RELIGIOUS BITES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 117, 13 November 1935, Page 11

RELIGIOUS BITES

ETHIOPIA AND THE PAST

Italian troops pour into East Africa, a spurred on in the fight against heat, c rough terrain, and tropical pestilence by memories of the old Roman legions, says a writer in an exchange. No less £ inspired, the Ethiopians await the issue I —the independence of their royal line c and religious culture which trace de- s scent from King Solomon and early 1 Christian proselytisers forming the c background for their valour. £ The story of Menelik, son of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, who was i crowned King of Ethiopia in the temple i at Jerusalem, is well known; and to i this day Ethiopian church ritual is sprinkled with Hebraic custom and belief. The adoration of the host, for , instance, is accompanied by a vencra- 3 tion for the Ark of the Covenant. The . native Christians even bake bread in \ thin round forms similar to those eaten ( at the Jewish Passover. Legend says that Christianity was first brought to the Ethiopians by the . Apostle Philip, through a eunuch of Queen Candace in the First Century A.D. More solid historical evidence indicates that Christianity was grafted upon the existent Judaism by Frumentius, a Tyrian merchant, ordained in ' 327 by the Patriarch Alhanasius of Alexandria. He became the first Bis : hop of Axum, the Ethiopian city whose ruins are near Adowa. : Frumentius and his successors in- j vested the rulers of the land with ■ ecclestiastical as well as temporal powers, in virtue of the royal link with Solomon. Neither Portuguese military adventures of the sixteenth century nor later Jesuits could effect the transfer of the allegiance of the Ethiopian clergy to the Roman Catholic Pope. They recognised only the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, and still do. TWO SABBATHS. ' Ethiopian Christians observe the Jewish Sabbath as well as the Christian Sunday, and keep most of the peni- ; tential periods and festivals of both Greek and Roman Churches. They fast every Wednesday and Friday, abstain ■ from pork and other "unclean" food, . adore ikons of the Blessed Virgin and , the saints. Churches in the north are built I squarely, while in the south their shape . is spherical, after the old manner of . the Templars. Men enter at the left ■ of the building, women-at the right. . Church bells are unknown, the con- . gregation being summoned by the ; musical clashing of two stones. I Bread for mass is prepared and kept . in the "House of Bread," a room in the . north-western corner of the church. I There is an outer yard; an inner court, > corresponding to the Hebrew Holy ; Place; and, within this latter, another ) court, the Holy of Holies, facing the - East and open only to priests. This last contains the Ark of the Covenant —a shelf supported on four posts, each eight feet high, on which lie the holy books, sacramental vessels, and processional crosses. Churches and monasteries are endowed with valuable lands and herds. Priests have a large income from gifts 3 and from their fees as public registrars of sales and other secular trans- . actions. > Civil marriage in Ethiopia is a simple i contract, involves wide polygamy, and - may be broken at will by either party. - There is also, however, a special - ecclesiastical marriage, which permits s the man only one wife, his absolute 1 social and legal equal. Such unions are indissoluble.