There was a nobleman of great distinction for his family and rank at court, for his age, and the merit of his service; he had occupied some of the lands belonging to a monk who happened to be a Catholic. This man, had he been an Alexandrian, could have had no recourse to the Abuna his patriarch, and the cause must have been tried before the civil judge. But Mendes was of another opinion. He ordered the nobleman to make his defence before the ecclesiastical tribunal; and, upon his refusing this as a novelty to which he was not bound, he condemned him immediately to restore the lands to the monk. This, too, was refused on the part of the present possessor, who being one day attending the king at church, the patriarch, without preamble, pronounced against him a formal sentence of excommunication, by which he gave him over, soul and body, to the devil. Such procedure was, till then, unknown in Abyssinia. The nobleman, though otherwise brave, was so much affected with the terms of his sentence as to faint, imagining himself already in the clutches of Satan, and it was with difficulty he was recovered, the king making intercession with the patriarch to take off this censure, or rather this curse. Sudden as it was, however, in the inflicting, and easy in the removal, it made very lasting and serious impressions on the minds of men of all ranks, greatly to the disadvantage of the patriarch and the professors of his new religion, in the exercise of which they did not discover that degree of charity, meekness, mercy, and long-suffering, that they had been taught were the very essentials of it. The next instance was this: There had been an Itchegué, that is, the superior of the monks of Debra Libanos, an Order instituted by Abba Tecla Haimanout, the last Abyssinian Abuna, not more celebrated by the church than the state, as being the restorer of the line of Solomon, for many years banished to Shoa; and this superior, besides the dignity of his office, was remarkable for an innocent, pious, and holy life. It happened that a Catholic monk officiated in a church where this Itchegué had been buried under the altar; the patriarch declared the church defiled by the burial of that heretic and schismatic, and suspended the celebration of divine service till the body was raised and thrown out of the church in a most indecent manner. Universal discontent seized the minds of all men; and, from that time, it seemed the friends of the old religion began again to recover strength, and the Catholics to be looked upon, if not with hatred, yet with terror. And every trifle now contributed towards the one or the other.