Fremona

Fremona ( Tigrinya ፍሬሞና ) was a settlement in northern Ethiopia , in what is now the Tigray region . There was a settlement of Catholic missionaries there in the 16th and 17th centuries .

This place, assigned to the Jesuit missionaries of Negus (Emperor) Minas , was actually called Maigoga (from Tigrinya : mai 'village' and Guagua 'water' ) because of the two stony watercourses that ran through this settlement . The Portuguese missionaries renamed the settlement after Saint Frumentius , who converted the kings of Aksum to the Christian faith. Bishop Andre da Oviedo died here in 1577. His grave became a place of pilgrimage for Catholic believers in this region.

After Emperor Fasilides turned away from Catholicism in 1634 and restored the official status of the traditional Ethiopian Church , he banished the Catholic priests, patriarchs and bishops to Fremona, which according to Jerónimo Lobo had 400 inhabitants at the time.

Eventually Fremona was completely abandoned by the Catholic missionaries. The historian Richard Pankhurst refers to a tax report from 1697 in which Fremona appears under its old name Maigoga. However, the Egyptologist Henry Salt (1780–1827), who came through this area around 1800, reports that he could not find anyone who could give him information about this name.