" they reached "the imperial city of Zamber" 30 which could be identified with Dambea, the province north of Lake Tana and a name sometimes applied to the lake itself. Almost certainly the report of this Genoese exploit is pure fan– tasy, but from the early sixteenth century an exaggerated idea of the southward extension of Ethiopia to the equator lent credence to the belief that the journey from Kongo to Ethiopia would be a relatively easy undertaking. So in the mind of Pedro de la Madre di Dios the centuries' long appeals from the Christian rulers of Ethiopia had become suddenly fused with the pre– dicament confronting Antonio Manuel, ambassador of the Catholic kingdom of Kongo. Not only did Pedro summon the Spanish Carmelites to assist the en– terprise, but he also ensured that firm instructions should be sent to the papal nuncio in Madrid that the obstacles preventing the ambassador from coming to Rome should be overcome. As late as May 1607 Don Antonio believed that he would be unable to complete his journey to Rome. He envisaged that he would have to leave for Lisbon the following month, so that in September he could set sail for Kongo. By then he was a very sick man, severely stricken with gall- 39. 28 Joseph de Santa Teresa, Rejorma de !os Desca!zos, Madrid 1684, IV, Libre XVII, cap 29 B.A.V., cod. Urb. Lat. 837, f. 147r-v. 30 Ibid., f. 144.