A World History of Christianity

Edited by Adrian Hastings

Ethiopia

Christianity came to Ethiopia earlier. It faced similar pressures to Nubia in the face of Islam. But in Ethiopia, Christianity survived. Ethiopia, too, relied on Coptic support and sustenance, but it should be stressed that the Ethiopian Orthodox church is not a mission church of Egypt. It is not ‘Coptic’, and has its own distinctive life and traditions. The origins of Christianity in the mountain kingdom of Aksum go back to the fourth century, to the visit of two Christina merchants from Syria, Frumentius and Aedesius, to the court of the Negus (King). These young men became important figures during the minority of King Ezana, using their position to spread the Christian message at court; to such an extent that the king ascribed his successful expansionist policy to the Lord of Heaven’ (echoing the association of conquest and religion which Constantine had made not long before). In 346 Frumentius went to Egypt to discuss the needs of the new Christian community with Bishop Athanasius. He found himself consecrated as the first Bishop (Abuna) of the Ethiopian church – and became known as Abba Selama. In the succeeding centuries monks from both Syria and Egypt played a large part in spreading the Gospel into the surrounding countryside of Aksum and, as in Egypt and Nubia, making the monastery basic to the health of the Ethiopian Church. Even more crucial was the support of the rulers and the close identification between Church and monarchy and the Amharic culture.

One of the unique features of Ethiopian Christianity is its sense of identity with the Jewish heritage of Christianity. Ethiopia is part of a Semitic world (Amaharinya is a Semitic language). There may well have been a Jewish presence (as there were in Arabia just across the Red Sea) long before the coming of Christianity. For centuries a small group of Amharic people, the Falasha, have described themselves as Jewish; they obey the law (Torah) and respect the Sabbath. But the Ethiopian Church also sees itself as the heir of Judah. The greatest of the Zagwe kings, Lalibela, returned from pilgrimage of Jerusalem determined to re-create ‘Zion’ in Ethiopia. The great rock churches of Lasta (often) with names from biblical topology) are the result. When the Zagwe dynasty, regarded as usurpers, was overthrown in 1270, the new dynast was anxious to stress its legitimacy. In the Kibra Negast, (The Glory of the Kings) the descent of the kings from King Solomon was emphasized, with the legend of Sheba returning to her Ethiopian Realm pregnant with Solomon’s son, Menelik I. According to this foundation myth, Menelik was to return to his father’s court to bring back the Ark of the Covenant (the tabot) to Ethiopia. Replicas of the ark are placed at the centre of all new churches in Ethiopia, and the churches themselves are designed on an idealized plan of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.

Kibra Negast, was translated in Ge’ez from Arabic in the reign of Amda Siyon (1314-44) whose ‘glorious reign’ is remembered as the time when the boundaries of the Christian kingdom expanded as never before, through military conquest followed by a process of Christianisation and acculturation. Yet the King himself was subject to criticism by the monks for his failure personally to exemplify Christian values. Strong rulers like Amda Siyon and, in the next century, Zara Ya’iqob (1434-68) were successful in forging a strong sense of nationhood. But the variety of peoples incorporated into the empire (for example the disparate Oromo peoples to the south), as well as the mountainous terrain, meant that this unity was always very fragile, and centrifugal forces correspondingly powerful. This was true of the church too. The Abuna continued to be called from Egypt, in a process which required delicate negotiations with the Muslim authorities in Cairo. He arrived as a complete stranger to Ethiopia, the upholder of orthodoxy, but inevitably circumscribed in his practical power and influence. This tended to be exercised by the monasteries around the capital in Shoa (the centre of power in Ethiopia had gradually moved southwards), one of whose abbots, Takla Haymanot of the monastery of Dabra Libanos, was regarded as having played an important part in the restoration of the dynasty. The abbot became an important official at court, known as the Echage, he was appointed by the Crown, and responsible for the practical management of the affairs of the Church. But, to many of the more ancient monasteries in the northern heartlands of the kingdom, this alliance between monarchy, Abuna and Echage often represented a falling away from the ancient traditions of the church. One conflict crystallized these different perceptions – the question of the observance of the Sabbath. The northern monasteries, grouped round the figure of Abbot Ewostatewos, conservatively defined the Jewish traditions of the church and emphasized Sabbath observance as opposed to Sunday observance, which the Ewostatewians claimed was an innovation of the Abuna and the Copts. Eventually a modus Vivendi was reached at the council of Mitmaq (1450) in which both Sabbaths were honoured. By this time the church, and monasteries in particular, had become great land owners, responsible for tax collection assuming a considerable burden of administration on behalf of the state.

The Christian kingdom of the highlands was by now surrounded by Islamic peoples. There is another important ‘foundation myth’ in Ethiopia which is used to explain the comparatively good relations between the Christian kingdom and Islam. It relates to the refuge afforded the companions of the Prophet Mohammed when they fled from persecution in Mecca before Hegira. This act of hospitality established a cordiality which subsisted for many centuries. Islam penetrated the highlands and Muslims became an important minority, including, a large merchant community of Amhara speakers. It was in the sixteenth century that this mutual acceptance was disrupted by the violent incursions of the Muslim general nicknamed Gran (‘the left handed’). Between 1529 and 1543 Gran ravaged and devastated the whole of the Christian highlands, destroying churches and monasteries. Ethiopia sought assistance from Portugal, an intervention which may well have been decisive for the survival of Christian kingdom, and which certainly opened up the way for greater contact with European Christianity. The Spanish Jesuit, Father Paez, after being captured by pirates and forced to work for a number of years as a gallery slave, eventually arrived in Ethiopia in 1603. His generous and sympathetic approach resulted in an interest in Catholicism on the part of the emperor, which may well have been prompted by an appreciation of the greater potential assistance which Rome could offer Ethiopia in comparison with a weekend and beleaguered Coptic Christianity, and the crisis provoked by this unprecedented challenge from Islam. The alliance led to the appointment of another Jesuit, this time a Portuguese, Alphonsus Mendez, as the first non-Egyptian Abuna since Frumentius. But the resentment already invoked by these breaks with tradition was exacerbated by the complete insensitivity with which Mendez tried to reform the Ethiopian church to bring it into line with Roman Catholic theology and practice. He insisted on rebaptism of lay people, the reordination of clergy, the reconsecration of churches – a programme extraordinary in its arrogance and one which almost immediately proved self-defeating. The civil war which ensued resulted in the education of Susenyos in favour of Fasiladas, who in 1632 formally dissolved the union with Rome and expelled the Jesuits. It left a legacy of bitterness against outside intrusion in the life of the Ethiopian church, and a fragmented church often bitterly quarrelling about Christological dogma – quarrels which may have their roots in Catholic attempts to introduce Duophysite nations into the church. The dispute also reflected the wider fragmentation of Ethiopian society between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, as the emperor was reduced to political importance in the face of regional barons.

The fascination of Ethiopian Christianity lies in its development of a coherent and indistinctive form of the faith, built on its own traditions and (for the first time in Africa) to a large extent independent from Hellenic or roman models (through the Eucharistic liturgy was shaped by Alexandrians traditions). It was a Christian culture strongly integrated into African life and ideas of kingship, combined with a vigorous local presence based on a peasant priesthood, hereditary in families which had rights to church land (gult) and tithes. Monasticism was crucial in supplying the learning and scholarship which the largely uneducated deacons and priests could not provide. Vital for the life of the local parish were the debtara, the lay cantors responsible for intoning the divine service based on a musical system of chants of great antiquity. Debtara had a rigorous musical training, and could be much better educated people than the village priests. They often combined these skills with a reputation as healers. Christianity became part of the very fabric of present life in Ethiopia, incorporating traditional views of the spirit world without the sense of conflict which was to be such a feature of nineteenth –and twentieth-century mission Christianity. But the Christaniazation of marriage practice was to be as problematic for the Ethiopian church as it was for later missionary Christianity. Even the most revered, successful and christening emperors found hard to combine ‘Christian’ views of marriage with the expediency of using polygamy as a political tool in fostering and sustaining alliances within the state. As a result there was a running battle with the monks, the guardians of Christian monogamy. Christian practice was equally difficult to achieve at a village level. As a result few married in the church, and it became the conventional understanding that participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist was only for the very young (before they reached puberty) and the very old. These patterns have been replicated time and again in many diverse forms in the modern history of Christianity in the rest of the continent.

In Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, the church often seemed woefully ill-equipped to withstand the pressures from an expanding self-confident Islam. Its inability, especially in Nubia, truly to develop a self-sustaining indigenous clergy was a fatal weakness. The development of viable local forms of episcopacy are crucial to this process, and even Ethiopia failed adequately to deal with the issue – to its determinant in both the sabbatarian conflicts and the encounter with Catholicism. The Christianity did survive at all anywhere in Africa in the face of Islam is perhaps as remarkable as its catastrophic decline. As Adrian Hastings has vividly put it: “Thus at times violently, but more often quietly enough, did Islam advance while Christianity, like an ill-adapted dinosaur, declined and expired in place after place, crushed essentially by its own limitations, its fossilised traditions, and the lack of a truly viable, self-renewing structures.”

Kevin Wood

University of Leeds