own feasts, very strange ones. They have the same feast over and over again during the year. Our Lord's birth is kept once a month (except March) on the 24th or 25th. Our Lady, St. Michael,[1] and "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" (one feast) also once a month. Their own saints, kings, martyrs and monks occur; but not one Metropolitan (since Abūna is an unpopular foreigner). They have very strange legends of their saints; on June 25 they keep Saint Pontius Pilate, of all people, and his wife Procla.[2] They have music in their churches, bells, rattles like the old sistrum, and especially big drums. To these the priests dance before the ark, as did David. They sing wild melodies, and the women make the strange shrill cries which one hears all over the East, either for rejoicing or mourning.
7. Ethiopic Faith and Customs — Judaism
The Abyssinian Church is Monophysite; it agrees in all points with the Copts. We need not then discuss these again. But it has some further peculiarities of its own. There are vehement discussions and three schools[3] concerning the hypostatic union and the birth of Christ. The normal Monophysites believe that our Lord was born of the Father from eternity, born of his mother in time, when he united, absorbed a human nature into his Divinity. This is the recognized and official school, to which Abūna and most of the clergy belong. A second party teaches that the union of Christ's humanity and Divinity into one nature (understood in the usual Monophysite sense) took place when he received the unction of the Holy Ghost at his baptism; so they count this as a third birth, the birth of our Lord's one theandric nature. A third school maintains that, as son of Mary, Christ was man only; later God infused into him Divinity, without changing his human nature. Now, as far as the doctrine of two
- ↑ St. Michael is the national patron of Abyssinia.
- ↑ Ludolf: Comment. p. 433. The wife because of her dream; Pilate because he said he was innocent. The Byzantine rite has St. Procla (alone), on October 27. The whole Calendar is given in Ludolf: ad suam. hist. æth. Commentarius, pp. 389-427, with notes.
- ↑ I do not call them sects, because they are all in communion with each other.
