Yohannes I.

Yohannes I ( Ethiop . ዮሐንስ, also John I , throne name Ailaf Sagad አእላፍ ሰገድ "before the tens of thousands bow down") (* before 1640; † July 19, 1682 ) was Negus Negest ( Emperor ) of Ethiopia from 1667 to 1682 .

He was the 4th son of the emperor Fasilides . Yohannes came from the ruling Solomon dynasty and was a follower of the Tewahedo faith. After the death of his father, at the suggestion of Blattengeta Malka Krestos , he was proclaimed emperor by the council of the highest secular and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the empire. At the same time, the council took the other sons of the Fasiledes to the prison mountain Wehni Amba to prevent disputes over the succession to the throne.

With his politics, Yohannes I aimed to separate the Ethiopian population according to religious affiliations. He issued an edict according to which connections between members of different denominations were forbidden. In addition, the clashes with European Catholic missionaries , which had already broken out during the reign of his grandfather, Emperor Sissinios, escalated . In 1669, Emperor Yohannes had I. the Gerazmach to Mikael, all based in Ethiopia and not the Ethiopian faith confess ending Catholics of the country to refer. Instead, the emperor sympathized with the Armenian Church and received the Armenian Bishop Johannes in 1679 .

During the reign of Yohannes I, as with his predecessors and later his successors, there were constant disputes between the followers of the two great Ethiopian faiths, Qibat and Tewahedo. Finally, in 1681, a council was convened under pressure from the Tewahedo monks from the Azezo monastery . As a result of this Council, the Qibat-denomination was the anathema occupied.

Emperor Yohannes I died in Gondar shortly after the council and was buried in the Sadda monastery on the island of Mesraha in Lake Tana .

Yohannes was married and had four sons and a daughter.

Due to the complicated transcription from Amharic , the spelling of Ethiopian proper names can be different in different publications.

predecessor	Office	successor
Fasilides	Emperor of Ethiopia 1667–1682	Iyasu I.