Mendez, Alphonso, a noted missionary of the Roman Catholic Church, flourished in Abyssinia in the early part of the 17th century. lie was a Portuguese by birth, but we know little of his personal history dis- connected from his labors in the East. He belonged to the Society of Jesus, and was created patriarch of the Abyssinians in 16-26, by the emperor Suscenius, or Soci- nios, who, quite contrary to general practices, not only himself paid allegiance to the Roman pontiff, but also obliged his subjects to abandon the religious rites and tenets of their ancestors, and to embrace the doctrine and worship of the Romish Church. Mendez, as patri- arch, by his intemperate zeal, imprudence, and arro- gance, ruined the cause in which he had embarked, and occasioned the total subversion of the Roman pontiffs authorit}' and jurisdiction, which seemed to have been established upon solid foundations. " He began his min- istry'," says Jlosheim {Eccles. Hist., Harper's edit., ii, 193), "with the most inconsiderate acts of violence and despotism. Following the spirit of the Spanish Inqui- sition, he employed formidable threatenings and cruel tortures to convert the Abyssinians; the greatest part of whom, together with their priests and ministers, held the religion of their ancestors in the highest veneration, and were willing to part with their lives and fortunes rather than forsake it. He also ordered those to be re- baptized who, in compliance with the orders of the em- peror, had embraced the faith of Rome, as if their for- mer religion had been nothing more than a system of paganism. Nor did the insolent patriarch rest satisfied with these arbitrarj' and despotic proceedings in the Church ; he excited tumults and factions in the state, and, with an unparalleled spirit of rebellion and arro- gance, encroached upon the prerogatives of the throne, and attempted to give law to the emperor himself. Hence arose civil commotions, conspiracies, and sedi- tions, which excited in a little time the indignation of the emperor, and the hatred of the people against the Jesuits, and produced at length, in 1631, a public decla- ration from the throne, by which the Abyssinian mon- arch annulled tlie orders he had formerly given in favor of popery, and left his subjects at liberty either to per- severe in the doctrine of their ancestors or to embrace the faith of Rome. This rational declaration was mild and indulgent toward the Jesuits, considering the treat- ment which their insolence and presumption had so just- ly deserved; but in the following reign much severer measures were employed against them. Basilides, or Facilidas, the son of Segued, who succeeded his father in 1632, thought it expedient to free his dominions from these troublesome and despotic guests, and accordingly, in 1634, he banished from his territories the patriarch Mendez, with all thp Jesuits and Europeans who be- longed to his retinue, and treated the Roman Catholic missionaries with excessive severity. From this period the very name of Rome, its religion, and its pontiff, were objects of the highest aversion among the Abys- sinians." Le Grand, himself a Roman Catholic, makes the following remark upon the conduct of the patriarch Mendez : " It is to be wished that the patriarch had never intermeddled in such a variety of affairs" (by which mitigated expression the author means his ambitious at- tempts to govern in the cabinet as well as in the Church), "or carried his authority to such a height as to behave in Ethiopia as if he had been in a country where the Inquisition was established; for by this conduct he set all the people against him, and excited in them such an aversion to the Roman Catholics in general, and to the Jesuits in particular, as nothing has hitherto been able to diminish, and which subsists in full force to this day" (in the fourth dissertation subjoined to vol. ii of Lobo's Voyage dCAbyssinie, which the reader will do well to consult, especially p. 116, 130, 144). See also Ludolfi Histor. yEthiopica, lib. iii, cap. xii ; Geddes, Ch. Hist, of Ethiopia, p. 233 ; La Croze, //wf. du Christianisme d'Ethi- opie, p. 79 ; Lockman, Travels of the Jesuits, i, 308 sq. (J. H.W.)
Mendez, Gonzalez Juan, a Roman Catholic prelate of note, flourished in the latter half of the 16th century. He was an Augustinian friar of the province of Castile, when he was chosen by the king of Spain to become ambassador to the emperor of China in 1584. In 1593 he was made bishop of Lipari, in Italy ; in 1607, bishop of Chiapi, in New Spain ; and in 1608, bishop of Propajan, in the West Indies. He died in 1617. He wrote A History T>f China in Spanish, which has been translated into several languages.
Mendez, Gonzalez Pedro, a noted Roman Cath- olic prelate in the Church of Spain, called the '■ grand cardinal," was born at Guadalajara in 1428, of an ancient and noble family. He made rapid progress in his tiad- ies, especially in the languages, in civil and canon Uiw, and in belles-lettres. His uncle, Gautier Alvarez, arch- bishop of Toledo, gave him an archdeaconry in his church, and sent him to the court of John II, king of Castile. His merit and quality soon made him friends, and he acquired the bishopric of Calahorra. Henry IV, who succeeded John, trusted him with the most impor- tant affairs of state, and with the bishopric of Siguenca, and finally procured a cardinal's hat for him, from Six- tus IV, in 1473. When Henry died, in the year follow- ing, he named cardinal Mendez for his executor, and dignified him at the same time with the title of the Cardinal of Spain. He did great service afterwards to Ferdinand and Isabella, in the war against the king of Portugal, and in the conquest of the kingdom of Granada from the INIoors. He was then made archbishop of Sev- ille and Toledo successively ; and, after governing some years in his several provinces with great wisdom and moderation, he died Jan. 11, 1495. He founded the mag- nificent college of Santa Cruz at Valladolid, and a hos- pital at Toledo. See Salazar de Mendoza, Chronica del gran Cardinal de Espafia (1625) ; Gen. Biog. Diet. s. v.