Jeronimo Lobo was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary who travelled to Ethiopia in the early seventeenth century to take part in efforts to convert the country to Roman Catholicism. Following the conversion of the Emperor Susenyos I to the Catholic faith in 1622, Jesuit missionaries began to arrive in greater numbers. Lobo arrived in Ethiopia from Goa in 1624 and undertook several expeditions through the country for the next decade including a visit to the source of the Blue Nile at Gish Abay near Lake Tana. Susenyos abdicated in 1632 and the country soon abandoned Catholicism and returned to the Ethiopian Church. Lobo and his fellow Jesuits were expelled from Ethiopia in 1634.

This French edition of Lobo’s account of his time in Ethiopia was translated by Joachim Legrand (1653-1733) and published in 1728. Legrand furnished Lobo’s account with an additional fifteen essays on Ethiopia.