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418 THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF THE MISSIO ANfIQUA Evidently Girolamo had a fanciful imagination, 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 was its total absence of any reference to the activities of the Jesuits in Ethiopia. When pro– posing a formal papal mission there, one might have 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 that Pedro Paez and other Jesuits 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 Jesuits, closely linked as they were with the maintenance of Portugal's patronal 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 patronal 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 several years later, maintained that there was no need to take further action 3 S. Girolamo's proposal was therefore laid aside in 1609, but eight years later the idea of opening up a transcontinental route between Kongo and Ethiopia was formally proposed to the ruler of Ethiopia by a remarkable Spaniard, Juan Bautista Vives, who had become the resident ambassador in Rome of the king of Kongo. Vives came 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 born in 1545, five years after the death in Louvain of his famous relative. Accounts differ as to the date of his arrival 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 concerning the fortunes of his 1609 memorandum are reported in this document written by Girolamo and now bound in a vol– ume of memoranda almost certainly collected by Ingoli soon after the foundation of the new Congregation.