appointment and consecration of Abūna in their own hands by not allowing the number of Abyssinian bishops to increase. Probably in the 8th century they forged an alleged canon of the Council of Nicæa, according to which Ethiopia is not to have a Patriarch, but is to be subject to Alexandria. The Abyssinian Metropolitan is called Katholikos, "which is less than a Patriarch."[1] At the same time they imposed on the daughter-Church a further law by which even the Abyssinian suffragan bishops must be ordained by the Patriarch of Alexandria.[2] About the year 1000 there was a revolution in Ethiopia by which a usurping Jewess made herself queen; her dynasty lasted till 1268. For a time the line of Metropolitans was interrupted; no Abūna came from Egypt. Then Philotheos of Alexandria (c. 981-1004) ordained one Daniel and sent him to Aksum.[3] In 1268 there was a counter-revolution. Yekūnō Amlāk, of the old line, was restored; under him and his successors the kingdom again becomes powerful. One version of the legend of Prester John (p. 106) places him in Abyssinia.[4] It is sometimes said that the story may have arisen from the fact that, in the absence of a bishop, the King of Abyssinia performed episcopal functions. But the great majority of legends place Prester John in Central Asia. As people in Europe knew that there was a Christian king in Ethiopia, as the mediæval concept of "India" was so vague, it can be understood that a variant of the story may have transferred its scene to the equally vague "Ethiopia." At intervals we hear of the ordination of a Coptic monk as Abūna of Abyssinia; such incidents, telling us generally a mere name, are all we have of Ethiopic Church history.[5] The Moslem rulers of
- ↑ Canons of Nicæa in the Arabic version, Can. 42 (Mansi, ii. 994). The Copts also set up a law that a Metropolitan must be ordained by twelve bishops. Then, by not allowing the Ethiopians to have more than seven, they secured the right of ordaining Abūna themselves.
- ↑ Renaudot: Hist. Patr. Alex. ib. He quotes the Canons of Ibn Naṣāl (p. 242).
- ↑ Lequien, Or. Christ. ii. 650.
- ↑ Oppert: Der Presbyter Johannes (Berlin, 1870), pp. 94-95. Abū Sāliḥ shares the popular idea. He says: "All the Kings of Abyssinia are priests, and celebrate the liturgy within the sanctuary" (Churches and Monasteries, ed. cit. p. 286).
- ↑ Ludolf gives an incomplete list of Metropolitans of Ethiopia (Hist. Æth. L. iii. c. iii. §§ 17-25). The Abyssinians do not count the Uniates of the 16th-17th centuries among them.
