Balthazar Téllez
From Encyclopaedia Aethiopica. Vol. 4.
He taught humanities, philosophy and theology at Braga, Coimbra, Évora and Lisbon, and held positions of responsibility: he was rector of the Irish seminary of St. Patrick, of the college of St. Antão and preposite of São Roque. In 1657 he was appointed Jesuit provincial in Portugal, a position he held for four years.
He earned a reputation as an author. He composed a widely popular Summa universae philosophiae (1642) and, on the request of the Jesuit General Muzio Vitelleschi (1615–45), he produced two books on the history of the Portuguese Province and, resp., of the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia (1645–47 and 1660). The latter was a revised edition of Manoel de Almeida’s homonymous treatise. T. was largely faithful to the original text but embellished its narrative with a baroque style and added some information by consulting missionary records (cf. Tellez 1660: 6r). The work also contained an engraving by Peter van Lisebetten, after a painting by Philip Fruytiers, as well as the famous map of Ethiopiaby Almeida.
