mother-Church with which they are in communion. But it is one of the most excusable, one of the least responsible schisms in Church history. What could these poor blacks in the heart of Africa understand of the issues involved, how could they realize the importance of the agreement of the great Church beyond Egypt? They have never seen further than the monks of Upper Egypt and the Coptic Patriarchate — to them the centre of the world. Then to the Ethiopians, too, Monophysism (never really understood) became the national Church and the national cause. All they know about it is that they are against anyone who annoys their father at Alexandria. But their heretical patrons did good to them also. It was Coptic monks who first translated the Bible into their language (Ge'z).
There now follows a period of darkness for centuries. The Abyssinian kingdom fell back into a small highland state, surrounded by Islam on all sides. We can only imagine Christianity living still in the Tigre mountains, following in its development the lines of the Coptic mother-Church. The Abyssinians evolved their liturgies on the Coptic model (p. 316); they had monasteries, as had the Copts; their Metropolitan (Abūna, see p. 308) came to them from Egypt, always ordained by the Coptic Patriarch. Kosmas Indikopleustes (6th century, p. 104) knows that there are Christians and bishops in Ethiopia.[1] In Jerusalem there was an Abyssinian monastery in the Middle Ages. In 1177 and again at the time of Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447) the Abyssinian king made advances towards union with Catholics, and a monastery for his people was established at Rome.[2] The dependence of the Abyssinian Church on the Coptic Patriarchate during all this time was clearly marked. Already it seems that the Abyssinian Abūna was normally, if not always, not only ordained in Egypt, but himself a Coptic monk, as is now the rule. The Coptic Patriarch Benjamin I (620-659, p. 228) sent one of his monks, named Cyril, to be Abūna of Abyssinia.[3] The Copts managed to keep the
- ↑ Ed. cit. pp. 50-68 (cf. p. vi).
- ↑ Baronius: Annales Eccl. vol. xix. (Lucca, 1746), p. 451; Raynald: Ann. Eccl. vol. ix. (Lucca, 1752), p. 367.
- ↑ Renaudot: Hist. Patr. Alex. p. 455. The definite law that Abūna must always be a Copt is said to have been made by Abūna Takla Haimānōt about the year 1270, in the reign of King Yekūnō Amlāk.
