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408 THE AFRICAN ORlGINS OF THE MISSIO ANTIQUA Ethiopian interest in creating closer ties with Christian Europe was ex– pressed with increasing urgency in the early sixteenth century. In response to another royal invitation sent from Ethiopia in 1513, a Portuguese embassy reached Ethiopia by sea in 1520. Subsequently it brought back to Lisbon letters from King Lebna Dengel calling for a closer military relationship based on a common faith. "If I had a Christian king for a neighbour", the king wrote to John III of Portugal, "I would never part from him for an hour", and Lebna Dengel also urged the pope to exhort the Christian kings of Europe to help him "for from all sides of my frontiers the Muslims, an evil people, surround me" 6 • Two decades later, harassed by the victorious Muslims, King Galawde– wos sent a message to Lisbon in 1545 which was interpreted as a request for the appointment of a Catholic patriarch for Ethiopia. In Rome the response to this apparent opening was taken up by the Jesuits, and especially by their foun– der. Ignatius showed exceptional interest in the preparations for a mission to Ethiopia, and in October 1546 he wrote to John III in Portugal saying that he himself wanted to go on "the enterprise of Ethiopia" should he be chosen. He read Alvarez's account of the earlier Portuguese embassy, and he discussed the project with Pedro, an Ethiopian monk resident in Rome since 1540 7 • Early in 1549 Ignatius learnt that Pedro was asking the papal curia to send five bishops to Ethiopia, leaving Galawdewos to select which one should be patriarch. The Portuguese ambassador in Rome was doing his best to frustrate Pedro's plan, and in a letter Ignatius insisted that John III should hasten to make an appointment and hence assert the right to nominate to this position "in those lands not very distant from his India" 8 . His letter illustrates the extent to which the Jesuits were becoming, in this instance, allies of the Portuguese padroado. It may have been in many ways a realistic assessment of the situa– tion, for the most practical way of reaching Ethiopia from Europe in the mid– sixteenth century was on board a Portuguese vessel. Yet it underlined the de– pendence on Portuguese control, even regarding an area which was in no way a Portuguese conquest. John III had in fact already revealed his power. In 1547 when told of the proposal to appoint Broet, a French Jesuit, as patriarch, John had vetoed the 6 Merid Wolde Aregay, The legary ofJesuit missionary activities in Ethiopiafrom 1555 to 1632, in Getatchew Haile et al. (eds.), The Missionary Factor in Ethiopia, Frankfurt 1998, 33s. 7 P. Caraman, The lost empire, London 1985,10. 8 S. Ignatii de ½ola Soc. Jesu fundatoris epistolae et instrnctiones (l'vfonumenta Ignatiana, Ser. la, II), Roma 1904, 304s.