Royal Names in Medieval Ethiopia and their Symbolism

Millenarianism, widespread among Christians in general, was also deep-rooted in the flock of the Ethiopian Church. Several ideas of that kind occur in Ethiopic written sources. In particular, they appear in the treatise composed in Gəʿəz language probably around the 16th–17th centuries AD. This work bears a title Fəkkare Iyäsus (“The Explication of Jesus”) and is dedicated to the last days of the World. Eschatological ideas about the appearance of a righteous King from the Orient became popular among the Ethiopian Christians and are well attested in royal chronicles. Chiliastic aspirations were prevalent during the period of political disintegration in the late 18th – mid-19th centuries AD known as the “Epoch of the Judges”. The strong expectation for a graceful and powerful reign encouraged some clergymen to make prophecies. This tendency was manifested in the Ethiopian royal historiography and especially in royal onomastics.

Hagiography as Source: Gender and Conversion Narratives in The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church

Drawing on the work of Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, this essay proposes utilizing hagiographies from the The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, a fifteenth-century Ethiopian collection of saints’ lives, to explore various aspects of conversion. Other scholars employ a similar approach when analyzing hagiographical literature found in medieval Europe. While acknowledging that these texts do not provide details about the historical experience of conversion, they can assist scholars in understanding the conception of conversion in the imagination of the culture that created them. This essay specifically focuses on the role of women in conversion throughout the text and argues that, although men and women were almost equally represented as agents of conversion, a closer examination reveals that their participation remained gendered. Women more frequently converted someone with whom they had a prior relationship, especially a member of their familial network. Significantly, these observations mirror the patterns uncovered by contemporary scholars such as Dana Robert, who notes how women contributed to the spread of Christianity primarily through human relationships. By integrating these representations of conversion from late medieval Ethiopia, scholarship will gain a more robust picture of conversion in Africa more broadly and widen its understanding of world Christianity.

Jerusalem Inscription of Yoḥannəs IV, Emperor of Ethiopia

The article contains the first publication of the text and commented translation of an inscription in the Gə‘əz language engraved in AD 1890–1891 over the entrance to the oratory of the Residence of the Archbishop of the Ethiopian Church in Jerusalem, which is situated in the Old City, near the 8th station of the Via Dolorosa. A considerable moneyed assistance of the Ethiopian community in the Holy City by the second great integrator of Ethiopia in the Modern Times, the Emperor Yoḥannəs IV, which is commemorated in the inscription, proved to be reflected also in his correspondence with local monks enclosed to a chronicle of him.