“I was not born to obey, but rather to command”: The Self-Fashioning of sägga Krǝstos, an Ethiopian Traveler in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Abstract

In 1632, an Ethiopian traveler named Sägga Krǝstos arrived in Cairo and introduced himself to Franciscan missionaries as the legitimate heir to the Ethiopian throne. Following conversion to Catholicism, he embarked on an epic journey throughout the Italian peninsula and France, where he was hosted and supported by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, multiple northern Italian rulers, and the French monarchy. By cross-referencing his autobiographical statement with a vast body of archival and published sources, this article shows that Sägga Krǝstos was an impostor, but also that, thanks to a favorable historical juncture and skilled self-fashioning, he was extensively supported by his European hosts. Sägga Krǝstos’s story of survival in the early modern Mediterranean dovetails with the literature on imposture, highlights the role that Africans played in the making of European expansion, and sheds further light on the condition of elite Africans in early modern Europe.