This article examines Gondar during the Classical Gondarine period (1636–1769) as a political-theological center within early modern global Christianity. Drawing on royal chronicles, Jesuit missionary writings especially those of Manuel de Almeida and Pedro Páez and Ethiopian ecclesiastical sources, it analyzes how doctrinal debate and imperial authority were mutually constitutive. Rather than interpreting Jesuit involvement solely as political intrusion or theological conflict, the study argues that the encounter compelled Ethiopian rulers and clerics to redefine the relationship between orthodoxy and sovereignty. Christological controversies, missionary interventions, and synodal deliberations functioned not merely as religious disputes but as instruments of state formation and imperial consolidation. Methodologically, the study employs historical research design based on textual and archival analysis of Ethiopian and European sources. By situating Gondar within both Ethiopian and European historical memory, the article repositions the city as a central arena in which theology, political authority, and global Christian exchange intersected. Gondar thus emerges not as a peripheral site of missionary rupture, but as a formative locus in the negotiation of religious legitimacy and imperial power in early modern Christianity.

Gondar, Political Theology, Jesuit Missions

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