As I discussed in an earlier post, Ethiopia was predominantly Christian during the Middle Ages, with its own stories, for example, of miracles of the Virgin, stories that like their counterparts in Europe were intended to show that no matter how big a sinner you were, there was always hope for salvation.
Ethiopia had been Christian since at least the fourth century, when priests from Egypt became established there. (You'll recall that Egypt was a major center of Christianity in the first centuries AD.) The Ethiopians indeed considered their attachment to the Judeo-Christian tradition to go back even further, to the days of King Solomon. The "Song of Songs," a book in the Old Testament, has the king address his beloved, "You are black but you are comely." Both Ethiopians and Europeans interpreted this as meaning the queen of Sheba, black as were the people of the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia).
Okay, the Song of Songs is supposed to be about Christ's love for His church, according to medieval theologians, not some king crooning to his mistress, but they would have been the first to tell you that a Bible text had meaning on more than one level. At any rate, the kings of Ethiopia, from at least the thirteenth century, asserted descent both from the Solomon-Sheba alliance and from those who had brought Christianity to the Horn of Africa in the fourth century. They also said that Sheba's son had brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia from Jerusalem, but we aren't going to talk about that now.
In the early days of the church, before the rise of Islam, Ethiopia had sent bishops to ecumenical councils. They attended the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which addressed some of the issues of the nature of Christ that seemed still to be up in the air after the Council of Nicaea over a century earlier. Christ was both human and divine, but was He both fully, or half and half? The council settled on "one person, two natures," fully human and fully divine at the same time, accepted by both the Latin west and Greek orthodoxy. The Ethiopians, along with some other Christian churches, held out for one person, one (blended) nature. (Yes, most of us today would be scratching our heads over why this was a big deal, but trust me, it was.) Other differences also persisted, such as whether to celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday. Also the Chalcedonian version of the church finished dropping any thought that Christians needed to follow Old Testament requirements of circumcision, which the non-Chalcedonian churches continued to follow.
Throughout the Middle Ages, although there wasn't much contact between western (Latin) Christendom and Ethiopia, once the Mediterranean basin became predominantly Muslim, they knew each other were there. Pilgrims from Ethiopia periodically visited sites holy to early Christianity, even if in areas (like Egypt or the Sinai) now predominantly Muslim. There were plenty of stories in Europe about "Prester John," a black priest (prester) who was sort-of-like-a-pope of some fabulous African land.
At the end of the Middle Ages, pilgrims from Ethiopia showed up in Rome. They wanted to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul who, being in the New Testament, were as important to them as they were to western Christendom. They settled in the church of San Stefano Maggiore, an old church, located near Saint Peter's basilica, that had been in some disrepair for centuries and had most recently been used to house priests. San Stefano became the Ethiopian guest house.
Ethiopian pilgrims continued to visit Rome and stay in San Stefano for the next two centuries, through the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Some stayed only a short time. Others lived there their entire lives. They learned about the Latin version of Christianity, and a few converted to it. They explained their version to the Roman priests. These priests thought to draw these strange people they thought of as "Indians" (that is from some distant marvelous land) into their version of Catholicism, and simultaneously became disturbed at what they considered heretical beliefs and practices. The pope, facing the split in western Christendom from the Reformation, tried to figure out how these Ethiopians could be on his side.
The Ethiopians' extensive writings on their experiences in Rome ended up in the library of the Vatican. Samantha Kelly, who (unlike most of us) can read their language, has very recently published a book on these Ethiopian pilgrims, called Translating Faith, Harvard University Press 2025.
© C. Dale Brittain 2025
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